Memory Contaminates Perception

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