Perception

My exam on perception was this afternoon so the blip is related. We had to know a bit about the perception of motion and how the brain processes it. Well as you might be able to tell there is inferred motion in this picture, with the sort of 'woosh' going to the right. Some neurons in the brain which are tuned to motion will detect this as movement (apparently) and it can cause a motion after effect, if a very brief one. This is when for example you stare for a period of time at a waterfall, your brain gets used to the downwards motion and eventually the neurons tire of being excited about this and so become less so. All the other neurons fire as normal, but normal is now more than the tired neurons and so, if you look away from the waterfall you see an image going in the opposite direction. I hope that made sense....just think its kind of cool!