Perceptual Adaptation

It might seem a daunting task to try and do almost anything while wearing glasses that invert your vision. Even something as simple as writing your name would become quite a challenge.

However, your brain being the amazing machine that it is, actually starts to adjust your senses to make the new stimulus more natural feeling. In fact, if you were to leave on the inverted glasses for a few days, your brain would even go so far as to invert the already inverted image so as to make you perceive things as upright once again (as tested by late 1800's psychologist, George Stratton).

Here is one more trick. Watch the center numbers that are counting down.

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/cog_numerosity/

For the one second that the gray dots appear, you should notice that the side with the most colored dots now appear to have the least gray dots. In fact, both sides have the same amount of gray dots, with similar spacing between them. This is because your brain is registering the left side as 'more' and the right side as 'less'. So when the dots turn gray and equalize, the brain assumes that there are now less on the left side than there are on the right.

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Negative Afterimage

Reber Shukri Professor Vaughn Negative afterimage is a stimulus which elicits a positive image. In order to experience this, one can look at a bright source of light and then look away to a dark area. The way negative afterimage works is when the eye's photo-receptors which are the rods and cones adapt to over stimulation and lose sensitivity. The photo-receptors which are constantly exposed to the same stimulus will fatigue their supply of photo pigment, resulting a decrease in signal to the brain. The way negative afterimage connects to perception is because of bottom up processing where the stimulus influences what we perceive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szy8iNCljlQ <Link to the video

Illusions that Confuse Multiple Senses

In this video, several illusions are shown that deceive your senses. Illusions such as the Zöllner Illusion and the Poggendorff illusion confuse our bottom up processing by tricking our vision. However, our vision isn't the only sense that these illusions can confuse, blind individuals presented with raised versions of the same illusions are also confused by them. These illusions effect the visual and touch systems by confusing our bottom up processing by tricking out sight and touch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je1mkzRU5rc&t=64s

The Rotating Mask Illusion- Schizophrenia

A schizophrenic process is more of a bottom up process than a top down which is what we do. We are unable to see a hollow face at first because we have never seen that before in our prior experience. This illusion occurs because the brain interprets information based on context and previous experience, or top down processing. In schizophrenic people there is a dysconnectivity between the parietal cortex, where top down occurs, and the lateral occipital cortex, where bottom up occurs, which is why they see the hollow face right away. In healthy people the connectivity in these areas are increased which is why they see a regular rotating face

Philosophy of Perception

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