The Neuroscience of Nothing

[bose]

I’ve put together a few links which discuss the nature of our visual perception and how it relates (or doesn’t!) to the reality of our surroundings. Although the idea that our perception is the result of our brain interpreting sensory data wont be anything new to anyone, the extent to which the brain subjectively interprets, ignores and even adds to that information, greatly depending on the context, is less often mentioned in discussions, (probably because our brain does such a flawless job at making things appear consistent, it gets overlooked!)
Though I’m sure this is all well known stuff to most readers, the articles have some fun demos to try and highlight just how much of what you see (and don’t see) is only a clever representation that the brain has constructed to optimise and make sense of what we see. The main focus is on how we perceive colour and that it relies heavily on contrast (which is context dependant) rather than the wavelength of the light.
All in all it shows that what we see isn’t as real as we experience it and we only need a suitable representation of the world to understand it, which is great news for quantum and string theory! :)

Video presentation: The Neuroscience of Nothing (the speaker isnt the best, but the content is good!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=e ... Ugb-V0bijA

The Anatomy of Illusion Article
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/ ... bout_t.php

Colour Contrast is 'Seen' by the Brain Article
http://www.physorg.com/news108382631.html


The Neuroscience of Illusion (full article only available with subscription, but worth reading if you can get it)
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the ... f-illusion


Complex Cells in the Brain's Vision Centre Tune in to Natural Scenes
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlser ... 30360&ct=1

[bose]

Im also looking for publications regarding how the brain constructs the image you percieve in terms of the neural pathways used and the areas/extent of brain activity. In particular Im looking for any differences that occur when the type of image you see changes (i.e. people vs objects, nature vs manmade scenes, variations colour and light intensity etc) Ive seen some articles but cannot access them as theyre subscription based. Any links would be appreciated

[psionic11]

You may have to dig a bit, but here's a list of neuroscience links you may find relevant:

http://www.utdallas.edu/~kilgard/lectures.htm

Here's a direct link to an MIT video on vision and face recognition:
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/154/

[Terry]

One more source here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z79k5O7MZ5k

The minds eye, one of the brain story series. The visual system consists of two main pathways and various task-specific subsystems. It mentioned about movement, face and object recognization, attention system, as well as the need that our visual inputs integrate with visual memories to interpret the outside world.

[bose]

Thanks for the links!

The question I was trying to answer was; is our perception of the world limited by the scope of our senses? Since perception seems to occur mainly in the brain, and one sense can be effectively substituted for another (see an example below) it seems not.
My real interest is in how can/will we manipulate our knowledge of the way the brain processes sensory information to enhance our perception? (most likely with the aid of technology) Will there be a time when we can find ways to perceive the invisible...maybe medical purposes, like a way to sense blood sugar levels, or (if I may go a little science fiction!) be able to percieve another spatial dimension.

But, back to reality....I also found this video about Daniel Kish who teaches blind people to use echo location, substituting vision so well that they use it to ride mountain bikes...pretty impressive!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uobuBc2GO0o

[Terry]

I think our senses and perception processes define our reality. The external world has no objective qualities of its own and we create our own qualitative aspects of the universe which form our 'experiencial space'. The perceived world was once all encoded in the form of electrical impulses before arriving to our brain just as the bits that we send through the internet, only then reassemble by different hardwares to produce various outputs (data, images and sounds) as comparable to our different sensations.

If we could master the perception processes and understand how different qualities arised, we may well create our sixth sense with proper transducer and interpreter mechanisms to extend our experiencial space.

It is a good idea to create a sound pulse emitting device to help in echolocation as not every person can make the sharp kick sound that can be effectively bounced back.

[Hardstreet]

I think our senses and perception processes define our reality. The external world has no objective qualities of its own and we create our own qualitative aspects of the universe which form our 'experiencial space'.

If the external world has no objective qualities of its own, what do scientists study (or try to study)? Do they study their own experience of the external world? Wouldn't that make psychology or neurobiology the only science that there is and that there could ever be?

