Thoughtful Thursday - Perceptions (Did you not see what you saw?)

Hello and welcome to Thoughtful Thursday; the day of the week where I tell you about how your brain lies to you, or do I?

Image was taken from http://eyetricks.com/0101.htm. Wondering what the new logo at the top of the image is about? Make sure to read Saturday and Sundays posts to find out.

Have you ever seen something that wasn't there? Provided you weren't on any type of hallucinogen at the time, you were probably a victim of your brains incorrect perceptions. Yes. Brains can be wrong too, and they can be so in a multitude of ways for a variety of reasons. Let's talk about that.

If you have ever seen strange faces in bricks or thought that a tree was staring at you, your brain has essentially deceived itself due to the simple fact that it likes facts, rather than malleable concepts. A study of psychology known as Group Psychology is centered around the fact that your brain does not percieve the pieces of what you sense, but what you sense as a whole. You don't smell the individual spices in a stew, you smell a stew. (Or, in the famous case that led to the discovery of Group Psychology, 2 slides of a vertical line and a horizontal line changed at a high enough speed, will be perceived as the line rotating.) It should be noted, I may be wrong about the name of this brand of psychology.

My ever favourite science and fact channel on YouTube, Vsauce, frequently talks about interesting facts concerning perceptions all the time. For example, this video discusses the way that the brain can perceive occurrences incorrectly and make you believe that it just happened, thus leading to Deja Vu. Another video explains how, even at this very second, your computer, phone, or tablet screen is lying to your brain right now. The yellow you're seeing all over my blog right now, (That is, if you're reading this when the blog is still yellow.), is little more than your brain assuming that the light coming off of your screen is actually yellow.
Yet another video is devoted to illusions, and discusses everything from the brains natural wish to assert itself as controlling over it's situation and future, to the fact that your brain is rather stubborn, and will often refuse to admit that it's wrong; choosing to rather change your perceptions in accordance with what it thinks is happening.

The point of the fact is, your brain, is easy to lie to, and easy to confuse, simply because of the way it works. While you can consciously understand concepts and decide that you were previously incorrect due to the grouped effectiveness of your mind, your brain is very much just an electrical machine with a massive tangle of cables. The electricity only flows one way and if one of the cables stops working properly for some reason, the rest of the machine for better or worse, continues to function to the best of it's ability. It has no ability to reconsider previous assessments.

This is not entirely a bad thing, as the constant stream of data which your brain sifts through in near real-time ensures that you can function and react effectively at all times. What would happen if your eyes decided they wanted to review what they said earlier while you were driving? (I can't see the result being altogether pleasant.) However, the downside to this is that incorrect assessments are never corrected, which is part of what leads to Phobias.

Phobias are the brains excessive and irrational fear of all things related to a certain subject, often as result of a traumatic incident involving that subject... or not. Phobias are caused by what is perhaps colloquially known as the "reptillian brain" which is the basic brain stem and the effective center of your brain. This part of your brain is most typically responsible for the preservation of your life, and handles things such as breathing, metabolism to a degree and, important to this discussion, the flight, fight or freeze responses.

Image is from http://www.wisdompage.com/FlawsInMentality.html

The thing about the conscious mind is that it is somewhat slow. You have to think about things, and then make decisions about them. And even woman can't multitask all that much, if the stereotype is to be believed. So your senses are processed first by the reptilian brain before your main cortex which is responsible for sapient thought. This allows you to react without thinking and is pretty handy for rolling out of the way when a bear is about to give you a hug. (Or some other reasonably fatal situation needs to be escaped.)

The problem arises however, with how your reptilian brain decides what is something that needs to be reacted to. Patterns. As a child, the first time you saw fire, you probably wanted to play with it. This is because your reptilian brain did not yet know what kind of danger the fire could pose to you. Once you harmed yourself however, the reptilian brain understood that fire = pain and hurt, and thus any time you encountered fire from then on, you were probably far more weary even before you had consciously decided to be so. This is good. It keeps you alive. The problem comes in with trauma, either physical or emotional. It's widely believed that the cause of Phobias is a result of patterns related to a specific, traumatic incident, not leaving the reptilian brain once the need for quick reactions is over. This leads to continual terror as the brain continues to think it is in danger and looks for a way to preserve itself. 

Perhaps even worse, is that in the same way that thoughts and memories are linked through neural synapses, your reptilian brain begins to associate non-dangerous things to the Phobia in this state. So you can go from merely being afraid of spiders, to being scared of TV's because a picture of a spider on the TV triggered a terror attack. The next time you see a TV can make you scared of where you saw that TV... and so on and so forth. Brains are rather stupid sometimes.

So why is it then, that sometimes, we seem to see or feel things that aren't actually there? Or perhaps the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, and you can feel someone's eyes on you? Well, to explain that, you need to understand that the human brain's first and foremost goal is self preservation. Anything it can do to give itself an edge in life, it does to the best of it's ability.

I mentioned earlier about how you might have seen a face on some bricks. (or toast.) This is one of the brains methods of self-preservation. Friend or foe, most creatures have a face. So it pays to notice them when you see them. In a similar situation, you will find that in classrooms or public places, it's fairly typical for you to notice when someone is watching you. This is again to help you know when you've attracted (un)wanted attention.

Interesting enough. Humans are the only creature with white eyes. At some point in our evolution, we decided that we no longer needed the camouflage of less seen eyes, instead favouring the social aspect of white eyes which helps people to know when you're looking at them.

In the end, those playing the game of survival of the fittest, and those with all the best weapons and advantages, move on to reproduce. So the next time time you think someone is watching you, listen to that "gut feeling". It might be more correct than you think, and all in thanks to your ancestors who used that sense to survive long enough to extend your bloodline down to you. If you found this article interesting, or would like to mention something I got wrong or missed out, be sure to let me know in the comments below or over Facebook and Twitter. Also, be sure to share this with any friends you think might find it interesting as well. Of course, if you would like to read more articles like this, be sure to follow me on Twitter and/or like my Facebook page so that you can get the latest articles, as I post them. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for taking the time to read this article; hope that you have/had an absolutely fantastic day, and I will speak again tomorrow.

Stay frosty friends.