More evidence of brain plasticity: Some blind people are able to use echolocation to perceive space and objects around them in surprising detail, even though the time differences in echoes necessary to do this are two small to be consciously perceived. An fMRI study by Lore Thaler, Stephen Arnott and Melvyn Goodale revealed that people who are especially adept at this use their calcarine cortex (a.k.a. V1 or primary visual cortex) to process spatial information from the echoes.
The original paper. A shorter discussion. (
Previously)
posted by nangar
on Jun 20, 2011 -
13 comments
"In the Bible, God appeared to Ezekiel as a “wheel within a wheel”. Spirals and concentric circles are commonly found in petrogylphs carved by cultures long dead. Similar visual effects are reported during extreme psychological stress, fever delirium, psychotic episodes, sensory deprivation, and are reliably induced by psychedelic drugs." Form Constants and the Visual Cortex, or Where Psychedelic Visuals Come From.
posted by Taft
on Mar 15, 2011 -
51 comments
Halation can interfere with your brain making out the shapes of distorted words, such as on
passing highway signs. Banned from advertising in F1 racing, a major tobacco company that sponsors a team came up with a
novel design solution that may play on this visual effect to an opposite, suggestive effect, depending on the observer. European officials were
not amused, going so far as to call the design "subliminal". Ferrari responded by
removing traces of the design from its cars.
Judas Priest could not be reached for comment. [
via]
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on May 13, 2010 -
53 comments
