This is insane. I’m in the middle of Oliver Sacks’ famous The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat — so crazy how if any little area of our brains malfunction, we can be in weird trouble quick!
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” is such a great read. It really is incredible (and a bit unsettling) how damage to a tiny, specific area of the brain can completely change how someone experiences the world. The case of LM is great to illustrate precisely that, that is why I wrote about it. There is so much we take for granted.
This reminded me of reading Hoffman's book many years ago. Must be quite a terrible and even frightening experience, a life without visual flow. But what does this say about the whole? Is our brain constructing flow (as it constructs language or vision or emotion)? Or faithfully reconstructing observed external flow (so we can drive, pour tea, or shoot something)? Is the base a series of discrete moments reconstructed or flow re-represented?
That is a great question. The brain constructs the experience of flow as a shortcut to save time and processing power. There is a phenomenon called apparent motion: if you flash a dot on the left on a screen and then shortly after flash another dot on the right, people report seeing the dot moving smoothly between them. LM’s case shows what happens that when this shortcut does not work. She would have been able to see only the stationary dots, sadly.
Hmmmm, fascinating, so is the brain using that v5 shortcut to efficiently represent a flow experience that is actually happening externally? (And the brain's only tool is that efficient shortcut but LM was even deprived of that). Or are we saying that external flow does not exist and the brain is just grabbing a couple of discrete moments, and the external reality is also a giant film reel, as it were, of discrete moments, a couple of frames and then in v5 declaring "flowing"? You can do a similar hypothetical exercise trying to imagine or somehow visualise billionths of a second or a metre. So I suppose 1) Is it all flow or all discrete? and 2) What is the brain doing to register that? (From your explanation, I understand it is recomposing discrete frames)
I think we can safely assume that there is flow in the world. It is all a bit more complicated because different features of an object are processed in different parts of the brain (e.g. edges, shape, colour, etc). The brain puts it all together in real time, while at the same time working out direction and speed. So even though LM saw snapshots, that was already an impressive amount of computing. The idea of "discrete frames," I am not sure that I would call it that. I think it would be more accurate to think that we see in pixels than in frames. It may help you to have a look at this article - http://bit.ly/457NyVy - It talks about photoreceptors and how information comes "into" the eye. I hope my explanation here helps but feel free to ask if not.
i’m from linkedin and omg i can’t wait to get my teeth into your posts later!! i’m job hunting today but will read when i’m done!!!!
Amazing…thanks for sharing!
This is insane. I’m in the middle of Oliver Sacks’ famous The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat — so crazy how if any little area of our brains malfunction, we can be in weird trouble quick!
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” is such a great read. It really is incredible (and a bit unsettling) how damage to a tiny, specific area of the brain can completely change how someone experiences the world. The case of LM is great to illustrate precisely that, that is why I wrote about it. There is so much we take for granted.
This is actually very interesting.
I think it's also used - but not as part of the whole episode - in the TV series House.
Akinetopsia.
Yes, you are right, it is called akinetopsia. I didn’t know it was on House. They had very interesting disorders in there. I will look it up.
Season 3, episode 7, in the first minutes of the episode actually.
Thank you. I will watch it 😃
This reminded me of reading Hoffman's book many years ago. Must be quite a terrible and even frightening experience, a life without visual flow. But what does this say about the whole? Is our brain constructing flow (as it constructs language or vision or emotion)? Or faithfully reconstructing observed external flow (so we can drive, pour tea, or shoot something)? Is the base a series of discrete moments reconstructed or flow re-represented?
That is a great question. The brain constructs the experience of flow as a shortcut to save time and processing power. There is a phenomenon called apparent motion: if you flash a dot on the left on a screen and then shortly after flash another dot on the right, people report seeing the dot moving smoothly between them. LM’s case shows what happens that when this shortcut does not work. She would have been able to see only the stationary dots, sadly.
We take continuity for granted, but it's stitched together by the brain like a lie told with good intentions.
Hmmmm, fascinating, so is the brain using that v5 shortcut to efficiently represent a flow experience that is actually happening externally? (And the brain's only tool is that efficient shortcut but LM was even deprived of that). Or are we saying that external flow does not exist and the brain is just grabbing a couple of discrete moments, and the external reality is also a giant film reel, as it were, of discrete moments, a couple of frames and then in v5 declaring "flowing"? You can do a similar hypothetical exercise trying to imagine or somehow visualise billionths of a second or a metre. So I suppose 1) Is it all flow or all discrete? and 2) What is the brain doing to register that? (From your explanation, I understand it is recomposing discrete frames)
I think we can safely assume that there is flow in the world. It is all a bit more complicated because different features of an object are processed in different parts of the brain (e.g. edges, shape, colour, etc). The brain puts it all together in real time, while at the same time working out direction and speed. So even though LM saw snapshots, that was already an impressive amount of computing. The idea of "discrete frames," I am not sure that I would call it that. I think it would be more accurate to think that we see in pixels than in frames. It may help you to have a look at this article - http://bit.ly/457NyVy - It talks about photoreceptors and how information comes "into" the eye. I hope my explanation here helps but feel free to ask if not.