Understanding the human brain

[Ben Banana]

I am dumbfounded! Its not about processing power at all.

 

 

Today's average computers are insanely faster than the human brain. Not only by computation, but also by logic and anything else consistent you throw at them. Its about hierarchy, representation, and structure! Pummeling millions of atomic pieces of information through a tree of classification and reduction, towards an ultimate abstraction. The bigger the brain, the more capable it is of developing and handling higher abstractions. Therefore, the bigger the brain, the more "intelligent" it is.

 

Human brains sort of combine information with the means of processing (don't think of it exactly like that, but..) they have an architecture ideally capable of conscience.

 

A simple algorithm might compare images by summing the red, green and blue bytes into integers (for both individual images). Then it would divide each color-component sum by the total number of pixels that were sampled, take the absolute difference of these color-component values between the two images, add them together, and divide by three. The final result should be a difference value between 0 and 255, 0 meaning they had a perfectly equal quantization of colors.

 

widthA = 20

heightA = 50

 

redA = 102000

greenA = 30600

blueA = 73950

 

widthB = 90

heightB = 40

 

redB = 357000

greenB = 153000

blueB = 229500

 

areaA = widthA * heightA = 20 * 50 = 1000

areaB = widthB * heightB = 90 * 40 = 3600

 

redA = redA / areaA = 102000 / 1000 = 102

greenA = greenA / areaA = 30600 / 1000 = 31

blueA = blueA / areaA = 73950 / 1000 = 74

 

redB = redB / areaB = 357000 / 3600 = 100

greenB = greenB / areaB = 153000 / 3600 = 42

blueB = blueB / areaB = 229500 / 3600 = 64

 

redDiff = |redA - redB| = |102 - 100| = 2

greenDiff = |greenA - greenB| = |31 - 42| = 11

blueDiff = |blueA - blueB| = |74 - 64| = 10

 

diffSum = redDiff + greenDiff + blueDiff = 23

diffFinal = diffSum / 3 = 23 / 3 = 7

 

However, this comparison is almost useless. Who would want to run a program like this on the worlds most powerful super computer? Intelligence must be capable of abstraction, and only a very particular intelligent architecture can be fully conscious as we think of ourselves. When you look at an image, "you" are far from the level of reasoning about a mere collection of colors.

 

I believe its possible to create machines such as self driving cars, or robots capable of reading a book and really understanding the contents, or whatever yet only humans have done to date. But depending on the architecture of the machine, it may or may not be conscious. I predict machines designed for practical efficiency purposes would not be conscious. They really could run on hardware similar to what we have now, but only to serve as extremely versatile number crunching machines. In fact, by the differences of common computer architecture and organic brains, they could be incredibly (INSANELY!) more powerful, yet just as capable of human-like things. They would only lack a conscience, and that's for the better of efficiency.

Edited February 4, 2012 by Ben Bowen

[calabi]

I'm not sure if anyone grasped the deep concept I was trying to throw out in my earlier post. I wasn't merely suggesting that "computers are conscious" (which is nonsense), I only said that they can be "conscious". Awe... this will be frustrating to explain.

 

@Santalum

Sorry.

 

@calabi

Wow, just as I hypothesized! I've been classified "colorblind" my whole life, however from close observation I've doubted the common notion of what it meant. At least in my case, its simply a difference of the brain and how it developed, not of the eyes or of some birth defect. Now to think of it, the idea of a birth defect which somehow makes your eyes "unable to measure select colors properly" sounds very stupid. Great video. I'm glad to see this research has been done. I was actually going to try explaining the very same idea in the last post (to support some things I wanted to say), but I thought the concept would be too alien for anyone to fairly consider. This is a great relief. Thank you very much for sharing that video!

 

 

Yes, this must be everyone's initial assumption. Its considerably difficult to suggest otherwise, as I will explain why later (not in this post, sorry).

 

I had a dream last night. As I woke up this morning, I wondered particularly about how my brain represented the images and events which I "experienced" in the dream. Sometimes I dream very lucidly, where the dream seems indistinguishable from awake reality.

 

Have you ever had a dream which seems to last for hours of the night, yet you may only be asleep a short duration? You may even experience multiple epics within the same night. Then you wake up in awe with the feeling as if you just read twenty whole novels in a single night! I think this is easy to find an explanation for. Its simply because you "make up" and experience the dream much faster than you can experience awake reality. Due to hierarchical abstraction of information and memory, native experiences (generated by your own mind) can be iterated on the fly. While dreaming, your mind goes through a daft relay of connections. If your dream is full of nonsense, these faulty connections are found (by comparison with "axioms" baked into your memory) and corrected during the natural process.

 

During awake life, you're processing external information. Miniscule observations which may already have been well abstracted and classified into your memory will only bloat your experience, inconveniently prolonged by the persistence of uncontrollable time. When you read a fictional book, its not only necessary to read and understand the words, sentences, dialogue and apply surface-level comprehension. Most importantly, you are required to run this information through a much higher pipeline of abstraction and relation, in the act of "painting a picture" around the story. In contrast, this can all happen simultaneously during a dream. Because dreams are native and your brain is not trying to integrate external information as it usually does, connections are very lively.

