Category: Seeing
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Transformations. Modern alchemy. Ancient secrets…
Since the Middle Ages, alchemists have sought to transmute elements, the most famous example being the long quest to turn lead into gold. Transmutation has been realized in modern times, but on a minute scale using a massive particle accelerator. Researchers have now taken a different approach to that alchemists’ ancient goal by making one…
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Cancelling your eyes. Making everything still. Flying…
Scientists analyzed how the brain of a fly compensates for its own movement when seeing and found out that indeed specific neurons are suppressed in order to keep the fly… flying. When a gust of wind unexpectedly blows a fly off course, for example, a powerful reflex known as the optomotor response causes the insect’s…
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Seeing via an app… Not seeing…
A mobile phone application from Microsoft is designed to help people with color blindness see the world a little bit more clearly. Color Binoculars, created by two Microsoft software engineers (one of whom is colorblind), applies a filter to incoming images, changing the colors on the screen to ones that are easier to distinguish. Looking…
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You have seen this before…
People say they see things for the very first time. But you cannot see anything you have not seen before. Because the very moment you see it, you have already seen it… And the only reason you see it is because you already understand it. A mind cannot understand what it does not already know.…
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Brain, Bayesian reasoning, hallucinations, schizophrenia, obstacles…
By weaving together expectations and information gleaned from the senses, the brain creates a story about the outside world. “The brain is a guessing machine, trying at each moment of time to guess what is out there,” says computational neuroscientist Peggy Seriès. Guesses just slightly off — like mistaking a smile for a smirk —…
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