dsc.discovery.com— Joel Pearson and his team from Vanderbilt University have found strong evidence suggesting that our brains experience mental images as if they were pictures.
Aug 9, 2008View in Crawl 4
It may seem obvious, but if you read the article it's actually interesting. The mental image the test subjects create actually affect what they SEE. Not to mention the importance of mapping just how mental images are constructed in the brain, which could have major implications in VR development.
In the end, the researchers discovered that if a person imagined one of the two patterns, that's the pattern he or she tended to see. "Hence mental imagery dictates what you will see later in time," says Pearson. That "hence" seems to be a like a big leap. I would hope that would have more extensive tests with more than 11 patients. Obviously if you tell me to think about something it will influence my later actions, but they have no basis at all to claim that it is because of mental imagery. For example, some people might just picture red, and since red is the predominate idea floating throughout their mind, you could show them turquoise and they will say red (kind of like that "silk.... what do cows drink? MILK!" sort of thing).The research is cool, but far from scientifically significant. We already knew people could "picture" things in their head, this tells us nothing more. (BTW is anyone having their comment box jump up and down while they are typing?)
Whilst you could count the number of receptors in our eyes, perception is something that is inextricabally tied with time. Situations unfold before us whilst we move our eyes and bodies, and as the environment changes, such that by the time we talk about how we understand the world, even that which is immediately in front of us, concepts such as megapixels would be meaningless.
paranoidmarvinAug 11, 2008
Does that mean I can submit my mental images to 4chan?
scalemodlgiantAug 11, 2008
It may seem obvious, but if you read the article it's actually interesting. The mental image the test subjects create actually affect what they SEE. Not to mention the importance of mapping just how mental images are constructed in the brain, which could have major implications in VR development.
adamantiumAug 11, 2008
In the end, the researchers discovered that if a person imagined one of the two patterns, that's the pattern he or she tended to see. "Hence mental imagery dictates what you will see later in time," says Pearson. That "hence" seems to be a like a big leap. I would hope that would have more extensive tests with more than 11 patients. Obviously if you tell me to think about something it will influence my later actions, but they have no basis at all to claim that it is because of mental imagery. For example, some people might just picture red, and since red is the predominate idea floating throughout their mind, you could show them turquoise and they will say red (kind of like that "silk.... what do cows drink? MILK!" sort of thing).The research is cool, but far from scientifically significant. We already knew people could "picture" things in their head, this tells us nothing more. (BTW is anyone having their comment box jump up and down while they are typing?)
petegingerAug 11, 2008
Whilst you could count the number of receptors in our eyes, perception is something that is inextricabally tied with time. Situations unfold before us whilst we move our eyes and bodies, and as the environment changes, such that by the time we talk about how we understand the world, even that which is immediately in front of us, concepts such as megapixels would be meaningless.
kingpAug 11, 2008
I always knew I had a pornographic mind.
dluckyeAug 13, 2008
Actually, i mean what we "see" is not the same as what is projected on the retina