Transcript The Doors of Perception and Reality The mind can only see what it is prepared to see. Edward de Bono -Introduction  Definitions What is perception, sensation.

The Doors
of Perception and
Reality
The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
Edward de Bono
-Introduction
 Definitions
What is perception, sensation and reality?
Which senses are involved?
-Neuroanatomical basis for perception
 Brain Organization , cross-section, regions
 How do we sense?
 How is data processed?
 What is memory?
 What is consciousness?
 How do we perceive?
 Perception and Reality
-Another perception-Altered Reality
Case Studies
 Picasso
 Dostoyevski
 A Drug Induced case
-Current and Future Research
Virtual Reality: Matrix
Artificial Neural Networks
Sensation is experiencing sensory stimuli
(e.g. Hearing, seeing, feeling),
Perception is assigning meaning to what we see, hear
and feel. To organize and interpret sensory input.
The process by which we assign meaning
to sensory stimuli
Reality: All of your experiences that determine how things
appear to you. Something that is neither derivative
nor dependent but exists necessarily.
19 Senses, not 5!
And now "others"
The research comes from Rivlin and
Gravelle, 'Deciphering Your Senses', 1984
Balance - Kinesthetic geotropic
Vestibular - Repititious movement
Temperature - Molecular motion
Pain - Nociception
Eidetic imagery - Neuroelectrical image retention
Magnetic - Ferromagnetic orientation
Vomeronasal - Pheromonic sensing
Electrical - Surface charge
Barometric - Atmospheric pressure
Geogravimetric - Sensing mass differences
First the BIG FIVE. . .
Sight - Visible Light
Hearing - Vibrations in the air
Touch - Tactile contact
Taste - Chemical Molecular
Smell - Olfactory molecular
Imagine one of your most memorable experiences…
you were probably very emotionally charged
(either negatively or positively)
and there was a lot of sensory input!.
Brain Organization
 Thalamus: Relay station of the Brain
Sensory neuron synapse
 Hypothalamus -Basic drives
 Limbic System- Emotion and Memory
hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus,
hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal glands
 Brain Stem
Medulla
Pons- Sleep and walking/consciousness
 Cerebellum
Motor Conditions and balance
Occipital
Visual Cortex
Temporal
Auditory Cortex
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What is memory? How is it stored?
• The power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been
learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms.
• The store of things learned and retained from an organism's
activity or experience as evidenced by modification of structure
or behavior or by recall and recognition
•This is Hebb's mental picture of what a memory might look
like - a group of simultaneously active neurons connected together
by strong connections so that if any one of them became active,
it would activate all the others in the assembly.
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The seat of conscious, frontal lobe
• Consciousness is awareness of self and environment, the capacity for
higher cognitive functions for motivated and intellectualized behavior,
delayed response solutions and intentionality.
• Many areas of the neo-cortex, such as the frontal lobes which are
hardly visible in lower animals (3.1% of cortex in cats), are considerably
larger (13% in primates) and occupy up to 25% of the total hemispheres
in man, were formally regarded as silent areas of the brain.
• Recognition of the functions of the frontal lobe continues to be difficult
in that they don’t appear to be essential to life. They are responsible for
higher meta-functions;
• intentionality, initiation,
• complex sequencing, creation of plans,
• manipulation of representative systems
- in short,
they denote an awareness of the activity of the mind.
When we acquire “wiring”?
• Miyelination of fibers within the frontal lobes is delayed
until the child is between four and seven years old allowing
prolongation of maturation to enable continued learning.
• Motor development begins before birth and closes at two.
• The windows of opportunity open for emotional and
social attachment at birth and close around two.
• Opportunity for acquiring a second language opens
around birth and closes between 8 and 10.
• Math and logic 3-6
The images above reveal the brain activity of a normal child (left)
and an institutionalized Romanian orphan who was neglected
in infancy (right). The blue and black tones show that brain areas
such as the temporal lobes, which oversee emotion among
other functions, are practically inactive in the Romanian child
compared to the healthy child.
We see! We perceive?
Do we take the limits of our
own field of vision for the
limits of the world?
AA
Real World
Sensory Surface
A miniature world and its projection onto a schematic retina
What's wrong with this figure?
There are many ways that this figure can be perceived
as a possible as a misperceived object. In other words,
it is possible to construct a physical model of the impossible
triangle that looks impossible from only one angle.
Case Studies
 Picasso
 Dostoyevski
 A Drug Induced Case
 Virtual Reality: Matrix
Was Cubism a Matter of Migraine?
Visual abnormalities?
DostoyevskiTemporal Lobe Epilepsy
and Mystical experience
Prince Mishkin in Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”.
He was thinking… there was a moment or two in his epileptic
condition…when suddenly amid the sadness, spiritual darkness and
depression, his brain seemed to catch fire at brief moments… all
his agitation, all his doubts and worries seemed composed in a
twinkling, culminating in a great calm, full of serene and
harmonious joy and hope, full of understanding and knowledge of
the final cause.
Scientists can map brain structures that contain opiate receptors and are
responsible for opiate drug effects on the body. This positron emission
tomography (PET) scan of mu opiate receptors in the human brain shows
the highest concentrations in the thalamus (red) which is involved in pain;
intermediate concentrations in the cerebral cortex (green) and basal ganglia
(yellow and orange) which plays an important role in movement and
emotions; and low levels in the visual cortex (violet).
VR
• Virtual Reality is a way for humans to visualize,
manipulate and interact with computers and extremely
complex data.
• The visualization part refers to the computer generating
visual, auditory or other sensual outputs to the user of a
world within the computer.
• This world may be a CAD model, a scientific simulation,
or a view into a database. The user can interact with the
world and directly manipulate objects within the world.
• Types of VR
Immersive
Telepresence
Neural Networks
parallel structure of the mammalian brain processes information...
When the doors of perception are cleansed,
things will appear as they truly are...
William Blake