Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered (Humans can see into the future)

Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered (Humans can see into the future)

www.livescience.com

Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur.

And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The more interesting point:

When light hits your retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the world.

...

Changizi now says it's our visual system that has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly ball (instead of getting socked in the face) and maneuver smoothly through a crowd. His research on this topic is detailed in the May/June issue of the journal Cognitive Science,

That's the part I find fascinating. The article than explains how the scientist intends to incorporate this into the unified theory, although I'm not sure how.

What do you think?

www.livescience.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 3-6-2008 by scientist]

Originally posted by scientist

That's the part I find fascinating. The article than explains how the scientist intends to incorporate this into the unified theory, although I'm not sure how.

What do you think?

www.livescience.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 3-6-2008 by scientist]

I'm thinking it'll most likely have something to do with bio-chemistry personally - which could of course lead onto much greater things...

Flagged and starred.

This seems to backup additional research that implies similar things, such as a study I vaguely recall that theorized people form opinions and first impressions of things before even seeing them, also only by milliseconds. I have a feeling it was covered in the BBC documentary called "Human 2.0" as well.

There's some interesting articles in this month's Scientific American:

The Neuroscience of Illusion
What Dictionaries and Optical Illusions Say About Our Brains

The second article is an interview with the cognitive scientist mentioned in the OP's article (Mark Changizi).

There's two slideshows, too!

I have read likewise in a book about Psychic spies - I htink they showed people a random set of pictures and monitored heart rates. the heart rate went up fractionally before the scary picture was shown.

There is a book called the origin of consciousness, I read in 1996......which considers pretty much the same....but he mapped a longer time lag. I have experienced this in everyday life numerous time. ALso humans "see" with their eyes closed as in dreams. For the most part especially within racial groups, Humanity is a collective.