Go to the posts related to the Ted Talks we did in week #4.
Read though the posts and pick a Ted Talk that sounds interesting (one that you haven't seen before) then watch that Ted Talk. http://www.ted.com/talks
After you watch the video write a brief discussion including 1) Why you picked that video, 2) What you expected to see, 3) What you actually saw and if you liked it or not, 4) What interested you the most? 5) How does the text discuss the material covered in the Ted Talk?
Make a list of key terms and concepts you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any questions,
--Dr. M
Nick Veasey: Exposing the invisible
1) I chose this video because of the title. I thought it was be interesting to see what x-rays pick up. X-rays take pictures of the inner workings of an object, and may change what you focus on when looking at the image. The description of looking at what the human eye can’t see intrigued me, and I expected to look at everyday objects very differently.
2) I expected this video to show x-rays of many hard to identify objects, and discuss the science behind x-ray photos. I believed the video would discuss how our brain perceives these photos, and constructs the 3-D image from the shading and brightness of an object so that we identify it. I also believe the video will make a point that human eyes only see exterior images, and often miss the intricate details that are going on inside an object.
3) Nick Veasey showed everyday objects that he had x-rayed such as clothing, dead animals, flowers, and even a bus. He described the process of taking x-rays very in-depth. He explains the many steps that are necessary when he x-rays jet planes, and the amount of time that is necessary to do this huge structure. He explained the thicker an object is the more radiation that is required. He also says that the longer the object is exposed to radiation, the crisper the object will appear to the eye. He explains the dangers of radiation poisoning, and his own exposures that will stay with him for life.
He also explains that he x-rays 3-D objects, and then translates these images into a 2-D image that is still recognizable to the human eye. The x-rays show the inner workings of the object, yet our brain can still translate what the image would look like if it was complete. He believes he has the “benefit of taking away the surface.” He thinks that x-rays help us to better understand objects, and how they work.
4) What interested me most in this video were the huge objects he had x-rayed such as a Boeing 747. The detail and time spent to disassemble and photograph each part must be exacerbating, and intricate. During the video I just kept thinking about how easy it would be to get bored with a project because of the sheer amount of work necessary.
5) I felt like the reader related best to this video because of the explanation of how our brain constructs 3-D images out of viewing 2-D images on paper. We use cues of shading, and angle to determine how the parts of an object relate to each other. I wonder if we would construct different visual rules if we could in fact see inside objects, and gain a better understanding of how things work. I struggled to find relatable material in my textbook about x-ray photographs however.
Terms: radiation, shading, 3-D objects, image construction
1.I chose this video because a lot of people in the class seemed to find it interesting and I wanted to see what it was all about myself. The title also just sounded interesting because everyone seems to be fascinated with optical illusions.
2.I expected to see images of optical illusions; especially ones that we have seen in our reader and text and also ones that I have seen before this class. The common optical illusions are what I expected to see. I also thought this lecture would discuss how optical illusions show us what our eyes see and why our brains interpret these images the way that they do.
3.I enjoyed this video because I love optical illusions. It’s crazy that we see certain colors differently based on the amount of light hitting them or what is surrounding the color. We see the same image but we have different interpretations of it. An example Lotto had was an object that was yellow had light hitting it; giving off a certain color. There was another object with a brownish color that was in a shadow and that color was the same as the yellow object being hit by light.
Another interesting part of this lecture was an image of a desert; the same image shown twice. Above the desert images was a green square on the left and a red square on the right. We would stare at a dot in the middle of the green/red squares. Then he had us look at the desert image and for a couple seconds the left desert was green and the right was red. Our brain was seeing the same information as if the right side was under red light and the green side was under green light.
4.I was most interested in the actual optical illusions because they are so neat. I liked that after the image was shown Lotto would talk about why we saw it that way and how light effected how we saw this image. It’s so interesting that we have multiple interpretations of an image. Also, these multiple interpretations are determined by our past history and many other factors like the light hitting the object.
