The piece of news that I´m going to write about today
is about how our brains conforms an idea of the world using the information perceived
by our senses and we don’t always see what is really there. Optical illusions
are a proof that our brains make mistakes sometimes in the interpretation. This
usually happens when we can´t perceive all the information and our brain has to
fill the blanks, but it can be affected by other things like our feelings too.
Now we need to clarify some terms used in the papers referenced
in this news: Working memory is our ability to retain and manipulate a small
amount of information for a short period of time, and visual working memory is
our ability to retain visual information as mental images in the mind´s eye.
In two studies published in 2009, the results
suggested that brain mechanism for perception and working memory are closely
linked. This finding motivated another research team to investigate if the information
retained in visual memory can change our perception of things. The results of
this study showed that visual working memory and perception interact with each
other, and this may be because the same parts of the brain are used for both of
them.
I choose this piece of news because it was the most
interesting one of the ones I could find. Perception is a really interesting
topic for me. To think that each one of us sees the world in a completely different
way fascinates me.
You can find the news in here http://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2011/aug/17/memory-contaminates-perception