 

Evidently, the information and process of a brain are merely the substance and mechanical throughput of a massive dynamic hierarchy.

 

I think there are cases where people are colourblind from things wrong with their eyes, like not enough cones or rods. Theres are lots of weird things, though, like there are cases where people whom are physically blind and yet really believe that they can see. They are conscious that they see, their brain just makes stuff up on the fly.

 

You should watch the rest of it its really interesting and pretty incredible if you think about.

 

I dont think we neccesarily experience dreams faster, although I have slept seemingly for only 30 minutes and had quite long dreams. I can be in my dream and be aware of all these other dreams that I've had previously, or I can create this huge history of other dreams. Its easy to create the perception of these huge narratives as long as you arent able to probe them too deeply, although it doesnt seem that hard to create on the fly just before you get to something, like you want to read a book, and each page writes itself just before you turn it. You can only be conscious of a few things at once, so perhaps its like the rest of your brain is holding millions of things ready to be presented to you at a moments notice.

 

Well OK.

 

Similarly looking at individual transistors in a CPU will tell you very little about how it all works.

 

The problem with unravelling brain function is that there is no systematic tool, as far as I am ware, for mapping neural connections given that one neurone has many hundreds of thousands of connections to other neurons. Where as transistors have only one input and one output.

 

A tool will have to be developed that some how averages the connections of one neurone to the next so that the complexity is reduced to something resembling the the very simple connections between transistors.

 

Until such a tool is developed it will be extraordinarily difficult to unravel and comprehend all the neural pathways.

 

 

 

With various robots and drones that these days have very powerful CPU etc and can process detailed images to distance measurements and obstacle avoidance ect, but that lack consciousness, they are never any where near as good as a human being.

 

The best military drones combine powerful computers and cameras etc with the consciousness of a human operator.

 

Perhaps an close approximation to a human with full processing power but no consciousness is a sleep walker who liable to walk in front of a bus or off the edge off a cliff. Without a conscious human operator, an otherwise autonomous drone is very likely to do the same thing.

 

It is fairly obvious to me from the various documentaries I have watched over the years that the powerful processing power of the human brain is useless without consciousness to bring it all together in a coherrent manor. And indeed that it is not possible to have this sort of computing power without generating consciousness by default.

 

Consciousness is as much an inevitable result of the functioning of a complex and powerful brain just as speed and sound are the inevitable results of a motorcycle functioning.

 

Perhaps consciousness is indeed unavoidable once you go beyond a certain threshold of computer (organic or inorganic) processing power. Perhaps this is a fundamental truth of the cosmos.

 

They've mapped a worms brain, and are working on humans but we are slightly more complicated.

 

http://web.mit.edu/n...in-mapping.html

 

 

Personally I dont think consciousness is just a matter of power, otherwise we would have already found it. Consciousness I think is like an abstraction, as Ben Bowan said, it doesnt work on raw data. But not just one their are many competing abstractions.

[Ringer]

Language only affects the ways people categorize colors, not the way they are perceived. It would be like saying a professional painter can see more colors than I do because I couldn't name all the different colors that they could. There are tribes who only have words for dark and light, but I doubt they don't see any colors.

 

Computers can do many things much better than humans, but at the same time there are things that humans can do that is unbelievable difficult to make a computer to do. Computers have a very difficult time separating necessary movement and unnecessary movements when trying to learn goal oriented behavior although even a baby knows the difference. An example is if a computer tries to learn to open a jar by watching someone do it. If they stop to answer the door a computer may 'believe' that is part of the process. Another difference is the redundancy within brains is something very few computers even come close to.

[Santalum]

I am dumbfounded! Its not about processing power at all.

 

Today's average computers are insanely faster than the human brain. Not only by computation, but also by logic and anything else consistent you throw at them. Its about hierarchy, representation, and structure! Pummeling millions of atomic pieces of information through a tree of classification and reduction, towards an ultimate abstraction. The bigger the brain, the more capable it is of developing and handling higher abstractions. Therefore, the bigger the brain, the more "intelligent" it is.

Yes it is about processing power.

 

And processing power is not only about speed.

 

Granted a computer is enormously faster than the human brain at simple mathematical etc tasks.

 

But computers are relative 'morons' at such enormously complex tasks like face and speech recognition where the human brain excels.

 

This is where the many to many connections between neurones out compute simple one to one connections between transistors despite the enormously slower speed of nerve impulses.

 

Human brains sort of combine information with the means of processing (don't think of it exactly like that, but..) they have an architecture ideally capable of conscience.

Yes! Something that is unlikely to be acheived at the same level of sophistication with solid state electronics in the foreseeable future. So Please refect carefull on which is really the more powerful computer - the human brain or an intel destop computer.

 

A simple algorithm might compare images by summing the red, green and blue bytes into integers (for both individual images). Then it would divide each color-component sum by the total number of pixels that were sampled, take the absolute difference of these color-component values between the two images, add them together, and divide by three. The final result should be a difference value between 0 and 255, 0 meaning they had a perfectly equal quantization of colors.