5.My text talked about a ratio principle that states: two areas that reflect different amounts of light will look the same if the ratios of their intensities to the intensities of their surroundings are the same. This explains the grey square surrounded by either black or white and how the grey color looks different depending on the color surrounding it.
Optical illusions, ratio principle, reflect.
Exposing the Invisible
http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_veasey_exposing_the_invisible_1.html
1)I thought it would be cool to see what objects would look like behind an x-ray machine. You normally don't see x-rays of large objects. It mostly consists of brain scans or body part scans to determine a cause or diagnosis.
2) I expected to see cars with people in it. This was shown but it was more broad than I expected. I thought there would be a lot of animal x-rays so we could see organs and bones within them.
3) There were many objects shown. Clothing, animals, motor vehicles, flowers, seaweed. It also shows the coloring in objects. It is hard to show the detail of light things (feather). The child toy x-ray looks like a robot. Its cool how it looks more realistic in life, but in the x-ray it looks like creepy robot made of man-made materials. I loved how they showed the x-rays of the people in the bus. This is used on the borders of countries to find illegal immigrants and contraband. You can see their hats, glasses, and headphones they were wearing.He talked about how he uses dead people for x-rays because of the radiation exposure.
4) The flowers (water lilies) was cool to see. I also enjoyed Nick Veasey showing his x-ray shed where he creates the x-rays. There were machines we are not familiar with, because we are not exposed to it on a daily basis, if ever at all. The plane was awesome to see, because it took him 3 months to x-ray it. Just knowing you can x-ray something that large is very cool.
5) My text does not talk about x-rays or radiation. I have talked about color and 2-d object recognition in other posts. That was the closest thing to this video that was related between the two. I was kind of disappointed not to find much in my text. I really do not like this textbook.
x-ray, objects, color, radiation, 2-d
Taylor Mali: What teachers make
1.) I chose this video because of it's title. I was curious as to what exactly it was going to tell us about what teachers make.
2.) Before watching the clip I read the short biography about the man presenting the clip (Taylor Mali). It was interesting to read that he is one of the very few poets that doesn't have a side job. So i expected this piece to be good, because he is obviously successful at what he does and enjoys it, so i figured I would as well. I honestly expected to hear some kind of spoof on teachers and what they make; whether that be annual salary or something else.
3.) It was quite humorous to hear his point of view on the subject of teaching. He starts off by stating, "what is a student going to learn from someone to decides to teach?" That caught my attention right away. He then goes on about how he makes students who may stuggle feel as though that C is like getting the "medal of congressional honor" and A students getting an A- he lets them know that they didn't work as hard as they could. The whole video was about how he can control his students behavior by simple little things used in the classroom. He ends the clip by saying that teachers make the difference in the classroom and in the student's lives. I didn't really get what he was getting at when I first watched the clip, but after it was over, I really liked it. I would agree with a lot of the things that he talks about relating to how teachers can make such an impact and development in a child.
4.) What interested me the most when watching the video was all the analogies he used that really do go on in the classroom and how that can affect the students. I also thought that it was interesting how he made the whole clip very comical. That made it a lot more fun to watch. I also liked & can relate to, that teachers do in fact affect a lot of a student's emotional behaviors. One example is that if a teacher calls the students parents around dinner time, the student instantly becomes nervous about why the teacher is calling and what is being talked about on the phone.
5.) There was obviously no material related to the topic of teachers affects on a student in and out of the classroom. So i decided to focus in on a section of the book titled, "the Effects of Occupation". This section was very interesting. It starts out stating that over one half of your adult life is spent in an occupational setting and those specific sets of occupational experiences can effect your perceptual abilities both at the physiological and cognitive levels. Some examples that you see in your occuptional setting is the magnitude of light, sound, or chemical stimulation that you are being exposed to. Taking that more into depth, the author explains that everybody's work settings are different. Whether you work in a quiet office, a loud factory, or band, you are experiencing the effects of noise. There are also jobs that expose their workers to high intensity lights. The most interesting thing talked about is the strange effect of myopia in the work setting. Myopia is commonly referred to as nearsightedness. This is a condition where the length of the eye is to great, parallel rays of light from objects far away come into focus in front of the retina, which results in bad distance acuity.
