Sensation and Perception

      What is sensation and perception?  According to dictionary.com, the definition of sensation is, "the operation or function of the senses; perception or awareness of stimuli through the senses."  Also using dictionary.com, the definition of perception is, "the act of faculty of perceiving, or apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding."  From the research I have done and the videos I have watch, these definitions make more sense and have more meaning to me then when I read them before the videos.  I feel that I have a deeper understanding and know what the definition means when it says "stimuli through the senses" and "apprehending by means of the senses." In all the videos and pages that I read, it discussed how the brain sees, hears, and transmits messages that you can understand.  One of the videos that I watched discussed how  you can see and hear colors.  These interested me a lot because before this, I had no clue how anyone could taste or hear color.  In one of the videos, this guy named Neil Harbisson was born unable to see any color besides grey.  This means that he never knew what any color looked like or anything.  As he grew older and became a scientist he worked in the field where they were trying to figure out a way to get color blind people to see color.  People who are color blind do not have problems with their eyes, but with their brain.  Their brain can not register color and therefor they can only see different shades of grey.  Neil came up with a solution to his problem of not being able to see color eight years ago.  He has this device that is on the back of his head and a sort of "eye",  as he calls it, that can sense different colors and send that info back to the chip on his head.  The chip in turn creates different types of vibrations on the bone that he can hear through bone conduction and he has trained himself to understand these sounds.  Neil said that he actually dreamed in color and could hear the sounds without using the device to do so.  In his dream his brain was making the different sounds for different colors.  This is truly amazing given the fact that his brain has never seen color.  Neil took this as his brain and the technology he had on his brain were truly bonding and that it had become part of his body instead of something that was separate.  He is now able to hear different things like speeches in color.  For example, he did Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech and a speech by Hitler into two different paintings.  Both paintings had many different colors that attracted many people, but most people liked the painting of Hitler's speech because of all the different colors and color patterns.  Could this show a correlation between the way people reacted to hearing the speech and how people reached to seeing a painting of the speech.  Hitler, even though he was an evil man, got many people to follow him just using his voice and convincing people that he was right.  Could the painting, with all its great colors, be a direct link to how we hear and why so speeches motivate us in certain ways when others do not.  This is something that I would love to test if I had time and the technology to do so.  My hypothesis is that there is a direct correlation between the way people react to the speech and the way they react to the painting.  

     One of the reading that I read was about this dress that took over social media by storm.  This dress divided people into two groups and neither group would budge.  It seemed to be split right down the middle, half and half, one group saw the dress as gold and white and the other half saw blue and black.  The dress looks different to the too groups because of how the brain perceives light waves.  People's minds are just so much different.  I have never seen the dress in person, only in pictures, but I truly believe that it is gold and white all the way.  Light waves are absorbed through the back of the eye called the retina.  Then the brain tells you what color the object that you are looking at is.  When it comes to the dress, Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, said that he has never seen a difference in color vision between people in all his thirty years.  This professor, along with many other scientist, have done many test and have found out that the dress is actually blue and black.  Even the ones that originally saw it as white and gold have admitted and come to find out that it is indeed the other way around.  Reading all the facts and looking at the dress for a long time I can see how my mind can trick me into thinking it is white and gold.  Every once in a while I can see a little black and blue.  I guess it all depends on how your mind works and how you are wired.

      The last video I watched over sensation and perception was about 3D art work.  3D art work is so amazing and I recommend everyone to go look at some.  It amazes me how people can paint images like that and how our brain sees a 2D image and turns it into something that looks like it is right there and is real.  People can even become part of the painting or look like they are in it.  The artist achieves these 3D images by painting them stretched out and distorting them.  Then, when you are standing at a certain point, your mind will condense the image and lose all depth perception.  it causes you to see the a 3D image that comes to life and is truly right in front of you.  It is so incredible how our brains work and function.  Our eyes and brain work as one to create all of these images look the way they are.


Sources:

• http://www.dictionary.com/browse/perception?s=t
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygRNoieAnzI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ItwbqVfTWI
• https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/