{"id":2199,"date":"2010-08-09T23:10:50","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T13:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=2199"},"modified":"2010-08-09T23:10:50","modified_gmt":"2010-08-09T13:10:50","slug":"the-braineye-mechanism-at-work-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=2199","title":{"rendered":"The brain\/eye mechanism at work again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/Quirkology#p\/u\/6\/O7jpJ12lBjg\" target=\"_blank\">Here<\/a> is an excellent video, from Quirkology author Richard Wiseman, illustrating an aspect of the blind spot in the human eye that I&#8217;d never before thought of. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/Quirkology#p\/u\/6\/O7jpJ12lBjg\" target=\"_blank\">Go and have a look<\/a>, and then come back here.<\/p>\n<p>The new wrinkle isn&#8217;t that Wiseman&#8217;s head disappears when it hits the blind spot (which is the bit of the retina where there are no light-receptive cells, because that&#8217;s where all the bundled wiring makes its way out to the brain). What&#8217;s interesting is that when he raised the horizontal bar over where his head ought to be (but isn&#8217;t, because it is missing), the bar itself is visible!<\/p>\n<p>What seems to be happening is that the brain, attempting to compensate for the hole, fills it in with its surroundings. The hole isn&#8217;t &#8217;empty&#8217;. It has the orange background of the wall. And the brain must extrapolate between the bits to the left and right of the hole, since it fills in a horizontal bar.<\/p>\n<p>Or, perhaps, it stretches the visual material to the left and right of the hole inwards, so as to fill it in. Either explanation would work with the content there.<\/p>\n<p>Fascinating. And another illustration of the fact that human senses are not scientific instruments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is an excellent video, from Quirkology author Richard Wiseman, illustrating an aspect of the blind spot in the human eye that I&#8217;d never before thought of. Go and have a look, and then come back here. The new wrinkle &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=2199\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2202,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions\/2202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}