Mind's Eye; the Brain relies constantly on Visual Memories

[Allenrythe]

Aaarraaggjhhhhh!!! What the hell! That hurt my head!

[xxJoeDog93xx]

if someone had cerebral palsy would that affect their minds eye in terms of forming mental pictures?

[gabydewilde]

If less than half of what you think is written here is actually written here,

then most of the world is not real.

[NromulousZ]

its obviously elevated to the right even i think its dumb

[PKarklouse]

So does that mean that my brain improvises anytime it sees something familiar?

[j1514120119]

I think the influence of memory on vision is only supplementary, providing interpretation of raw visual stimuli (size, shape, object identification, etc.), so that big incoherence wouldn't happen in the actual visual picture, but only in its interpretation.

[spartacandream]

Reality = Stranger than what your brain will allow you to see. Nuff said.

[TonyBtheEG]

Thanks for sharing.

[djlogan2]

The show is a BBC documentary named "Human Senses". It's #3 of 3, covering Touch and Vision. I found a torrent download of it.

[jwilldoutube]

Fascinating ~SuperJ

[mrhomie3366]

does anyone remember the name of a documentary that discovery channel ran some 8 years ago about the same subject, where throughout the entire show, a man in a gorilla suit walked around in certain scenes and at the end all scenes were played back to reveal them to the inattentive viewers?

[beefill]

Oh my gosh I was just looking for that documentary for one of my University presentations. Please share with me if you have found it yet?? Cheers

[Kishmond]

After knowing this, how can one say that any observation at all is objective?

[estefez]

The brain may fill in vision from memory, but footage of a distorted room does NOT demonstrate that!

The reason the room looks correct is not that you assume rooms to be correct, but because it has been designed to remove perspective. It's the architects fooling you, not your brain.

If, however, the distortions of the room WERE visible (if you saw it from a different angle) and you still saw it to be proportional, that WOULD be evidence of your brain influencing your vision.

[TheLogicJunkie]

Yes, yes! This is exactly what Jeff Hawkins talks about in his book "On Intelligence": that the stuff of intelligence is actually the incessant and all-pervasive making of predictions, on the levels of both the conscious and unconscious minds.

Great video. Five stars.

[uzmynem]

What happens to someone that has impaired memory?

Would they see things a bit differently since they are using only their vision rather than vision and memory...?

[QuarksAreStrange]

(Re:uzmynem)

I see what you mean. I suppose so; impaired memory would affect perception. But here, we're dealing with something as basic as "what should a room look like". If this is something you can't remember, life must be quite strange regardless of vision.

[spilledinsanity]

@uzmynem

I suppose that could be the way it works during an attack of derealization. I don't think impaired memory would change anything though, even if you can't consciously remember things like names the idea of a room, a chair, a face is all stored deeply in our subconscious.

just a guess though.

[Ko252]

Wow, the room fooled me.

[AyumiLovesYaoi]

I've heard this before, and it kinda upsets me. I've always wanted to think I was so so very preceptive, but it seems we can only be more preceptive than others, because we don't actually see things completely. Makes sense though, imagine if we took in every single detail at once, ouch!

[IWISHIWASYOUREDILDO]

It's easy to see the room how it really is, when you know how it really is.

[schrodcat]

I'm not sure how much of the second part was a literal illustration (or proof) of the first part. What the eyes see is always a 2 dimensional image, which the brain must reconstruct as 3d. Of course the brain uses prospective to do that. No doubt those are also stored in our memory. But the room example IMO doesn't prove (like experiments do) that the memory in THAT right moment is doing the trick, as much as it could be because of hard wired "instinctual" (trained) 3dimensional reconstruction.

[AyumiLovesYaoi]

Wile you kinda lost me there, I agree, I don't think that room is proving the point. It seems to me to just be an optical illusion, like the gray dots that appear between black boxes on a white background (or however that one works).

[JimmyXXL]

I want 1:23 to 1:47 as a screensaver or visualizer.

[jumpingelephant]

stupid brain who have fooled me for the last time. i'm going solo.