6.)distance acuity, Myopia, nearsightedness, parallel rays
Julian Treasure: The 4 ways sound affects us
1) I picked this video because I am very interested in how things we take for granted every day, like environmental sounds, can affect us. I also picked this video because I wanted to break away from talking about the visual side of S&P.
2) After already having experience with Ted Talks from the assignment in week 4, I expected to see someone giving relevant and interesting examples of how sounds affect us.
3) I pretty much got what I expected and enjoyed it. Treasure begins by saying that most sound is accidental. He goes on from there to tell us the 4 way that sound affect us. The first way is physiologically. Sounds can affect our hormone secretions, breathing, heart rate, and our brain waves.
The next way we are affected is psychologically. The example used for psychological influences was music. Music can influence our emotions.
The third way sound affects us is cognitively. Everyday, we must choose between simultaneous noises as to which one we will listen to. In open plan offices where it is more noisy, productivity is decreased by 66% compared to a quiet, private work space.
The last way sounds affect us is behaviorally. We tend to physically move away from unpleasant sounds.
Treasure says that noise can damage our health also. Retail noises, for example, are unpleasant and can affect us negatively.
Treasure states that music is the most powerful sound because of it's recognition and association.
The video then goes on to talk about brand sounds and provides 4 golden rules for commercial sound but that section is not very informative. Treasure concludes by saying that we should take control of the sound around us.
4) What interested me the most about this video is the fact that we must choose which noise we listen to every day. I have honestly never thought about it in that way before. Also, I was surprised to see how big of an impact noise has on productivity.
Something I can relate to my life if the unpleasant sounds of retail. I work in retail and have noticed many times, especially during the holiday season, that the noise of the store is really distracting and difficult to work in.
5) My text says that the sound from a given source reaches the ears by many different paths. Much of the sound we hear is due to reflections or echoes even though we may not be aware of them. The direct sound and it's echoes are several sounds that reach our ears at relatively the same time and we perceive them to be a single sound. This made me wonder how often we hear directly from the source or if that ever happens. My text does not say but I plan on looking into it.
My text also says that we are selective in the frequencies that we hear. This made me think of that high pitched ring tone that some people can hear and others can't. I wonder if sounds still affect us if we don't really hear them. Do they have some sort of subliminal affect? I love the questions that are popping into my head about this topic and I will definitely be finding answers and posting more about sound and hearing.
Terms: sounds, brain waves, physiological, psychological, behavioral, cognitive, reflections, echoes
Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?
1) I generally am attracted to things that are labled/marked as weird just because I have always been interested in things that are perceived as out of the ordinary.
2) I'm not particularly sure what I had expected to see, though I can say for certain that I had expected more of the senses discussed.
3) What was actually presented was the common perceptions that are taken for granted culturally. I liked the video because it takes some very basic concepts and beliefs from cognitive psychology and relates them to how people see the world around them.
4) My favorite portion of the video (though it's very short) is the part about the differences in city set up (blocks vs streets).
5) Though the video didn't turn out to have much to deal with senses specifically, it did significantly relate to cultural perception of various ideas. This relates to cognitive psychology in the regards that people tend to have a very mechanistic view of how the world works and sometimes as a culture we get tunnel vision and conveniently forget that it doesn't work our way everywhere.
Terms: Cognitive Psychology, Perception, Mechanistic View, Cultural Beliefs, Cultural Perception
1. I went through and read some of the posts from the last time we watched the TED Talks and found one about a man painting with a pendulum. I’ve always been interested in art and the different ways people paint in general. I have a great appreciation for art because I know I could never paint or draw to the extent most artists can.
2. I expected to see someone painting to a rhythm of some kind. When I hear the word pendulum I think of a steady beat, probably coming from my music background. Pendulums are normally a steady swinging motion.