 

widthA = 20

heightA = 50

 

redA = 102000

greenA = 30600

blueA = 73950

 

widthB = 90

heightB = 40

 

redB = 357000

greenB = 153000

blueB = 229500

 

areaA = widthA * heightA = 20 * 50 = 1000

areaB = widthB * heightB = 90 * 40 = 3600

 

redA = redA / areaA = 102000 / 1000 = 102

greenA = greenA / areaA = 30600 / 1000 = 31

blueA = blueA / areaA = 73950 / 1000 = 74

 

redB = redB / areaB = 357000 / 3600 = 100

greenB = greenB / areaB = 153000 / 3600 = 42

blueB = blueB / areaB = 229500 / 3600 = 64

 

redDiff = |redA - redB| = |102 - 100| = 2

greenDiff = |greenA - greenB| = |31 - 42| = 11

blueDiff = |blueA - blueB| = |74 - 64| = 10

 

diffSum = redDiff + greenDiff + blueDiff = 23

diffFinal = diffSum / 3 = 23 / 3 = 7

 

However, this comparison is almost useless. Who would want to run a program like this on the worlds most powerful super computer? Intelligence must be capable of abstraction, and only a very particular intelligent architecture can be fully conscious as we think of ourselves. When you look at an image, "you" are far from the level of reasoning about a mere collection of colors.

 

I believe its possible to create machines such as self driving cars, or robots capable of reading a book and really understanding the contents, or whatever yet only humans have done to date. But depending on the architecture of the machine, it may or may not be conscious. I predict machines designed for practical efficiency purposes would not be conscious. They really could run on hardware similar to what we have now, but only to serve as extremely versatile number crunching machines. In fact, by the differences of common computer architecture and organic brains, they could be incredibly (INSANELY!) more powerful, yet just as capable of human-like things. They would only lack a conscience, and that's for the better of efficiency.

 

Yes computers are very good and number crunching but comparably useless at simulating any human qualities. Again which is more powerful here, the human brain or even a cray super computer.

 

I think there are cases where people are colourblind from things wrong with their eyes, like not enough cones or rods. Theres are lots of weird things, though, like there are cases where people whom are physically blind and yet really believe that they can see. They are conscious that they see, their brain just makes stuff up on the fly.

 

You should watch the rest of it its really interesting and pretty incredible if you think about.

 

I dont think we neccesarily experience dreams faster, although I have slept seemingly for only 30 minutes and had quite long dreams. I can be in my dream and be aware of all these other dreams that I've had previously, or I can create this huge history of other dreams. Its easy to create the perception of these huge narratives as long as you arent able to probe them too deeply, although it doesnt seem that hard to create on the fly just before you get to something, like you want to read a book, and each page writes itself just before you turn it. You can only be conscious of a few things at once, so perhaps its like the rest of your brain is holding millions of things ready to be presented to you at a moments notice.

 

 

 

They've mapped a worms brain, and are working on humans but we are slightly more complicated.

 

http://web.mit.edu/n...in-mapping.html

 

 

Personally I dont think consciousness is just a matter of power, otherwise we would have already found it. Consciousness I think is like an abstraction, as Ben Bowan said, it doesnt work on raw data. But not just one their are many competing abstractions.

 

What we make of the output of a computer on the screen is an abstraction that would be meaningless coloured patterns to any other species. But ultimately it is understandable and defineable in terms of electronic architecture and is totally constant and identical no matter who or what turns the computer on.

 

I believe that consciousness is no different - ultimately understandable and defineable in terms of neuronal architecture.

 

As to whether we will ever reach that understanding of neuronal architecture is another matter entirely however.

 

Language only affects the ways people categorize colors, not the way they are perceived. It would be like saying a professional painter can see more colors than I do because I couldn't name all the different colors that they could. There are tribes who only have words for dark and light, but I doubt they don't see any colors.

 

Computers can do many things much better than humans, but at the same time there are things that humans can do that is unbelievable difficult to make a computer to do. Computers have a very difficult time separating necessary movement and unnecessary movements when trying to learn goal oriented behavior although even a baby knows the difference. An example is if a computer tries to learn to open a jar by watching someone do it. If they stop to answer the door a computer may 'believe' that is part of the process. Another difference is the redundancy within brains is something very few computers even come close to.

 

Nicely enunciated. So again we need to reflect on which is really more powerful - a brain or the fastest solid state computer.

[calabi]

Why is this forum in know way like a science forum?, we have people with assertions that go directly against evidence.

[iNow]

Why is this forum in know way like a science forum?, we have people with assertions that go directly against evidence.

There are a bunch of people making comments about a topic they don't understand. It happens. I was thinking something similar, myself. For a thread with a title like "understanding the human brain," there sure isn't a lot of understanding being presented here.

[Santalum]

There are a bunch of people making comments about a topic they don't understand. It happens. I was thinking something similar, myself. For a thread with a title like "understanding the human brain," there sure isn't a lot of understanding being presented here.

 

 

Perhaps, from a comment like this, both of you don't really have any understanding of brain physiology yourselves.

 

Because a lot of this is from cutting edge brain research and debate around it.

 

Why don't you read one of the inumerable books on the human brain written by respected researchers in the field.

