Hot answers tagged sensation
11
As Ben Brocka mentioned, what you're describing is Habituation, which Wikipedia defines as:
Habituation is a decrease in an elicited behavior resulting from the repeated presentation of an eliciting stimulus (a simple form of learning.
More specifically, it's technically called Neural adaptation. To quote Wikipedia again:
Neural adaptation or ...
9
Yes, this scenario is possible, occurring with certain cases of brain lesions in specific areas of the visual cortex, the fusiform, lingual and posterior parahippocampal gyri. These areas are analogous to what is referred to in primates as V4, or the 4th visual cortex, and are known to be involved (at least partly) in the perception of color (though see ...
8
As @Gray mentioned, the philosophical problem you are interested in is known as the inverted spectrum. Unfortunately, @Gray's claim about no empirical difference is not exactly true. As @ChuckSherrington pointed out, we can have differences in color perception due to brain lesions, but this is cheating in way. We don't have to go this far, we already have ...
7
There is a substantial literature on eye tracking.
Skill acquisition example
One study that I am familiar with and is of some relevance is Study 2 in Lee and Anderson (2000, PDF).
Specifically the study used eye tracking tools to examine how visual attention was allocated over time on an air traffic control simulator.
The broad finding, consistent with ...
7
The Wikipedia article no longer makes reference to the phenomenon that you quote (to my inspection), so I'm not entirely sure if that assertion was edited out as an inaccuracy on someone's part. I did find some information on visual perception and high frequency flicker that might point to some of the significance of the 60 Hz refresh rate of a monitor.
At ...
4
I would point you towards the debate on qualia in cognitive science. It has been argued by some philosophers such as David Chalmers that there are internal qualitative states separate from their physical realization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_spectrum
With the exception of color-blindness and other differences in visual circuitry such as ...
4
To what degree can the brain move resources from the "what" to the "when" to achieve a precise level of timing for conversion between sensory and motor output?
I think that you may be making a false assumption here. I don't think that the 'what' and the 'when' are in competition for resources. According to Arnal and Giraud (and many others), having a valid ...
4
I will split this answer into two parts - first, about sensory immersion as it is defined and scientifically examined. Second, I will try to address specifically what you asked for regarding the effects of sensory overstimulation and overload.
Sensory immersion
I don't think your definition of sensory immersion is right when you said it's a "deliberate ...
3
Mainly: the choice of variables.
Beware that the exponent depends on the choice of parameters; or even worse - relations can change from power-law to linear, logarithmic or exponential, with redefining variables.
E.g. you can measure sound volume in either amplitude, energy density (square of the amplitude) or dB (logarithm of the first one). None of it is ...
2
The brain does map different parts of the visual image to different neurons. It's called topography and is a fundamental feature of all sensory neurons.
The next part of your bolded questions jumps upstream. Some fMRI studies found "Jennifer Anniston" cells- cells that only respond to the image of Jennifon Anniston. Italian researchers found neurons in ...
2
I'd argue that "brain power" is dangerously vague. Are you looking at weight, volume, area (including or excluding cortical folding), are you looking at just the cortex, or the whole brain?
At a lower level, are you counting just cell bodies, or do you count the processes that join them; do you just weigh the whole lot and try to figure out "power" that ...
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