Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Humans rely more on 'inferred' visual objects than 'real' ones

#1
C C Offline
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...080752.htm

RELEASE: Humans treat 'inferred' visual objects generated by the brain as more reliable than external images from the real world, according to new research published in eLife.

The study, from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, reveals that when choosing between two identical visual objects -- one generated internally based on information from the blind spot and an external one -- we are surprisingly likely to show a bias towards the internal information.

To make sense of the world, humans and animals need to combine information from multiple sources. This is usually done according to how reliable each piece of information is. For example, to know when to cross the street, we usually rely more on what we see than what we hear -- but this can change on a foggy day.

"In such situations with the blind spot, the brain 'fills in' the missing information from its surroundings, resulting in no apparent difference in what we see," says senior author Professor Peter König, from the University of Osnabrück's Institute of Cognitive Science. "While this fill-in is normally accurate enough, it is mostly unreliable because no actual information from the real world ever reaches the brain. We wanted to find out if we typically handle this filled-in information differently to real, direct sensory information, or whether we treat it as equal."

To do this, König and his team asked study participants to choose between two striped visual images, both of which were displayed to them using shutter glasses. Each image was displayed either partially inside or completely outside the visual blind spot. Both were perceived as identical and 'continuous' due to the filling-in effect, and participants were asked to select the image they thought represented the real, continuous stimulus.

"We thought people would either make their choice without preference, or with a preference towards the real stimulus, but exactly the opposite happened -- there was in fact a strong bias towards the filled-in stimulus inside the blind spot," says first author Benedikt Ehinger, researcher at the University of Osnabrück. "Additionally, in an explorative analysis of how long the participants took to make their choice, we saw that they were slightly quicker to choose this stimulus than the one outside the blind spot."

So, why are subjects so keen on the blind-spot information when it is essentially the least reliable? The team's interpretation is that subjects compare the internal representation (or 'template') of a continuous stimulus against the incoming sensory input, resulting in an error signal which represents the mismatch. In the absence of real information, no deviation and therefore no error or a smaller signal occurs, ultimately leading to a higher credibility at the decision-making stage. This indicates that perceptual decision-making can rely more on inferred rather than real information, even when there is some knowledge about the reduced reliability of the inferred image available in the brain.

"In other words, the implicit knowledge that a filled-in stimulus is less reliable than an external one does not seem to be taken into account for perceptual decision-making," Ehinger explains.

The team says that understanding how we integrate information from different sources with different reliabilities can inform us about the exact mechanisms used by the brain to make decisions based on our perceptions.

"By finding out how implied stimuli are compared to real ones, we can better understand how other internal sources of information are weighted against external, real information," König concludes. "In future, we would be interested to see if the greater reliability placed on implied information is specific to the blind spot, or whether it generalises to other internal information that often occurs in visual processing, such as with optical illusions, afterimages or change blindness."
Reply
#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
Just to clarify: So if I'm in an old house and I hear creaking noises and knocking then is this suggesting that because my brain has knowledge of reported ghost sightings and other supposedly ghostly occurrences, that it will produce false images to fill in for a ghost that isn't there? 

Or are they referring to the blind spot only? 

Wonder if someone has connected denial to false images because if you ask people if they actually saw something they will deny that they saw a fake image and are usually adamant about having seen the "real thing."
Reply
#3
C C Offline
(May 17, 2017 04:38 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Just to clarify: So if I'm in an old house and I hear creaking noises and knocking then is this suggesting that because my brain has knowledge of reported ghost sightings and other supposedly ghostly occurrences, that it will produce false images to fill in for a ghost that isn't there? 


In scenarios like that, for the non-hallucination inclined majority, it's more likely to be misinterpretations of objects, events, and situations in the environs (usually when vision is obscured by darkness or other factors).

With respect to broader territory, even what has objective (inter-subjective) validity is probably more useful, successful fiction than the original or au naturel existence which consciousness supposedly tries to mimic with its brute appearances / intuitions.

A creature without intellect (memory, concepts, and cognitive habits) wouldn't even understand that its raw sensations were trying to represent an external world, or that they were "about" the latter. (There would be automatic or instinctive somatosensory reactions to stimuli, but no meanings attached to them.) So most of our so-called "perception" is unavoidably fabricated and inferred, or complemented by slash infested with the products of intellectual processes. The identities of things and circumstances, and the predictions about them, do not come along with the sensory information itself; but are injected into the latter by us. We abstract ideas / concepts and expectations from past experiences, store them, and then combine that knowledge with our immediate experiences.

For instance: An automobile for a human is a vehicle to be driven. But for rats it is just a shelter to build a nest in if it rests idle and outdoors for too long. An ant scurrying on its surface has an even less ambitious conception of it than that. Meanings, purposes, and even the distinctions made which yield separations or break a landscape down into objects and sets of them (categories), are not "out there in the environment" -- but supplied by minds or embodied cognitive systems of varying stripes and capabilities.

- - - - - -

Bertrand Russell: Physics assures us that the occurrences which we call "perceiving" objects, are not likely to resemble the objects except, at best, in certain very abstract ways. We all start from "naive realism," i. e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. --An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth

John Gregg: I have argued that things are abstractions. We create all things, we infer unity and mid-level individuation in the world. Seen in this light, consciousness has a much bigger job than just painting the apple red. It must create reality much more broadly, including the apple itself. Just as there are no red photons, there are no rocks, cars, dogs, or numbers. Nature presents us with a wash of particles, a continuous flux of quantum stuff, and we overlay this flux with stories about cars and rocks. --Realism: To what extent is the world out there the way it seems?

Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Article New visual deception: The bumpy circle illusion C C 0 13 Mar 13, 2024 03:12 PM
Last Post: C C
  Study: “Smarter” dogs think more like humans to overcome their biases C C 0 53 Dec 22, 2023 08:45 PM
Last Post: C C
  A car called Keith: Why we give objects human characteristics C C 2 80 Mar 29, 2022 06:24 PM
Last Post: Yazata
  Dreams anticipate future events + Some people lack visual imagery C C 1 163 Jun 9, 2021 04:35 AM
Last Post: Syne
  Remarkable ways brains slip into synchrony + Visual illusion & consciousness C C 2 300 Dec 25, 2020 03:50 PM
Last Post: confused2
  Seeing it both ways: Visual perspective in memory C C 2 280 Sep 3, 2019 02:57 AM
Last Post: Leigha
  When robots are valued as more important than humans C C 0 333 Feb 11, 2019 03:32 AM
Last Post: C C
  Open relationships satisfying as monogamous ones + Moral behavior & free will C C 1 315 Jul 1, 2018 12:30 AM
Last Post: Syne
  Porn problems + Captive apes are curious, wild ones are not + Bilingualism overrated C C 0 480 Mar 7, 2018 02:59 AM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)