Questions tagged [perception]

For questions regarding the organization and identification of transducted sensory information in the brain and its interpretation and consolidation in the mind

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Is there any neurological research on schema theory?

I noticed schema theory is frequently mentioned in educational psychology and sociocultural topics but didn't find neurological research related to it. I wonder if there are some shared mechanisms ...
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How can sinusoid sound be perceived as having constant loudness?

To elaborate, given an audible, sinusoidal wave $A\sin(ft)$ with constant $A$ and $f$. That sounds constant to us. Now from a few posts linked below, I understand that as stereocilia of the hair cells ...
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How to best understand recursive computation within hierarchically cascading neural systems?

Context: The suprachiasmatic nucleus outputs to either the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) or the pretectal area. The LGN outputs to either V1, V2, or V3. The V1 goes to V2, V4, V5, and V6. The V2 ...
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Can brain improve "non-active" functions?

I'm from computer science background and this question struck me when learning about neural networks as they are initially filled with random values. Can brain improve "non-active" functions ...
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How do hair cells recognize frequencies?

I read that "a neuron can fire up to 1000 all-or-none impulses/sec" 1. But the hair cells in our ears are trimmed to recognize frequencies up to 20 kHz. How can a hair cell detect a ...
2 votes
2 answers
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Does the human eye have a muscle that if paralyzed would make us only see things that are in motion?

In "Kwantechizm", a relatively popular book written by a Polish physicist Andrzej Dragan, I read that chickens move their head so that they can see things that are not in motion, with the ...
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Less littering with less trashcans [closed]

I live in Stockholm and recently visited Helsinki. I've lived a few different places in Sweden and only been to Helsinki in Finland. A big difference i noticed right away was the way cleaner streets, ...
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4 votes
1 answer
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How is 'purple' both ligt at one wavelength and the sum of light at two different wavelengths?

I see purple, violet, magenta, etc. as very similar shades and don't understand why. Consulting color wavelength charts like we see that purple (or violet) is about 400 nm. Consulting color mixing ...
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Is there a name for the gap between speaker's intention and listener's interpretation?

I apologise if this as been asked before, but I couldn't find anything online. Whenever there is an exchange of information from one person to another - such as if someone is speaking to someone else ...
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How many stories can the human brain discern? [closed]

Perhaps the question will seem strange and not clearly formulated, for which I apologize in advance. Are there estimates of how many stories the human mind can discern? For example, let each story be ...
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1 answer
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What causes this motion illusion?

There are some questions here about various optical illusions. I stumbled upon this one and would like to find out where does it belong. Wikipedia has a page about illusory motion that mentions ...
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What causes the perception of time

I've recently watched veritasium video about time perception. And what i got out of that is that the more are brain is being used up the slower time goes and the less we use the faster it goes. Is ...
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Does human biology compute audio fast enough to benefit from phase accurate audio propagation in 3D space?

In nature when people perceive a point source of audio moving in 3D space say when I am stationary and listening to someone talking who is walking around me does my perception of that audio benefit ...
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Are centre-surround antagonism and lateral inhibition synonyms?

On Wikipedia, there is one page for centre-surround antagonism and one for lateral inhibition. They both concern the activity of a neuron being reduced by stimuli present not in the center of its ...
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Is Tinnitus caused by damage to the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) or Auditory Cortex, which can be repaired?

It is well known that loud noises can lead to hearing problems such as temporary hearing loss or tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and even permanent hearing loss. But this is the first time scientists ...
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1 answer
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Mirrors/optics and physical adaptation of the eye

Is it possible to use a clever combination of lenses and mirrors placed between your eye and a screen 1m away from you to make the eye react to the screen as if it were 20m away from you? What I'm ...
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2 votes
1 answer
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The perception of time of workaholics

“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.” -Albert Einstein It's no secret that Elon Musk puts a ...
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What is the recommended way to deal with failed trials during an experiment run?

Imagine I run a psychophysical experiment. I have generated a sequence of trial conditions which are presented to each participant in same order. But not all of participants are equally good at ...
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Is there any average time span estimate for change in a "perception"? [closed]

This question is about a perception in general and not related to a specific perception. Suppose an individual has a perception (say X) on a particular phenomenon and later, the individual came to ...
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What count as an exposure?

From this answer (emboldenment is mine) : If you want to go with modern cognitive theories of motivation, then a good concept to explore would be PLOC (Perceived Locus of Causality), or how much you ...
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Analytic thinking of the western individual versus the holistic thinking of most people

I am reading a book called the righteous mind by the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and in one of the chapters he discusses how the perception and thinking style of Westerners is different from ...
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Does our conscious experience of world match the world as it IS or as it presents itself?

Steven Pinker in his book 'How the mind works' says: our conscious sensation of color and lightness matches the world as it is rather than the world as it presents itself to the eye. The snowball is ...
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1 answer
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What is it called, when people lean forward in the real world while moving forward in a Virtual Environment?

A test subject wears a Virtual-Reality-Headset (like the HTC-Vive). When the test subject moves forward in the virtual world and stands still in the real world, the subject tends to lean forward in ...
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Are there established psychological reasons why many see the world from a “dualism” perspective? [duplicate]

By dualism, I’m referring to the tendency of seeing two sides of an issue that appears to be connected yet different. This has been described as dualism, dialectic, etc, by various sources. For ...
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Flashforward moments

I've heard someone describe having what he calls "flashforwards": Moments he lives through which he feels like he remembers from before - on some occasions in situations he definitely did ...
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Does the way we see the world in vision change with age? [closed]

I clearly remember a period in my youth where the world looked better, more colorful. Cartoons and videogames, drawings and pictures seemed higher resolution. Around the age of 15 I started noticing ...
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Meaning of a phrase '... reciprocal of neutral density value required arranged on an inverted scale'

The article paramount for my research seems cryptic. It is for visual perception (psychology) and was written 45 years ago. There are a number of sentences hard to 'decypher'. 'reciprocal of neutral ...
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What scientific evidence is there for the definable real world quality of redness independent our perception?

