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By now, most of us are familiar with
the 'Invisible Gorilla' experiment, which shows how selective our attention can be,
but now a research team from Caltech (The California Institute of Technology) has found that our brain can mess with our perceptions in other ways-including changing our memories to fit a non-existent reality.
The new research, published in the journal
PLOS One, is centered on two experiments that use flashes of light accompanied by beeps. The first experiment, called the "Illusory Rabbit," instructs a participant to focus on a cross in the center of a screen, then count the number of vertical bars of light they see near the bottom of the screen using their peripheral vision. The bars of light only flash for 58 milliseconds, and appear first on the left side of the screen, then the right. To make it simple, there are only two of them, and each one is paired with a short beep when they light up.
Here's the rub, though: despite there being only two bars of light, there are
three beeps, including one that happens between the first and second bars lighting up.
Because the lights and sounds happen so quickly, human perception is glitched: researchers found that participants in the study tended to count
three flashes instead of two, apparently reacting to the audio stimuli (the beeps) rather than the visual stimuli. Because there
was no third bar of light in between the real two, researchers claim that this experiment shows how the brain "fills in the blanks" to fit patterns it observes, even retroactively changing perceptions (and memory) to fit what it believes
did happen.
Comment: Some good advice and exercises in the above piece. However, one wonders if anyone had the attention span to actually read it in its entirety!
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