Illusions
Contrary to popular belief, the biggest illusions occur not when you close your eyes, but when you open them. From the moment your eyes see, the illusion begins. To understand this, we must understand how the brain renders sight.The brain works by deciphering bits of information transmitted by electrical signals, sent from all over the body. In the case of sight, electrical signals from the eyes are picked up by the brain and converted into an image. All that you learnt in primary and secondary school science about light falling on the eyes and forming an image is only the tip of the iceberg. But ever wondered, what's next? The image is broken down into electrical signals that the brain receives, and inside that skull of ours it reforms that image. That much we can deduce ourselves.
Now the interesting part. The image that the brain forms is incomplete. Instead, it fills in whatever your eyes failed to pick up. All human eyes have a blind spot in the retina, usually the center, because there are no receptors on that part. For this reason, the eye fails to pick up certain spots in the image we see. Try some simple tests here. http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chvision.html The brain corrects for these errors by assuming whatever should be there, so now the overall image is one concocted by your brain. Just imagine, the very words you see here are partially made up.
And to top it all off, your brain actually has the power to decide what you see. Have you ever wandered into someone or something because you were not paying attention? In an experiment, people were asked for their full concentration to count the number of times a black ball was passed between a few people, all wearing the same coloured attire, in a simple ball game involving two balls, a white one and a black one. At the end of the experiment, they were asked if they saw the gorilla walking by. Almost all said they had not seen any gorilla. To prove that there was one, a video that recorded the entire experiment was immediately shown to them, to prevent any claims of altering the footage. The video revealed that during the course of the experiment, a man in a monkey suit had walked in between the players and stood there waving for a few minutes before walking off again. What does this show? That we only see what our brain wants us to see.
(more points to ponder) A cat seen through a pickled fence is not seen as slices of a cat but a whole cat. A driver engaged in a phone conversation looks round the corner but fails to see the cyclist. (now you know why never to distract the driver.) More information about sight here. http://www.girevikmagazine.com/Girevik/Fourth/eyesight.htm
Sight. The biggest illusion of all. Because what you see is not what you get...
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home