[From Kenny Kitzke 11.8.98 900 CDT]
FYI and comment.
BNN, Bubba News Network
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* Science:
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Do We Think Up What We See?
To a nervous hiker traipsing along in a thick forest at
dusk, curved sticks become snakes, and beady little
eyes peer out from almost every bush, or so it seems.
Believing could indeed be like seeing, though,
according to a new study by researchers at the Max
Plank Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tuebingen,
Germany, and at the University of Wisconsin in
Madison.
Their report in the latest issue of the journal Nature
Neuroscience says they have discovered that
expectations can influence our brain to such a degree
that it overrides reality and actually modifies our
interpretation of events as they happen.
"This topic is of great interest to eye-witness
testimony
theory," explains Pawan Sinha, a professor of
psychology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison,
"because our study shows that there may be difficulty
in distinguishing between what we expect and what
really is happening right at that moment."
That memories become fuzzy and distorted according to
likes and dislikes is already well known. But if the
brain
distorts an event as we are watching it, then the
memories generated from that event are likely to be even
more unreliable.
It has been thought that when an event is witnessed, it
is recorded by vision and then processed and analyzed
in the brain. With time, expectations color the events
seen. However, this study shows that as the brain is
processing and analyzing an ongoing event, there is a
feedback mechanism from the brain that distorts the
reality as it happens.
Sinha and his colleagues, Heinrich and Isabelle
Buelthoff at Max Plank, stumbled upon this find as they
were attempting to better understand how the brain
recognizes 3-dimensional objects that are in motion.
Subjects watched a series of movies called biological
motion movies, which portrayed a person walking. The
person is not shown, however. Instead, participants
viewed points of light at each joint and limb that
represented the moving form. Even though the
researchers distorted these images greatly, subjects had
no problem identifying the figures.
"Not just that," says Sinha, "but they were unable to
detect there were distortions."
The study is another in a growing body of evidence that
suggests the supposed hierarchy of going from images
to recognition is not true, according to Tomaso Poggio,
a professor at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab and
Brain
Science departments.
"Recognition, in some cases, can actually precede and
influence visual processes," Poggio explains, "and this
approach is important in developing better artificial
intelligence systems, such as an ATM recognizing your
face."
By Barbie Bischof, Discovery Channel News
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BNN's favorite quotes:
"expectations can influence our brain to such a degree
that it overrides reality and actually modifies our
interpretation of events as they happen."
"because our study shows that there may be difficulty
in distinguishing between what we expect and what
really is happening right at that moment."
"But if the brain
distorts an event as we are watching it, then the
memories generated from that event are likely to be even
more unreliable."
"However, this study shows that as the brain is
processing and analyzing an ongoing event, there is a
feedback mechanism from the brain that distorts the
reality as it happens."
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Am I thinking up the need for a colonoscopy? For those who know I have
been quiet due to health concerns, I have had some rear end problems and
heavy pain that Prep H has not solved. My doctor thought it might be H
and/or a lesion. Since my brother died from colon cancer at about my age
(55)and since some of the symptoms would not come just from H, they have to
take a look. Yuk!
I'm thinking up the "photos" show no problems. Not sure that will work
without a miracle, but we'll see early in November.