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One of the neat things (i think) is that the visual and tactile systems in our bodies seem to always agree on what is perceived 'reality'. This on the surface s

by mbfg 10y ago

One of the neat things (i think) is that the visual and tactile systems in our bodies seem to always agree on what is perceived 'reality'. This on the surface seems like an argument against this proposal. But of course we can easily be fooling ourselves. I once saw some experiments where they showed people some movies where the sound was offset from the picture by some time shift, either too slow or too fast. Within a surprisingly large range the mind could easily meld the two out of sync signals together so that it appeared that they were synchronized. Of course beyond the threshold that illusion fell apart, but still was pretty interesting. The weaving of still pictures of a movie into ... a movie is also an interesting concept. Maybe vision and tactile works the same way? Could one influence the other? It's amazing how well our brains are built to pretend.

throwanem 10y ago
I remember seeing a report of a study in which a fake arm, cleverly manipulated within the subjects' fields of view, often succeeded in overriding both tactile and proprioceptive senses - some of the subjects thought the fake arm was their arm, because they saw it doing what they expected their own arm to do. As I recall, some subjects reported significant confusion and some discomfort on recognizing the actual nature of events, and I should think that's no wonder. I don't have a cite to hand. I'll look for one if you like, but it's been so long that you'd probably be able to find it at least as quickly as I could. Fascinating stuff, in any case, and perhaps somewhat germane here.
- kernelbandwidth 10y ago
  Maybe not the same source, but V.S. Ramachandran's book, Phantoms in the Brain, covers his use of a set-up like that to help patients recover from phantom limb syndrome. Shockingly effective for what is, essentially, just an illusionist's trick.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>One of the neat things (i think) is that the visual and tactile systems in our bodies seem to always agree on what is perceived 'reality'. It's a matter of precision-weighting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23811293 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23811293

by mbfg 10y ago

throwanem 10y ago

I remember seeing a report of a study in which a fake arm, cleverly manipulated within the subjects' fields of view, often succeeded in overriding both tactile and proprioceptive senses - some of the subjects thought the fake arm was their arm, because they saw it doing what they expected their own arm to do. As I recall, some subjects reported significant confusion and some discomfort on recognizing the actual nature of events, and I should think that's no wonder. I don't have a cite to hand. I'll look for one if you like, but it's been so long that you'd probably be able to find it at least as quickly as I could. Fascinating stuff, in any case, and perhaps somewhat germane here.

kernelbandwidth 10y ago
Maybe not the same source, but V.S. Ramachandran's book, Phantoms in the Brain, covers his use of a set-up like that to help patients recover from phantom limb syndrome. Shockingly effective for what is, essentially, just an illusionist's trick.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>One of the neat things (i think) is that the visual and tactile systems in our bodies seem to always agree on what is perceived 'reality'. It's a matter of precision-weighting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23811293 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23811293