 

In them you will find the computing power of the human brain being compared and contrasted to the computing power of modern computers.

 

In them you will find that it is widely agreed that computers are excellent at simple number crunching but very primitive at simulating even those most basic human qualities and abilities such as face recognition.

 

In them you will find consciousness being compared to the intended noise and speed generated by a motorcycle but none the less not being physical components of it.

 

All that has been discusses in this thread is entirely scientifically relevant to brain function.

 

I suggest you both start here: http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/03/why_the_brain_is_not_like_a_co.php and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness and here http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394-1,00.html

 

From the first reference...

Accurate biological models of the brain would have to include some 225,000,000,000,000,000 (225 million billion) interactions between cell types, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, axonal branches and dendritic spines, and that doesn't include the influences of dendritic geometry, or the approximately 1 trillion glial cells which may or may not be important for neural information processing. Because the brain is nonlinear, and because it is so much larger than all current computers, it seems likely that it functions in a completely different fashion. (See here for more on this.) The brain-computer metaphor obscures this important, though perhaps obvious, difference in raw computational power.

 

From this the computational power of the human brain is vastly greater than even our most powerful super computers, despite the fact that nerve impulse speed is vastly smaller than the speed of electrical currents. This is largely due to the fact that our brains are capable of massive parallel processing where as our computers are only capable of serial processing.

Edited February 5, 2012 by Santalum

[iNow]

Uhuh.

[DrmDoc]

Why is this forum in know way like a science forum?, we have people with assertions that go directly against evidence.

If there is evidence contrary to an assertion, the best approach is to present that evidence plainly with your supporting sources. If a respondent cannot present a cogent rebuttle, ignores your evidence, or end his or her participation without comment, your perspective is more than likely valid. Admitting that someone's perspective is likely more valid than ours is something our massive and fragile ego will not frequently permit.

[l.boyd]

Can you prove this?

 

I may well percieve the sky to be red, but since I have been taught from an early age that the name of that colour is blue I will call it blue

 

If you show me what you percieve to be blue, I will also call it blue

 

It doesn't mean we see the same thing

 

If what you perceive to be blue is actually red, why would you also call what the other person perceive to be blue (which may very well be brown)...blue?

You already have your own perception of blue (which is red). If the person presented you what they perceive as blue, and if it's not red (your blue), you obviously won't "also call it blue."

 

 

[Tres Juicy]

If what you perceive to be blue is actually red, why would you also call what the other person perceive to be blue (which may very well be brown)...blue?

You already have your own perception of blue (which is red). If the person presented you what they perceive as blue, and if it's not red (your blue), you obviously won't "also call it blue."

 

 

Of course we will, we will have both been taught that the name of that colour is blue

 

I see the sky as red, you see it as brown. We were both told it's blue

[Santalum]

Of course we will, we will have both been taught that the name of that colour is blue

 

I see the sky as red, you see it as brown. We were both told it's blue

 

 

All this speculation about random individual colour perception is rather nonsensical.

 

We all have the same types of rods and cones in our our retinas, although the number and distribution of each might vary, and we all share virtually the same neural pathway structures in our brains.

 

This means, in all likelihood, our percpetion of 'red' etc is innate and not a learned behaviour. With the exception of those with colour blindness of course.

[DrmDoc]

All this speculation about random individual colour perception is rather nonsensical.

 

We all have the same types of rods and cones in our our retinas, although the number and distribution of each might vary, and we all share virtually the same neural pathway structures in our brains.

 

This means, in all likelihood, our percpetion of 'red' etc is innate and not a learned behaviour. With the exception of those with colour blindness of course.

I disagree; the autistic brain provides empirical evidence that our individual interpretation of sensory information, such as color, isn't uniform but rather dependent on how our individual brains process that information. There is evidence suggesting that the autistic brain does not integrate sensory data as effortlessly as a normal or average brain. This appears to explain why some of the afflicted with this condition have difficulty processing visual, aural, and tactile stimuli contemporaneously. Synesthesia is another good example or non-uniform perception and processing of sensory stimuli. Although we may share similar sensory structures (e.g., rods & cones) and neural pathways, there could be distinct variations in those structures and pathways that may significantly alter how we individually perceive and process color and other types of sensory information.

[Tres Juicy]

All this speculation about random individual colour perception is rather nonsensical.

 

We all have the same types of rods and cones in our our retinas, although the number and distribution of each might vary, and we all share virtually the same neural pathway structures in our brains.

 

This means, in all likelihood, our percpetion of 'red' etc is innate and not a learned behaviour. With the exception of those with colour blindness of course.

 

I disagree. And I'm certainly not saying that colour perception is a learned behaviour.

 

What I am saying is that, whatever your perception, the names of colours remain the same.

 

What part of this do you not understand?

[Santalum]

I disagree; the autistic brain provides empirical evidence that our individual interpretation of sensory information, such as color, isn't uniform but rather dependent on how our individual brains process that information. There is evidence suggesting that the autistic brain does not integrate sensory data as effortlessly as a normal or average brain. This appears to explain why some of the afflicted with this condition have difficulty processing visual, aural, and tactile stimuli contemporaneously. Synesthesia is another good example or non-uniform perception and processing of sensory stimuli. Although we may share similar sensory structures (e.g., rods & cones) and neural pathways, there could be distinct variations in those structures and pathways that may significantly alter how we individually perceive and process color and other types of sensory information.

