Vision Impaired

Visual illusions at least raise the issue of what our brains are doing that we can 'see' two or more different things although the object we're looking at clearly does not change. It also leads to the extremely important question of which is the 'right' image? Here's another one just to make it a bit more complicated. In the following phrase, how many letter Fs do you see? There is no hidden catch in this: what you see is what you get:you think.

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF MANY YEARS.

The correct number is at the bottom of the blog, so please check it before reading on.

The probabilies are very high that you got the number wrong. Somehow your visual apparatus failed to provide an accurate image of what was on the page, and this raises even more disturbing questions. If you can distort what is on the page in such a simple task, what does this say for your accuracy in 'seeing' the world around you, in all its complexity. And just what is your nervous system doing to make life even more difficult than it already is? The answer is far more unsettling
than you would think, even in your wildest dreams, but before you blame yourself, read the two following excerpts from books on the subject of seeing:

1. Positioned in the skull as far away from the eyes as possible, the visual c cortex occupies an area in the occipital lobe, at the back of each hemisphere
From the retina light-triggered impulses race over the million fibres of the
optic nerve, half of them crossing at the chiasma junction in front of the
brainstem. They fan out through paired cell clusters called lateral geniculate
bodies (LGNs), and travelling at speeds of up to 400feet per second, slam into
the occipital cell bank, stimulating the miracle of seeing.

2. Again, most of the retinal output is sent to the LGN. But the reticular
connnections in the LGN account for only about 10% of the synapses there:
nearly 60% of the synapses in the LGN are signals from the cortex, and the
remaining synapses are connections with other parts of the brain.

Now without explanation that may seem like another language, which in a way I suppose it is. So the following explanation will clarify it, as well as raise even more disturbing problems. Look at the diagram below.

On the left is the retina, R, which receives the light reflected from your surroundings, and here the first transformation occurs, from light energy to nerve energy in the form of nerve impulses, which then travel along the optic nerve O, to the LGN (lateral geniculate nucleus) deep in the brain. Here they form a kind of relay with a number of other inputs indicated by the arrows, and from the LGN they are then transmitted to the visual cortex VC at the back of the brain (the occipital cortex).

It immediately becomes clear that the nerve impulses from the retina don't go directly to the visual cortex where the formation of images occurs, because they form connections with various inputs, and this is where the whole process becomes extremely complex, and of profound importance in deciding the nature of the images.
Now look at the two excerpts above: the first one omits to mention this relay, simply stating that the impulses go through the LGN on the way to the cortex, and this is the common understanding of the process of seeing,with the assumption that what reaches the cortex is what the retina has created by transforming the light
reflected from our environment. This is what almost everyone, including most scientists, believe, and it is clearly wrong.
Look at the second excerpt, and it shows why it is wrong. Reading it carefully in view of what I have just described shows that only a small percentage of the information being transmitted from the LGN to the visual cortex comes from the retina: the rest comes from the various inputs to the LGN, and fundamentally it comes from other parts of the brain, which themselves receive information from all over the body, including the other senses, such as hearing, which also go through a similar process to that of vision. Perhaps even more startling is the fact that one of the inputs to the LGN is actually from the visual cortex itself! But we'd better leave the implications of that for now.

A critical part of this input to the LGN is from our own body, which may cause some
more questions, but in trying to understand perception, how we evaluate what is happening to us, it makes perfect sense that so much of that perception is derived from our body and brain. If this didn't happen how would we be able to assess the significance of any events that we have to deal with all the time. Remember, change
never stops, and in dealing with it by far the most important thing we need to know
is 'how does this affect me', for if I don't know that, what is going to determine how I react?

The wider implications of this are profound, far-reaching and very disturbing for everyone's peace of mind. However, I shall only deal here with one major consequence, and others will become more obvious as I continue. Consider this: if my perceptions contain only a relatively small contribution from the world around me how accurate a representation of the world can my perception be and what implications does this have for the way in which we think about the world and react to it?

I CREATE THE WORLD THAT I PERCEIVE.

This statement, if you haven't come across it yet, is very shocking, but there is no other conclusion possible given the nature of the processes involved. When we talk about 'mind' in general people have no clear idea of just what it means. It is usually thought of as something behind the eyes and between the ears but the nature of 'it' is nebulous. Intelligence or education has little or nothing to do with it for the same confusion affects even the most learned and seriously minded, as is very clear if you read the learned journals. I don't propose to go into the details here - they have filled libraries - but we do need a way of thinking about it that will mean much the same to everyone reading this blog. Think of the mind as a process, not as an entity or thing or body part. For instance, fluid balance isn't an entity or thing: it is a process involving a number of organs and activities. So with thinking - it is a process involving many organs and activities, the actions of which are integrated by their interaction. For example, in the nervous system information comes together from outside the body and from inside the body, including memory, and it is all processed to provide as accurate an image or representation as possible of the reality we are experiencing in a continuous flow. This processing
is 'mind,'

To appreciate fully the practical meaning of this, recall that we take it for granted that since we all have similar nervous systems our sensory systems must therefore be similar so what we perceive ought to be the same, since after all there is only one world out there. If you think this is an distortion or exaggeration ask yourself what other assumption do you make if someone disagrees with your perception
about an object or a situation? You assume in a very practical way that your perception is the correct one - after all there can only be one correct perception of anything and there is no question who is right and it isn't the other person.

This is bad enough for a relatively simple situation - big or small, green or yellow, fast or slow - the best place to test this out is to spend few hours in a court room and become astonished about contradictory evidence, given in good faith. The reputation of a lawyer can be built on the ability to make a witness seem totally unreliable and psychologists write books on the phenomenon and perform experiments demonstrating this. But when it comes to matters of behaviour, of custom, of fundamental belief systems the consequences of holding belief systems and behaving according to them are responsible for everything from family squabbles to world wars. And all because there is only one right way, and guess whose that is?

So now when I show that difference in perception is built in to the way in which our bodies work, and the fact that social groups of any size insist that conformity based on this fallacy must be observed by everyone in the community, it almost seems that we humans have a fatally flawed nervous system that ensures that it is virtually impossible to live together without conflict of various kinds. In fact there have been important books by very well informed authors and scientists who make this precise point. The best known is 'The Ghost in the Machine', by Arthur Koestler, but his concept and the evidence came from Paul D. Maclean, a highly reputable neurophysiologist whose book 'The Triune Brain in Evolution' is the classical statement on the subject. I met him 10 years ago and he was a charming,
modest and erudite person, though I had to express my disagreement with his conclusion. There are other critical factors that must be understood before coming to an informed opinion which I shall deal with as we progress.

I feel this is enough for a blog, so will continue in the next one.
The number of Fs is 6!