Want to freak out your mind? Find your visual blind spots and discuss how you think they go unnoticed most of the time and how they seem invisible.
Place your right hand over your right eye while looking at a small object on a wall far away, like a door knob or light switch.
Keep your right hand over your right eye and keep looking at the object with your left eye.
Raise your left thumb out in front of you so your left thumb blocks your view of the object on the wall, then slowly move your left thumb to the left but keep looking at the object.
At about 15 degrees to the left of center your thumb will disappear.
This is your blind spot. You have one in your right eye about 15 degrees to the right of the center in your right eye too. If you move your left thumb around a little bit you can sort of tell where the edges of the blind spot are, but if you move your open hand into the area, it seems to become difficult to see the blind spot at all.
The weird part is figuring out how the empty spaces seems to be filled in like camouflage so you can't see it. It seems to go unnoticed.
Those of us lucky to have both of our eyes don't notice our blind spots because the visual fields of both eyes overlap.
I once thought that there was some process by which the brain fills in the space with surrounding sensory information.
I tried splitting the visual field into two separate colors with a third color for the spot in the center. I moved the colored paper with the center spot into my blind spot but that yielded negative results. I traced on paper the edges of the blind spots. They were vertically oriented oval shapes, tried the colored paper again with larger spots, no luck.
I gradually came to realize that my whole concept of blindness was wrong. I assumed that blindness was like darkness but even the dark has substance and is recognized as something.
For a long time I couldn't grasp the concept of the cognitive gap, that in our field of vision there are empty spots where nothing processes. It doesn't show up as a shadow that one naturally assumes a flaw in visual perception should, like dirt on a camera lens, one can only make sense of it with processed visual information, leaving one unable to articulate the experience properly.
Real blindness is a void that cannot be adequately defined in any way, because it simply does not exist to be processed in our minds. We don't notice it, we only notice the thing moving behind the veils of non-perception.
For those of us with two eyes we don't need to worry because the visual field of the other eye overlaps the blind spot.
Some still say that the brain fills in the detail with surrounding information, but I'm not convinced. I'm certain that there are other such gaps in our general perception of the world that prevent us from sensing what is real. As a species we only earned enough perception through natural selection to allow for our basic survival. If we had more perception than what we needed we might go completely insane.
Currently, our eyes can see a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, 400 to 800 nanometers. University of Southern California scientists have unlocked an electronic method of firing neurons in rats that allow them to remember things they forgot.
Place your right hand over your right eye while looking at a small object on a wall far away, like a door knob or light switch.
Keep your right hand over your right eye and keep looking at the object with your left eye.
Raise your left thumb out in front of you so your left thumb blocks your view of the object on the wall, then slowly move your left thumb to the left but keep looking at the object.
At about 15 degrees to the left of center your thumb will disappear.
This is your blind spot. You have one in your right eye about 15 degrees to the right of the center in your right eye too. If you move your left thumb around a little bit you can sort of tell where the edges of the blind spot are, but if you move your open hand into the area, it seems to become difficult to see the blind spot at all.
The weird part is figuring out how the empty spaces seems to be filled in like camouflage so you can't see it. It seems to go unnoticed.
Those of us lucky to have both of our eyes don't notice our blind spots because the visual fields of both eyes overlap.
I once thought that there was some process by which the brain fills in the space with surrounding sensory information.
I tried splitting the visual field into two separate colors with a third color for the spot in the center. I moved the colored paper with the center spot into my blind spot but that yielded negative results. I traced on paper the edges of the blind spots. They were vertically oriented oval shapes, tried the colored paper again with larger spots, no luck.
I gradually came to realize that my whole concept of blindness was wrong. I assumed that blindness was like darkness but even the dark has substance and is recognized as something.
For a long time I couldn't grasp the concept of the cognitive gap, that in our field of vision there are empty spots where nothing processes. It doesn't show up as a shadow that one naturally assumes a flaw in visual perception should, like dirt on a camera lens, one can only make sense of it with processed visual information, leaving one unable to articulate the experience properly.
Real blindness is a void that cannot be adequately defined in any way, because it simply does not exist to be processed in our minds. We don't notice it, we only notice the thing moving behind the veils of non-perception.
For those of us with two eyes we don't need to worry because the visual field of the other eye overlaps the blind spot.
Some still say that the brain fills in the detail with surrounding information, but I'm not convinced. I'm certain that there are other such gaps in our general perception of the world that prevent us from sensing what is real. As a species we only earned enough perception through natural selection to allow for our basic survival. If we had more perception than what we needed we might go completely insane.
Currently, our eyes can see a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, 400 to 800 nanometers. University of Southern California scientists have unlocked an electronic method of firing neurons in rats that allow them to remember things they forgot.
Using an electronic system that duplicates the neural signals associated with memory, they managed to replicate the brain function in rats associated with long-term learned behavior, even when the rats had been drugged to forget.Imagine what would happen if the brain could be enhanced to perhaps see the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Meet "The Man with the X-Ray Eyes!