 

That does not prove that an autistic brain can have a totally different colour perception to the norm, i.e. seeing blue as brown and red as green or what ever. All it proves is that autistic brains are incapable of integrating and coordinating sensory signals in the same way that a normal brain can.

 

Since colour perception, the neural pathways and the retinal cones associated withit are a fundamental inherrited trait from our fish->amphibian->reptile ancestors, as far as I can see, the only way that fundeamentally different colour perception could exist would be between different species that seperated from one another far back in evolutionary history. E.G. Insects and modern fish that can perceive ultraviolet radiation as a 'colour' and humans that cannot perceive it as a 'colour'......except for colour blindness in humans, where some colour perception is missing rather than fundamentally different.

 

I disagree. And I'm certainly not saying that colour perception is a learned behaviour.

 

What I am saying is that, whatever your perception, the names of colours remain the same.

 

What part of this do you not understand?

 

Clearly you do nor understand that the fundamental parts of our neurocircuitry that result in components of our perception, e.g. perceiving 'red' and all agreeing that it is called 'red' or what ever in other languages, are genetically determined and inherrited from our distant fish ancestors.

 

Let me give you a another related example that I saw in a documentary I recently watched.

 

A scientist drew a billowing cloud shape and an irregular pointed star shape on sperate cards. On two other cards he invented possible names for those shapes - booba and kiki.

 

He then went out on the street and proceeded to ask random people which shape was called booba and which shape was called kiki.

 

99.9% of the poeple he asked called the star shape kiki and the cloud shape booba.

 

Why? Because 99.9% of people have language and shape percpetion circuitry that immediately associate the sharp points of the star shape with the sharp sounds of the work 'kiki' and conversely associate the curves of the cloud shape with the smooth sound of the word 'booba'.

 

This experiment shows that language in humans did not develop totally randomly and that in fact the above innate tendancy was necessary for agreed language to develop among large numbers of people.

 

I put it to you that colour perception and agreement on what is red and what is blue is similarly innate and is very unlikely to be randomised among individuals who then simply learn to go against what their brain circuitry is telling them by calling what they perceive as green red in order to coform with other members of society.

 

It is VERY likely that much of our perception and cognition is innate and hard wired into our brains, and subject to various genes.

 

Are you suggesting for example that it is equally possible that some people might perceive sweet as bitter but simply learn to call it sweet and enjoy it because that is the accepted thing in society????

 

I don't think so.

 

Again, taste perception is innate and hard wired into our brains. Unless some one has a taste defiecit of some sort, everyone agrees on what substances are sweet and enjoyable and which substances are bitter and not enjoyable.

[zapatos]

Of course we will, we will have both been taught that the name of that colour is blue

 

I see the sky as red, you see it as brown. We were both told it's blue

I tend to think you'd quickly run into problems if this was true.

 

For example, let's say that I perceive the apple as red and am told it is red. You perceive the apple as black but are also told it is red. All other colors we perceive the same and have the same name for.

 

We are now asked to pick from a color pallette the color which seems to be a lighter shade of the color of the apple. I pick pink, which we both agree is pink, and you pick gray, which we both agree is gray.

 

At that point we realize that we perceive colors differently.

 

I think if we perceive colors differently we would have people constantly criticizing the clothes we picked for the day.

 

Which is exactly what happened with my dad who was color blind. It was obvious to the whole family that he did not perceive colors as we did.

[Santalum]

I tend to think you'd quickly run into problems if this was true.

 

For example, let's say that I perceive the apple as red and am told it is red. You perceive the apple as black but are also told it is red. All other colors we perceive the same and have the same name for.

 

We are now asked to pick from a color pallette the color which seems to be a lighter shade of the color of the apple. I pick pink, which we both agree is pink, and you pick gray, which we both agree is gray.

 

At that point we realize that we perceive colors differently.

 

I think if we perceive colors differently we would have people constantly criticizing the clothes we picked for the day.

 

Which is exactly what happened with my dad who was color blind. It was obvious to the whole family that he did not perceive colors as we did.

 

They key point about human colour blindness is that it results in a deficiency in perception and not from a fundamentally different form of colour perception.

 

People who speak different languages have totally different labels for the colour 'red' etc. But if language independant tests were conducted, such as chosing a colour card that most closely resembled the colour of an abstract object (rather than a known object that has a known colour) given to the test subject, then 99.9% of the human race would undoubtedly agree on what the closest matching colour card is. That would be undeniable evidence that, not withstanding colour blindness, colour perception is innate and hard wired rather than learned or variable.

 

 

http://www.decodeme....aste-perception

 

Taste perception and the genetically determined human response to bitter-tasting foods may have a considerable effect on nutrition and health.

 

One does not learn to respond to bitter tasting foods by emulating the behaviour of others. The response is innate, perhaps even an involuntary reflex action.

 

Human colour perception is little different to this and everyone's perception of the various colours is more or less identical, except when colour blindness deprives us of some of that colour perception.