3. Immediately I was surprised to see a man with Parkinson’s within three seconds of the video, then I found out he was the artist. He explains in the video how he has done experiments with magnets etc. to try and figure out some unknown questions he had. By using magnets and a remote he has been able to continue painting even with his Parkinson’s tremors. I think the paintings are really cool. He explains one painting as he wanted the two spheres to intersect. He had to paint one and then the other on top of it and see how they reacted to one another. He then starts talking about moire patterns and if the paint is really making them or if it’s the eye and image construction.
4. I was really interested in finding his paintings and in the device itself. The one shown holds six different colors, I wanted to know if he had others with more compartments for multiple colors. I tried to find a site where they listed the prices of his pieces but ran into a dead end. They would only allow subscribers to see past auction prices.
5. I tried to look up moire patterns in the text and didn’t find anything. I went online to look at some more moiré patterns and found that the word moiré comes from a type of textile normally silk that means rippled or watered appearance.
6. Pendulum, moire pattern, and image construction.
Itay Talgam: lead like the great conductors
1. I selected this video because I was interested as to see how conductors help develop music in orchestras, bands, and choirs. Also I wanted to see how it ties in to sensation and perception of music. People don’t really know that conductors play a major role in the construction of music as well as the musicians. This tie into what we have been learning in the reader as far as us constructing everything we see. Whether it is music, objects, or illusions. Itay Tslgam is a world renowned conductor basically known for showing his image of music as a model for all spheres of human creativity. It’s also intriguing to see how 150 people can all watch the conductor, read the music, construct different ideas, construct different interpretations, and tell different stories, but still all remain on one accord with synchronizing all the same.
2. I expected to see Itay Talgam show some of the techniques he uses in conducting a piece of music. I also thought he might go in depth as to what happens in music that makes it so interesting. Something else I expected him to do was talk about the different philosophies of conducting music and explains why he chooses to use a particular one of his chose. Or maybe elaborate on how conducting motivates and assists construction.
3. What he actually did was he talked about the art conducting. Construction of a piece of music is developed by the conductor. In doing that, he showed different clips to display different conducting styles. After each one he talked about the various techniques they used to relay what they wanted in the music. One conductor in particular, showed happiness to display the excitement he wanted in the piece. He did this by slightly dancing. Other clips showed different execution, storytelling, and interpretation. One conductor was very hard in his motions to display loudness. Another conductor barley did any movement at all, there was another one who was dancing and so forth. By showing these examples, he talked about how each of these conducting styles has pros and cons. Some were more laid back in which allowed the musicians to tell their stories and construct how they feel within a piece. One conductor used very little moment which made the first chair players gave cues to lead the ensemble in on entrances. This enabled them to utilize the perception of the music. Other styles were very authoritarian in which wouldn’t allow any other construction besides the conductors. My favorite was the style that showed happiness by dancing which impacted the musicians playing in a positive adventure. He said, “That music is in the players’ heads, by taking in all these styles, it opens up layers in music for other interpretations so you’re able to build a roller coaster.” This made a lot of sense to me because it related to some of the experiences I’ve had with different conductors. The best ones are much laid back because it relaxes the stress of the players; also it makes the piece more fun to play which is the key aspect to music. Itay did some conducting on the audience his self to demonstrate some of the principles shown throughout the clips. I would have to say my favorite part was seeing how each rule that the conductors use to relay a message.
4. I would say that the relation of what Itay was saying had the most interest to me. Even in playing in my jazz group, I saw how my conducting of time and various dynamic levels had an effect on the movement of the music. Using different tools such as brushes, sticks, and mallets were very similar to the conducting styles. Also singing in choir, playing in jazz band, and concert band, I saw how these conducting styles play a massive role in how we as musicians interpret and construct music. There was a professor here named Dr. Brad Barrett who taught choral conducting and UNI singers. He was the BEST at implementing these different styles of conducting, but mainly used the laid back method to be more effective.
