Can our brains be fooled?

www.patmedia.net...

Is there anyone here with any kind of knowledge as to how this sort of illousion works, or more so why does our brain make us see things this way? I am asking this on the UFO forum because i wondered if it could be the same with other things that we see in the world, whether everyday things or the not so common things like UFO sightings.

For example, on the illusion above, the strobe type effect alters the way we see the image of the circle of dots. If we were look at something like this on a UFO craft with all the lights and whatever else has been reported, could our perception of what we see be altered by our own brains as we focus so intently at the object?

Maybe it's totaly irrelevant to seeing other things first hand out in the open, but you never know till you ask do ya!

Thanks,

CX.

It is called lateral inhibition.

Most people assume that what you see is pretty much what your eye sees and reports to your brain. In fact, your brain adds very substantially to the report it gets from your eye, so that a lot of what you see is actually "made up" by the brain (see Seeing more than your eye does). Perhaps even more interestingly, the eye actually throws away much of the information it gets, leaving it to the rest of the brain to fill in additional information in its own ways. A characteristic pattern of connections among neurons (nerve cells) in the eyes of most animals (including humans), termed a "lateral inhibition network", is a significant way information is thrown away. Lateral inhibition helps to explain a number of "optical illusions" and, more importantly, provides an excellent example of how the brain is organized to actively "make sense" of the information it gets, rather than to simply absorb and respond to it. In so doing, it provides some valuable insights into the sources of our sense of "reality".

Tricks of the Eye, Wisdom of the Brain

Further explanations and examples, here:
Seeing more than your eye does

How this would play out in relation to UFO encounters or sightings involving strobe type effects is unknown. One would have to correlate the number of reported UFO sightings involving strobe type effects to those reported UFO sightings that did not involve such strobe type effects to determine if what you postulate [quoted below] is indeed valid.

Originally posted by CX
If we were look at something like this on a UFO craft with all the lights and whatever else has been reported, could our perception of what we see be altered by our own brains as we focus so intently at the object?

seekerof

[edit on 1-11-2005 by Seekerof]

There are lots of cool studies on how the human eye and the brain render our environments and spatial perception. Our brain is geared toward forming information from our eyes into discernable shapes. There are some cool tests that show how are mind fills in vision in our periphery to process and maintain a forward focus. argh I wish I had the links. Very interesting subject though. I don't think this applies only to UFO's. It applies to everyday life. It not only affects how we visually interpret an event but how our mind is wired to replay it after the fact.

Hrees an itnerstenig ecexrsie, eevn tghuoh I tpeyd tihs cmopetely out of sueqcnee, you can stlil raed it jsut fnie.....