 

http://www.scienceda...51026082313.htm

 

Each subject was asked to tune the color of a disk of light to produce a pure yellow light that was neither reddish yellow nor greenish yellow. Everyone selected nearly the same wavelength of yellow, showing an obvious consensus over what color they perceived yellow to be. Once Williams looked into their eyes, however, he was surprised to see that the number of long- and middle-wavelength cones—the cones that detect red, green, and yellow—were sometimes profusely scattered throughout the retina, and sometimes barely evident. The discrepancy was more than a 40:1 ratio, yet all the volunteers were apparently seeing the same color yellow.

"Those early experiments showed that everyone we tested has the same color experience despite this really profound difference in the front-end of their visual system," says Hofer. "That points to some kind of normalization or auto-calibration mechanism—some kind of circuit in the brain that balances the colors for you no matter what the hardware is."

 

In a related experiment, Williams and a postdoctoral fellow Yasuki Yamauchi, working with other collaborators from the Medical College of Wisconsin, gave several people colored contacts to wear for four hours a day. While wearing the contacts, people tended to eventually feel as if they were not wearing the contacts, just as people who wear colored sunglasses tend to see colors "correctly" after a few minutes with the sunglasses. The volunteers' normal color vision, however, began to shift after several weeks of contact use. Even when not wearing the contacts, they all began to select a pure yellow that was a different wavelength than they had before wearing the contacts.

 

"Over time, we were able to shift their natural perception of yellow in one direction, and then the other," says Williams. "This is direct evidence for an internal, automatic calibrator of color perception. These experiments show that color is defined by our experience in the world, and since we all share the same world, we arrive at the same definition of colors."

 

Is there really any point in arguing your view any further Tres Juicy? Clearly it is not consistent with legitimate science as demonstrated by the above research.

 

 

Edited February 24, 2012 by Santalum

[DrmDoc]

That does not prove that an autistic brain can have a totally different colour perception to the norm, i.e. seeing blue as brown and red as green or what ever. All it proves is that autistic brains are incapable of integrating and coordinating sensory signals in the same way that a normal brain can.

 

Since colour perception, the neural pathways and the retinal cones associated withit are a fundamental inherrited trait from our fish->amphibian->reptile ancestors, as far as I can see, the only way that fundeamentally different colour perception could exist would be between different species that seperated from one another far back in evolutionary history. E.G. Insects and modern fish that can perceive ultraviolet radiation as a 'colour' and humans that cannot perceive it as a 'colour'......except for colour blindness in humans, where some colour perception is missing rather than fundamentally different.

 

 

 

Clearly you do nor understand that the fundamental parts of our neurocircuitry that result in components of our perception, e.g. perceiving 'red' and all agreeing that it is called 'red' or what ever in other languages, are genetically determined and inherrited from our distant fish ancestors.

 

Let me give you a another related example that I saw in a documentary I recently watched.

 

A scientist drew a billowing cloud shape and an irregular pointed star shape on sperate cards. On two other cards he invented possible names for those shapes - booba and kiki.

 

He then went out on the street and proceeded to ask random people which shape was called booba and which shape was called kiki.

 

99.9% of the poeple he asked called the star shape kiki and the cloud shape booba.

 

Why? Because 99.9% of people have language and shape percpetion circuitry that immediately associate the sharp points of the star shape with the sharp sounds of the work 'kiki' and conversely associate the curves of the cloud shape with the smooth sound of the word 'booba'.

 

This experiment shows that language in humans did not develop totally randomly and that in fact the above innate tendancy was necessary for agreed language to develop among large numbers of people.

 

I put it to you that colour perception and agreement on what is red and what is blue is similarly innate and is very unlikely to be randomised among individuals who then simply learn to go against what their brain circuitry is telling them by calling what they perceive as green red in order to coform with other members of society.

 

It is VERY likely that much of our perception and cognition is innate and hard wired into our brains, and subject to various genes.

 

Are you suggesting for example that it is equally possible that some people might perceive sweet as bitter but simply learn to call it sweet and enjoy it because that is the accepted thing in society????

 

I don't think so.

 

Again, taste perception is innate and hard wired into our brains. Unless some one has a taste defiecit of some sort, everyone agrees on what substances are sweet and enjoyable and which substances are bitter and not enjoyable.

Perhaps you misunderstood my point; if we can prove that the human brain may not be uniform in its interpretation of sensory information from person to person, then it is also possible that our individual interpretation of color may not be uniform. Although autism is a good example of non-uniformity, conditions like synesthesia and dyslexia prove that how we individually interpret sensory, such as color, may not be the same. Dyslexia in particular is a condition that can go undiagnosed for years because the sufferer isn't aware that his interpretation of visual information does not conform to the norm and we, as his peers, do not perceive his disorder in his behavior. Regarding the color analogy, the idea is that the aberrant perception of red as green infers the reverse--that the individual also perceives geen as red. The individual may perceive all other colors as you or I with the exception of these two. If the individual experiences that his green perspective of red is commonly coordinated with the colors commonly coordinated with red, then he may never learn of the distinction in how his brain interprets red. This is not about the commonality of sensory organs (rods & cones) but rather about the individuality of the organ (brain) that interprets the sensory.

