The Distinct Power Of The Human Brain

Recently, the researchers have found that the human brain functions and determines the properties of a particular object with the help of purely statistical information. It is a result which is reflective of the fact that there is an 'inner pickpocket' in all of us.

One of the major reasons why successful pickpockets are so efficient at their work is that they are able to identify objects that they have never seen before just only by touching them. In a similar manner, we often presume and imagine that what an object placed in a shop window will feel like just by looking at it. In both the cases, reliance is being made on the brain's ability to break down the persistent stream of information received by the sensory inputs into distinct chunks. The pickpocket has the capability of interpreting the sequence of small depressions on their fingers into a series of well-defined objects in a pocket or handbag. While the shopper's visual system has the capability to interpret photons into reflections of light from the objects in the window. The ability to extract distinct objects from cluttered scenes with the help of touch or sight alone and accurately predict how they will feel based on how they look, or vice versa, is of much importance with respect to our interaction with the world. By means of performing clever analyses of earlier experiences, the brain can instantly identify objects without the requirement for clear-cut boundaries or other specialised cues, at the same time make a prediction of unknown properties of new objects. Professor Máté Lengyel from Cambridge's Department of Engineering stated that the researchers closely look into, analyse and observe the entire process by which the brain takes in the continuous flow of information. The brain further segments and breaks down the information it receives. Lengyel and his colleagues made scenes of various abstract shapes without visible boundaries between them and asked the participants to either observe the shapes on a screen or pull them apart along a tear line that was passing either through or between the various objects. The participants were then subjected to another test. i.e. their ability to predict the visual such as how familiar did real jigsaw pieces look in comparison to the abstract pieces constructed from the parts of two different pieces along with haptic properties of these jigsaw pieces. The researchers observed that the participants were able to form the correct mental model of the jigsaw pieces either from visual or haptic (touch) experience alone. They were also able to immediately predict haptic properties from visual ones and vice versa.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190521075053.htm