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I've seen this doing the rounds, and I'm a bit surprised by the publicity it's getting. The interpretation of the results is fanciful. The results merely show t
by kghose 13y ago
I've seen this doing the rounds, and I'm a bit surprised by the publicity it's getting. The interpretation of the results is fanciful. The results merely show that a person's report of an event will be biased by their expectations. This can be done with anything. There are more rigorous studies of "efference copy" which are actual signals that are sent out to different parts of the brain indicating that a movement is about to be made. Such efference copies are important for actions involving timing where the proprioceptive feedback from the limbs would arrive too late to be useful (so some brain regions get a predictive signal that allows them to plan further action in time).
- gliese1337 13y agoThey aren't relying strictly on subjective reports, though. They are also doing eye tracking. It'd be more solid if it was backed up by MRI or EEG or some other kind of brain function measurement, but that's something, at least. I've experienced this effect numerous times (for my whole body, not just my hands), and I always figured it was due to proprioception cross-talking with the geometry-extracting part of visual processing. The result that synaesthetes report more vivid images seems to support something like that. Definitely worth doing neurological studies on to see exactly how it works, but I never realized it was the sort of thing that anybody would be surprised by.