[Santalum]

Perhaps you misunderstood my point; if we can prove that the human brain may not be uniform in its interpretation of sensory information from person to person, then it is also possible that our individual interpretation of color may not be uniform. Although autism is a good example of non-uniformity, conditions like synesthesia and dyslexia prove that how we individually interpret sensory, such as color, may not be the same. Dyslexia in particular is a condition that can go undiagnosed for years because the sufferer isn't aware that his interpretation of visual information does not conform to the norm and we, as his peers, do not perceive his disorder in his behavior. Regarding the color analogy, the idea is that the aberrant perception of red as green infers the reverse--that the individual also perceives geen as red. The individual may perceive all other colors as you or I with the exception of these two. If the individual experiences that his green perspective of red is commonly coordinated with the colors commonly coordinated with red, then he may never learn of the distinction in how his brain interprets red. This is not about the commonality of sensory organs (rods & cones) but rather about the individuality of the organ (brain) that interprets the sensory.

 

I understand essentially what you are saying, but you are refering to the way that the brain puts together all that sensory information into an internal model of the external world.

 

Yes! That can vary and widely and indeed bizarely as synesthesia proves.

 

But synesthesia does not prove that the way we perceive actual colours varies in any way through our visual systems........apart from colour blindness.

 

For example, colours that synesthetes see in response to words or letters are believed to result from cross connections between language circuitry and visual circuitry, i.e. the language centres of the brain do not generate the sensation of colour but merely trigger parts of the visual system via these cross connections as they are carrying out language processing.

 

I have previously posted a specific experiment where it has been proven that 99.9% of the human race all agree, to a fairly high level of precission, as to which wavelengths give us the sensations of red, yellow and blue etc. I have no doubt that if synesthetes were given the same visual (not language) test then they would also agree on which wavelengths give them the sensation of red, yellow and blue etc.

 

IN THEORY, some individuals with visual dyslexia have an excess of L (red) photoreceptors in their eyes. The excess of red photoreceptors cause a visual dissonance when reading. A measureable effect is an increased ability (hypersensitivity) to see a Blue Dyop™ on a Black background more easily than they can see a Green Dyop™ on a White background.

 

 

Assuming there is scientific credibility to this theory, some forms of dyslexia are caused by an imbalance in the colour information coming in from the eyes but it is not caused by a difference in how the colours are perceived, i.e. what sensations each wavelength/ retinal cone induces.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Santalum

[DrmDoc]

Assuming there is scientific credibility to this theory, some forms of dyslexia are caused by an imbalance in the colour information coming in from the eyes but it is not caused by a difference in how the colours are perceived, i.e. what sensations each wavelength/ retinal cone induces.

So, theoretically, if I understand correctly, there could be an "imbalance in the colour information coming in from the eyes", which could go undiagnosed as dyslexia, resulting in a distinction in how an individual might perceive certain visual information? Doesn't this suggest the possibility of non-uniformity in how we may individual perceive and interpret visual information?

[dimreepr]

So, theoretically, if I understand correctly, there could be an "imbalance in the colour information coming in from the eyes", which could go undiagnosed as dyslexia, resulting in a distinction in how an individual might perceive certain visual information? Doesn't this suggest the possibility of non-uniformity in how we may individual perceive and interpret visual information?

 

 

In a recent bbc program called “how to grow a planet” the colour perception is a result of evolution coming to distinguish fruit that is ripe and so is uniformly recognised in the human brain, any difference would result, Naturally, in extinction. Our society of course doesn’t allow this, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

 

 

[Santalum]

So, theoretically, if I understand correctly, there could be an "imbalance in the colour information coming in from the eyes", which could go undiagnosed as dyslexia, resulting in a distinction in how an individual might perceive certain visual information? Doesn't this suggest the possibility of non-uniformity in how we may individual perceive and interpret visual information?

 

Are you denying that the re-posted experiment below proves that 99.9% of the human race all agree on what colour sensation each wavelength induces?

 

I not then I fail to see how you can come to your above conclusion.

 

All dyslexia proves is that sufferers have a problem in processing visual information in terms of written language due to an imbalance in the colour sensations coming in from the eyes. It it does not indicate the surfers have different colour sensations for given wavelengths.

 

Even if suffers in theory would see everything slightly......say........redder than everyone else because they have far more red cones in their retinas than blue and green cones, please note what the experiment below says about in built filter circuitry in the visual cortext that compensates for this. Like when you are wearing coloured goggles in the snow fields. In the end red objects still cause the sensation of red regardless of your skewed colour perception due to the goggles.

 

http://www.scienceda...51026082313.htm

 

Each subject was asked to tune the color of a disk of light to produce a pure yellow light that was neither reddish yellow nor greenish yellow. Everyone selected nearly the same wavelength of yellow, showing an obvious consensus over what color they perceived yellow to be. Once Williams looked into their eyes, however, he was surprised to see that the number of long- and middle-wavelength conesthe cones that detect red, green, and yellowwere sometimes profusely scattered throughout the retina, and sometimes barely evident. The discrepancy was more than a 40:1 ratio, yet all the volunteers were apparently seeing the same color yellow.

