Brain Tricks

After visiting http://braintricks.org/index.php , I lost at least 20 minutes of my life trying without success to figure out the visual clue for why moving one section of an image changed the number of people (drawn in caricature) from 12 to 13 or 13 to 12. Our visual center and its inherent processes are fascinating in their implications. Can we trust that we are seeing what really is there, and is there a there? Given quantum mechanics and the phenomena that what is seen depends on vantage point and whether you are looking at "it" or not suggests that no two people possible can share the exact same view. That's right, two people standing right next to each other watching a parade will each have different observations and will relate them differently as well. This means a lot when law enforcement interviews people who "witness" a crime. 

Well, on to the assignment.... I scored 100 percent correct on the color blindness test, http://braintricks.org/test_score.php. 

I then did the color perception test which asks people to look at the center cross. I quickly was able to see the green dot phasing or cycling through each position on the "clock" face, creating a ghostly green glow around each of the previously magenta dots. In the time I allowed, I was not able to see only the green dot or to have the magenta dots disappear altogether.

 

Having seen this before, I gravitated to see how quickly I would find the hidden human face in the image above. Do you see it?  Did you see it right away or was it a delayed response? I found it quickly. 

My next choice was the audio test that asked for use of a headset. I put on a headset and discovered that the references for left and right were  not congruent with my experience so I flipped the headset so that what was on one ear was now on the other and in fact, the references in the audio track were congruent. When the barber said he was positioning the clippers or the electric razor next to the right ear, that is where I heard it.

Forming a hypothesis about why I may see something that isn't there, the brain can be fooled to not see something that is there due to a structure in the brain so perhaps there is a structure that similarly explains why I may see something that isn't there. Sometimes a brain injury accounts for people who do not see a full face when looking at others.

Since a hypothesis must be tested, I will suggest that I can see something that isn't there due to the image staying on my retina longer, as when a person shifts their eyes and quickly the image of what they were gazing at persists for a moment or two longer. I imagine that this is a standard tactic in movie making cinematography to fool us into believing that a person was stabbed or fell off a cliff.

I could test this by staring intently, as I did in the above illusion test, at a particular object--my cell phone--and then quickly shifting my eyes to the space on the table near the cell phone and see if the ghostly image of my cell phone will appear. To form a theory, I would have to do this under controlled conditions, allowing for others to perform the test and then measuring their responses as well before determining if the evidence supports my hypothesis. 

I have wondered about the ability of law enforcement to train themselves to be observant as they drive by, scanning for the unusual, the patterns that suggest crime, or the ability to elicit accurate information and assessment of that information for problem-solving duties. Sometimes I test my observation skills. I am beginning a new career in Asian medicine which relies on various skills, including powers of senses such as smell, vision, and touch to provide clues to the practitioner. Becoming aware of the sensory impressions literally at our fingertips as well as the scents that people carry and the sounds and sights that constantly are in our environments is a valuable exercise. it is not hard for people to smell if another has recently smoked a cigarette or eaten a meat sandwich or to detect the scent of their personal care products and cologne. It can be hard to train one's attention on one sound when another sound is more strident, or louder. It can be hard to find the right pressure to detect nuances in someone's pulse but using our senses and respecting the statements that people make about their experience of reality is what we work with. If they say they feel pins and needles in their legs, and we do not see any, well, we take in that information and seek other inputs as we work with people to resolve their concerns.  

Conversely, trusting what we see that is not seen by others has value as well. Each of us has acuity that can vary according to genetics, awareness and state of alertness, and training or acceptance of sensory perceptions. Training oneself to not allow the brain to filter in ways it may choose to on an automatic basis is a challenge, but can deepen one's practice and yield interesting options.