'With light poise and counter-poise, Nature oscillates within prescribed limits. Yet thus all arise the varieties and conditions of the phenomena which are present to us in space and time.' - Goethe ...
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Is it generally accepted idea that a memory associated with strong olfactory stimuli will be kept longer?

Question: If you go to see flowers and don't smell them, is it likely that you will forget the event easier than when you do smell them? assuming all the other factors are constant. Here's the story. ...
5 votes
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What is the conceptual difference between causal inference and 'prediction'

Unifying brain theories of cortical function often describe the brain as a prediction machine, based on a generative model (given X, what's the probability of Y). In this context, from Bayesian ...
3 votes
1 answer
700 views

What is the scientific term for the tendency to see familiar patterns in things, that are actually something completely different?

What is the scientific term for the tendency to see familiar patterns in things, that are actually something completely different? One of the most common examples of this bias, is the perception of ...
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Is the perceived flexibility in this picture (when moving it) related to the perceived curvature when it's not moving?

Look at this picture: All squares are of equal size but when you look at the picture the horizontal and vertical bands they constitute seem to be curved. When you move the picture up and down the ...
2 votes
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What is the bandwidth of visual perception?

Approximately how much "bandwidth", in bits per second, can typical human visual perception process? Consider "The Matrix", where we assume a near-perfect digital encoding that can ...
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Perceive person's importance to the education

Can we perceive, through some indications, if a person gives too much or too little importance to the education and intellectual formation? Discussing this with some colleagues who say that no because ...
3 votes
1 answer
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Are there "place cells" for temporal encoding?

First of all, I have to say I am not a neuroscientist but I like to learn about neuroscience. I understand there are sets of neurons called "place cells" and "grid cells" which ...
1 vote
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Is there an upper bound on signals ascending from the sensory nerves through the medulla?

I'm starting to go down a research path related to haptic and embodied cognition. Though I haven't taken a deep dive into neuroanatomy (only a 300 level undergrad cognitive neuroscience course's worth ...
2 votes
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Resources on understanding the Orchestrated objective reduction

I was trying to understand the mathematics behind the theory of Orchestrated objective reduction, and clearly, first I read the original paper of Penrose & Hameroff. Then I tried some other ...
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What is the scientific term for the erroneous inversion of cause and effect?

What is the correct scientific term for the - erroneous - inversion of cause and effect?
2 votes
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In principle, could a brain be rewired to experience more pleasure and/or pain?

I'm not sure if these are two separate questions, but I'm curious: in theory, could an existing adult mind/brain be modified to perceive pleasure/pain signals more intensely than otherwise? Without ...
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1 answer
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What is the scientific term for the expectation, that a personal experience positively deviates from what first- or second-hand experience suggests?

What is the scientific term for the tendency of people to believe, that their expected experience positively deviates from what their first- or second-hand experience suggests? An example for this ...
3 votes
2 answers
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Term for the tendency to relate events that occurred in proximity?

What is the correct scientific term for the tendency to wrongfully relate arbitrary observations to a significant event, just because they occurred in temporal or spatial proximity? Most recently I ...
5 votes
1 answer
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The unpredictable loading bar -- or, the slot machine effect

Say we A-B tested user reactions to completing some task (e.g. transferring files, restarting their device): would people be quicker to get impatient/ annoyed if they got random percentages as ...
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Does reading sentences one by one contributes to better comprehension of the text?

Does reading sentences one by one beside a picture (as shown in this video of this project) contributes to better comprehension of the text, due to better readability, focus and other factors? In ...
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Is the symbolic meaning of dark/black and light/white innate in humans?

Dark/black and light/white have symbolic meanings(1, 2). Dark/black represents, among others: Grief, evil, mystery (often with hidden threats), lack of knowledge, etc. Light/white represtents, among ...
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Equalize/balance brightness and saturation of different colors using RGB (across various monitors)

We want to present different colors to participants in an online experiment (in an HTML/CSS-based application, hence we'll use RGB values). More in specific, we ...
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Objectively defining the image parameters for facial detection, recognition, and identification in digital imagery

Axis communications have given guidelines on minimum operational requirements of a camera to allow a human observer to identify, recognise, and detect human subjects (https://www.axis.com/en-ca/...
2 votes
1 answer
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Is there any formal understanding of how humans perceive humanity/vitality in other entities?

When humans watch animations which contain human-like characters in them, we seem to imagine that the animated individuals, whether they be photorealistic or mere stick figures, are human, or at least ...
1 vote
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Predisposition toward organizing information in a hierarchical manner?

I understand someone why we like hierarchical social structures today. They are present across virtually all cultures and we've used them for a very long time. However, it appears we also gravitate ...
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Name of cognitive bias that causes experts to overestimate their ability in other areas?

Is there a name for a cognitive bias that causes people who have been successful in one area to be overconfident in their level of knowledge / ability in another unrelated area? It's related to the ...
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Are there any definitions of the perception & JND of the colour of light approximately like how the Weber Law defines it for the brightness of light?

As I understand it, the greater light levels are the more we require in order to detect a difference. I've also read this holds true for colour saturation. However, I can't seem to find any ...

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