Understanding Visual Adaptation: How the Brain Shapes Perception

And I want you to stare at the centre of the screen, cause I’m gonna talk to you. What I’m doing at this point, what I’m doing is I’m fatiguing, or adapting, a set of cells in the back of your brain, the visual cortex, which are selectively tuned to rotational motion in the clockwise direction. And as you’re looking to it, your brain is adapting. Now, the way that we perceive the world is combining all the information from all the relevant sensors, so that if you fatigue one set of sensors, you experience a distortion. So now look at the back of your hand. Ooh, it should be writhing. If you’ve been fatiguing some hands up if you can see it writhing. Yes, many you have. Others weren’t really focusing. It’s the same. It’s a motion aftereffect. It’s the same as when you’re sitting on a bus or a train and then you’re driving along, you come to a halt and suddenly the world seems to be moving in the opposite direction. That’s a demonstration of adaptation. But the other reason I wanted to show you that is this is a good example about how our conscious, uh, conscious awareness or perceptions or experiences are determined by the brain. And the brain has design features that can be manipulated or biased.