[motorolafan]

hahah, good one :)

[novaczik]

@jumpingelephant good one

[vanoman]

i want more of it, please upload more stuff like this :D

[QuarksAreStrange]

hehehe I have 5 videos on the brain, that's already a bit much in my opinon : )

Thanks for watching though.

[adriansalamandre]

can defense lawyers use this video in court to refute eye witness accounts?

[QuarksAreStrange]

haha, good question. "your honor, the witness saw what he wanted to see" : )

It could be arguable. But it could not be based on a generalization, like using this video. I suppose a lawyer could use this principle and try to demonstrate, with the opinion of a professional, that the witness was bias by her previous experience and memories. But I'm no lawyer, and this comment is not a legal advice, hehehe : )

Thanks for commenting adrian.

[QuarksAreStrange]

To create a visual perception of the world, your brain ALWAYS relies as much on sight as memories.

Susan Greenfield: "Our brains are constantly distorting what we see. Using imagination, our brains take a bold shortcut; we guess what's out there from past experience rather to having to build up the image in our mind each time from scratch. [...] The brain doesn't just allow us to see what's out there, it actually invents much of it."

[QuarksAreStrange]

This concept explained and much more in the documentary series "Brain Story" by the extraordinary British Broadcasting Corporation.

More info and links in the description section.

[BradOFarrell]

Hectar was my favorite part of the whole series. I really need to finish it.

[StevenErnest]

Also, there've been psychological studies, where a film is shown of an African-American guy attacking a Caucasian with a BANANA -- and the majority of people swore they saw a knife! Fits right in to your vid, about memories and expectations. And racial prejudices.

[QuarksAreStrange]

How many innocent people are shot by trigger happy cops every year for taking their black wallet out of their pocket? It's the brain taking a wrong shortcut. A very wrong shortcut.

I got more stuff coming soon on the visual functions of the brain, you'll like that one - showing, among other things, how some people with brain damage see the world. Fascinating.

[StevenErnest]

And I still vote for vids explaining how the synapses work in the brain. Very important. Was misrepresented in computer animation in What The Bleep Do We Know" movie. I just watched DVD of Fantastic Voyage, 1966, loved it then, still cool!

[heinz57girl]

You did a fantastic job! Thank you for sharing it with the rest of us. I am going to work harder on concentrating on what I am seeing.

[QuarksAreStrange]

Thank you! : )

I say, focusing on what you're seeing is over-rated; let the brain define what's real using visual memories. It's one of the multiple abilities of the human brain, a useful one I guess, considering the amount of data we have to deal with. Maybe it increased the chances of survival of our species.

[QuarksAreStrange]

Of course, if you're trying to learn new things, there's nothing like concentration; another great characteristic of our complex thinking machine. I should do a video about maximizing the chances of memorizing something, that's a very interesting subject. More on the brain coming soon.

[heinz57girl]

Yessssssssss, that would be amazing to learn more about!!!! Please do it!

[StevenErnest]

Great stuff, Quarks! (So you managed to sneek out of SticKam for a bit? ;) I love that illusion room. Also, our eyes are constantly jumping around, imperceptively, across objects in our field of view. Regarding how we mentally create a lot of reality -- what we see -- someone said, "We're all greater artists than we realize." In that case, I must be a surrealist! ^_^

[StevenErnest]

I also really love that Hitchhiker's quote. Excellent use of it here, very poetic!

[QuarksAreStrange]

Thanks Steven (You know, I posted 3 videos in 3 weeks, that's not bad) : )

About our eyes jumping across objects, I saw a product placement study in which subjects were wearing a device which allowed the marketing company to see exactly were the eye was focusing. I also saw a similar device on someone who was DUI; scary, very scary.

You're very right, beauty is in the eye of the observer... and in his visual memories : )

[StevenErnest]

Re marketers studying our eye movements, there was a movie about that! Looker, by Michael Crichton, in the 80's, with Susan Dey. Not really that great a movie, but maybe worth a viewing. Shows you that Mr. Jurrasic Park was up on this scary stuff long ago. Yikes. ^_^