"Those early experiments showed that everyone we tested has the same color experience despite this really profound difference in the front-end of their visual system," says Hofer. "That points to some kind of normalization or auto-calibration mechanismsome kind of circuit in the brain that balances the colors for you no matter what the hardware is."

 

In a related experiment, Williams and a postdoctoral fellow Yasuki Yamauchi, working with other collaborators from the Medical College of Wisconsin, gave several people colored contacts to wear for four hours a day. While wearing the contacts, people tended to eventually feel as if they were not wearing the contacts, just as people who wear colored sunglasses tend to see colors "correctly" after a few minutes with the sunglasses. The volunteers' normal color vision, however, began to shift after several weeks of contact use. Even when not wearing the contacts, they all began to select a pure yellow that was a different wavelength than they had before wearing the contacts.

 

"Over time, we were able to shift their natural perception of yellow in one direction, and then the other," says Williams. "This is direct evidence for an internal, automatic calibrator of color perception. These experiments show that color is defined by our experience in the world, and since we all share the same world, we arrive at the same definition of colors."

Edited February 27, 2012 by Santalum

[DrmDoc]

Are you denying that the re-posted experiment below proves that 99.9% of the human race all agree on what colour sensation each wavelength induces?

 

I not then I fail to see how you can come to your above conclusion.

 

All dyslexia proves is that sufferers have a problem in processing visual information in terms of written language due to an imbalance in the colour sensations coming in from the eyes. It it does not indicate the surfers have different colour sensations for given wavelengths.

 

Even if suffers in theory would see everything slightly......say........redder than everyone else because they have far more red cones in their retinas than blue and green cones, please note what the experiment below says about in built filter circuitry in the visual cortext that compensates for this. Like when you are wearing coloured goggles in the snow fields. In the end red objects still cause the sensation of red regardless of your skewed colour perception due to the goggles.

 

http://www.scienceda...51026082313.htm

 

 

I disagree; dyslexia proves that certain sensory and neurological abnormalities can cause non-uniformity in how we may individually perceive and interpret sensory information. Although a color imbalance from the eye could result in some forms of dyslexia, such an imbalance cannot account for the more common symptom of word reversal and an inability to discern right from left. Regarding the study you cited, what was the sampling of volunteers? Was the sampling large enough to include aberrant subjects? For example, if the sampling involved 10 participants, where less than .05 percent of the area population is of aberrant vision, then the sampling was not large enough to include data relevant to the whole of that population location. Did the study include aberrant vision participants such as synesthesia and dyslexia sufferers? Although your study appears to account for the norm, it may not be inclusive of the abnormal. Again, my position is that a condition (neurological, physiological or psychological), which renders a distinction in how we may individually perceive and interpret our surroundings, supports the possibility of an aberrant distinction in how we may individually perceive visual information. For me it is simple, you are suggesting that we all see the same thing in the same way; whereas, I am suggesting the possibility that we may not. Edited February 29, 2012 by DrmDoc

[Santalum]

I disagree; dyslexia proves that certain sensory and neurological abnormalities can cause non-uniformity in how we may individually perceive and interpret sensory information. Although a color imbalance from the eye could result in some forms of dyslexia, such an imbalance cannot account for the more common symptom of word reversal and an inability to discern right from left. Regarding the study you cited, what was the sampling of volunteers? Was the sampling large enough to include aberrant subjects? For example, if the sampling involved 10 participants, where less than .05 percent of the area population is of aberrant vision, then the sampling was not large enough to include data relevant to the whole of that population location. Did the study include aberrant vision participants such as synesthesia and dyslexia sufferers? Although your study appears to account for the norm, it may not be inclusive of the abnormal. Again, my position is that a condition (neurological, physiological or psychological), which renders a distinction in how we may individually perceive and interpret our surroundings, supports the possibility of an aberrant distinction in how we may individually perceive visual information. For me it is simple, you are suggesting that we all see the same thing in the same way; whereas, I am suggesting the possibility that we may not.

Well with all due respect I would sooner accept the findings of a reputable scientific study on the matter rather than your personal opinion.

 

Anyway from information on Dyslexia Australia's website:

 

Will coloured lenses help?

Dyslexia Australia will successfully correct perceptual distortions of words or symbols (known as Perceptual dyslexia) without the use of glasses or coloured lenses.

 

Coloured lenses are for a condition known as Irlen or Meares-Irlen Syndrome (aka scoptic sensitivity syndrome) NOT for dyslexia. The Irlen Syndrome is a condition characterised by visual distress. Some of the problems associated with this syndrome are sensitivity to light or colour, poor depth perception, lack of facial recognition and visual distortions.

 

it looks as though this notion that colour perception problems cause dyslexia is nothing more than psuedoscience nonsense!

 

 

Edited February 29, 2012 by Santalum

[JohnStu]

Are you talking about understanding of the structure of the brain or the psychology of humans?

 

I think studying the structure of the brain first would help studying the psychologies of humans later on. Well, psychology is more like a result of years of brain activity. So I guess studying children or fetuses or other animals' brain would do better.