[Terry]

By quality, I mean the brightness, colorness, hotness, etc that we perceived. The sound, taste and smell that we can't explain the feelings. Think of a camera, there is light forming images but we don't expect there is brightness and colorness 'inside the camera'. Perception is an interactive process between the perceiving and the perceived entities. We take part in what we perceived. We say that red, green and blue are the three primary colors. But this is due to our trichromatic color vision, not an absolute objective fact. There are dichromatic and monochromatic color vision as well.

We study our very own experience of the external world and our theories only fit for our minds. As long as we share our common perceived world, we have the objectiveness to build our own science. Do you think so?

[Hardstreet]

By quality, I mean the brightness, colorness, hotness, etc that we perceived.

I think that the external world has real properties, but our only knowledge of those properties is gained through our senses which the brain uses to construct a model of the external world. As you pointed out (in somewhat different terms), we shouldn't confuse our internal model of the external world with the external world itself.

[Mossling]

It seems important to add to all this that our perceptions are also affected a lot by language - the way we label and conceptualise the world. This can lead to such situations as 'not seeing the wood for the trees', for example.

What is perceived in a chaotic ink blob by one person can be very different from what is perceived by another.

Salience is directed by past experiences and our cultural framework, and when we are operating in social contexts we can be influenced by other minds as to what we see - even on the level of pure body language outside of spoken words.

It seems that if we can bypass the languaging processes in our brain when we observe the world, we will be a lot more likely to sense a 'raw' reality. Such a witnessing of 'nothingness' is reported by Zen Masters when they become enlightened.

[psionic11]

Another way of bypassing these "social filters" you describe above is by using as many methods of observation as possible. View the same thing from multiple angles or perspectives, if you will. This is what our scientific instruments do... perceive reality beyond normal human senses..

ultrasonic, infrasonic, infrared, x-ray, microwave, seismic, radioactivity, salinity, chemical concentration, weight, density, viscosity, temperature, etc....

[Mossling]

Scientific aparatus is calibrated to our senses, and because the aparatus is not embedded in our body, we must use concepts to interpret what the aparatus is measuring. Also, the aparatus is constructed in such a way that it is calibrated to our philosophical orientations, so that it is chopping the universe up in to units which will determine how we view the world. If we use a star-shaped biscuit-cutter to make our cookies, we say cookies are star-shaped - the same goes with what ever unit of measurement we impose on reality.

We must conceptually choose the unit of measurement and how to construct the aparatus, and then use concepts to interpret the data, and so the social filters can still influence the results in this case, because our concepts are socially-rooted. The glass half empty or half full is a perfect example of this.

The potential units we have available to measure a glass of water are 'emptiness' and 'fullness', and when the water is half way we can choose which ever unit we would like, in order to produce a different philosophically meaningful answer. By saying "We have a glass half full of water here and we're going to use the unit of emptiness to measure the level of the water", it seems we have already 'coloured' the conclusion.

We have our own 'measuring aparatus' within our bodies, but it produces a differnt of kind of data - it is analog, and therefore doesn't cut anything up with biscuit-cutters.

We can feel the universe via our own Being by feeling the changes and sensations within us as we take part in the flow of energy between atoms. When we digest our food, or when we breathe air in to our lungs, for example - all of this involves energy transfer, and we can learn about the patterns of movement and interaction in the universe beyond conceptualising things - we can percieve it as a flow of sensation (this is where practices like Taichi produce wisdom).

Our senses can be very finely tuned it seems - just look at that blind kid who learned to use echo-location, for example - imagine that power turned inwards towards our own physical processes.

Just like when we learn to ride a bike or use the vocal apparatus to render words, any understanding about our physical existence gleaned in this way is not something we can explain - frustratingly - our understanding is rooted in muscle memory and kinesthesia. So it is trapped in the realms beyond concepts, and yet it is an understanding - it is knowledge, and just like riding a bike or rendering words it can be VERY useful and resides within our Being as a resource where ever we go.