A photo from open sources We used to depend on our five main feelings and completely forgot that they sometimes can lie: various parts of the brain together form our idea of reality, but often it goes against common sense – our gray matter has a number of significant drawbacks. For example: 1. Your eyes can make you hear the words. When you hear what someone says, then everything at first glance is pretty simple: another person’s mouth makes a sound that your the ears. It seems that this scheme works fine, so what can go wrong So? In fact, your eyes can deceive you: eyesight most people have a dominant feeling, which means sometimes it is the eyes that determine what your ears hear. This illusion called the McGurk effect, and the most amazing thing is that even if you know what sound is actually pronounced, your ears will still hear what the eyes prompted. Usually, McGurk’s effect is minimized if you are dealing with familiar person, but manifests itself fully when talking with a stranger. It even matters what the person is wearing – you subconsciously expect certain words from him. 2. your brain removes some objects from your field of view when you are behind driving. We have all seen optical illusions more than once, but this is only a small part of how the brain can deceive our senses: it able to ignore light at night in the rearview mirror when you drive, scientists call this phenomenon “blindness caused by movement.” Believed to be an ability brain to discard the information that at the moment he identifies as irrelevant. There are too many in the world irritants – sounds, smells, moving objects towards – and if the brain processed all the incoming information, it would receive significant overload. Instead, it eliminates the “useless” things: that’s why it’s so hard to keep track of all random passers-by, walking along the same street with you. 3. Your eyes are capable of influencing taste of food.
If you do not have a deviation called synesthesia, then you are unlikely Do you think about what color tastes like, or vice versa – how does taste looks like. But in reality, these feelings are interconnected: our eyes determine how much food we like, and it’s not only that we want to eat more food that looks appetizing. For example, tasters believe that with red wine combines some products better, and white – others, more In addition, for each type of wine, the taste is revealed at a certain temperature. Scientists set out to find out what affects taste perception, and asked members of a London wine clubs describe the aroma of white wine.
At first, people talked about flavors traditionally considered typical for white wine – bananas, passion fruit, red pepper, however, when the researchers added red dye to the wine, experts began talking about the flavors characteristic of red the fault. Note that it was the same wine, just different colors.
This experiment has been repeated many times in different clubs, and always the result was the same. Once one of reputable tasters tried to describe the taste of white wine, painted red, and tried for quite some time – but not because he correctly identified the variety, but because he tried recognize which red berries this wine is made of.
The wine example is not the only one: the shade of glass can affect temperature and taste of the drink, for example, in one of the experiments the participants felt hot chocolate tasted better if they drank it from cups of orange or coffee color, and the taste of strawberry jelly seems fuller if the dish is served on a white plate and not on dark. 4. Your brain “changes” the size of surrounding objects. To see such illusions in real life, enough take a look at the night sky: when the moon is just rising the horizon then looks huge but over the next few hours it gradually “decreases” and closer to midnight it seems quite small. This does not mean that the moon unexpectedly moved away from Earth – it looks bigger just because the objects in front of it – trees and buildings – create the illusion of perspective.
And this is strange: how easily you succumb to illusions, depends on what you are used to seeing: so, city dwellers more vulnerable to optical illusions. On the other hand, if you were growing up far from civilization, your brain will not be stored as much memories of large rectangular objects, so trick him through illusion it will be more difficult. 5. You can easily forget where are your limbs. If put next to your hand fake rubber hand and ask which of the hands on the case is yours, then you probably will not answer this question thinking, but most likely make a mistake.
If your real hand is covered by something, and you only see brush, it’s enough just to simultaneously touch both hands to mislead your brain: you do not see your real hand and automatically accept fake – visible – hand for his.
If you hit an artificial hand with a hammer, then you startle, although you don’t feel pain – the brain will instinctively respond to hit.
Even more interesting is that as soon as your brain accepts an artificial hand for your own, the temperature of a real hand, hidden from your eyes, drops sharply, indicating a restriction blood flow at this time – in other words, your brain begins to deny the very existence of your real hand on physiological level.
This phenomenon, also called proprioception, shows that your eyes play a huge role in awareness of your own body parts: it allows you to drive without looking at your legs, or blindly type text on the keyboard.
For the same reason, teens seem awkward – they don’t immediately have time to get used to the fact that they have grown, and their brain often distorts visual perception of one’s own body.
Proprioception is often used to treat phantom pain. after amputation – just show the patient an artificial limb with a mirror so that the brain decides that the arm or leg still in place.
Time Mirrors Illusions Moon
