Friday, September 21, 2012
The Binding Problem
The binding problem or large-scale integration problem is how various brain areas produce a perception of a single object.This occurs, for example, when sensations of color, shape, boundary, and texture are combined to produce the percept of a person's face. No one knows exactly how the brain does this. Thus the binding problem is one of the major unsolved mysteries in psychology.The example in the book about how the ventriloquist works and how we think the sound is actually coming from the dummy really got me. Its weird because i know that its not coming from the dummy but from the person controlling the dummy and yet when i watch a ventriloquist I still catch myself thinking that the dummy is talking. Not much research has been done on this subject because it is quite hard to determine what is really going on. I saw a video on how one philosopher saw the binding problem and i liked what he said.
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The binding problem and the way that we perceive things is completely fascinating! And I'm really intrigued by that philosopher's take on the matter--consciousness is an illusion. The fact that we are able to sense and perceive things and not be able to have physical or concrete evidence for that simple human phenomenon is crazy! It raises questions like the existence of the soul and existence of our mind and the levels of our consciousness.
ReplyDeletePerception is such an interesting topic to dive into!
Although there is not a lot of information about the binding problem the information that is present helps to put things in perspective. For example, I am sure that everyone is familiar with optical illusion. This whole time I thought my eyes were being fooled, and as it turns out it was my brain that was being fooled. Our brains choose to ignore certain details because it is focusing on what it deems important. The binding problem is an interesting topic that I hope we can understand better one day. When and if that day ever comes I wonder if because we understand the topic better, will the way we perceive things change? I suppose it could go either way, but probably not being that our brains have so many other things to do and to worry about.
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