5. The text discussed this material in a unique way. Chapter 9 and 14 used some metaphoric concepts in relation to what Itay was saying. Keep I mind that these chapters have to do with hearing and taste. I know your saying how do does taste tie into conducting and music. Taste is not something that goes on your tongue as people would construct. It is actually the way you feel music or it could also be a particular preference of music. This is basically what Itay is talking about. By using a variety of “TASTE” it can make a musical experience to die for. The text talks about 4 basic tastes which are salty, sour, bitter, and sweet. This can also be implemented into to music. Sour is perceived as musical notes that appear to be displaced in a sequence which are sometimes refer to as accidentals. Bitter could be explained by sounds that aren’t pleasant to the ear. An example of this would be dissonance in music which is clusters of notes that are of equal intervals,and aren’t perceived well within the ear. Bitter taste would be that of a conductor who is authoritarian all the time. Another one is sweet which is appearing as beautiful and major chords with consonance added. This can be perceived as happy or relaxed music. Sweetie conducting taste uses less movement and is more laid back. Salty is used as dynamic contrast within a piece of music. Think of it as adding some to your food. This is like adding seasoning to a piece of music to enhance the flavor. Specific hungers theory is a term the text used which is the idea that a deficiency of a given nutrient will produce craving for the nutrient. These ties into conducting because people come to shows to hear good music which is the craving. By utilizing these different theories by incorporating sour, bitter, salty, and sweet in conducting, this provides the nutrients that quench the hunger for people. This makes them enjoy their musical experience.
6. Taste, bitter, salty sweet, sequence, accidental, consonance, dissonance, cluster, interval, chords, flavor, Specific hungers theory,
1) I picked the video Beau Lotto: Optical Illusions show how we see. It caught my eye because of the optical illusion part which I find interesting and at the same time still relates to the course.
2) What I thought he would talk about was is different types of illusions. Which he did but he went into much more detail about how our brain picks up different messages or visuals that we are used to. He showed some sentences that had letters missing in them yet people were still able to read them because this is what we have been trained to read over time.
3) What I saw was him showing us was different types of illusions and naturally he did. But what I found interesting was how the very first thing he did was had a bunch of colors on two different boards. One white backboard and one black. He told the people in the audience that there were 2 colors that matched on each board. Ironically the thing I just talked about was how we construct different shades of gray on different backgrounds. He even goes and talks about the exact same thing out of the book with the two different shades of grain in different colors as backgrounds. I thought what he showed us was interesting and also how he talked more about the different ways our eyes make up different scenarios.
4) I would have never thought that I could read sentences that didn’t have all of the words in it. Which I was going right along with him keeping up with the sentences. It was interesting to see the different types of illusions he showed. He also talked about how a bumble bee sees illusions and that humans are not the only species that see optical illusions. I would have never thought that different species or animals would be able to see optical illusions.
5) I actually got lucky by finding this video because I just got done doing my mind map on the way differentiate shades of gray and its surrounding colors. He talked a lot about the same thing that the book did when trying to construct different shades of a certain color we will think one is darker than the other compared to its background. However he did go into more detail about the fragments of sentences and how humans will construct them naturally because it is what our brain is primed to do.a
Sorry forgot to use my terms.
Optical illusions, shades, fragments, visual, construct.
Exposing the Invisible
http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_veasey_exposing_the_invisible_1.html
1) I chose this video for a couple of reasons. Firstly I was told that it was really interesting by others in the class who had watched it and secondly I thought that it would be really interesting to see how different objects would show up on an x-ray because I have only ever seen x-rays of the bones and muscles of the human body.
2)I expected to see the insides of everyday objects such as cars or maybe a suitcase like in the airport. I also exptected this video to talk about how the human eye is limited in only seeing the exterior of things, and how we construct the x-ray with our eye when we look at it and how it can become a 3-D image.
3)In this video he x-rayed a lot of things including animals clothing motor vehicles flowers and even a plane! He said that the thicker the surface the more radiation it takes to successfully x-ray something and the longer it is exposed to radiate the crisper the picture will appear to the human eye. He said that he used dead people because of the radiation exposure but it was cool to see the people on the bus because you could see all the details of all the things they had with them on the bus.
4)I enjoyed the parts of the video with the plane and bus I thought it was so neat to see such big things like that x-rayed. I am sure that it would take some real commitment to do something like this because of the amount of time it would take just to do something that big.
5) I couldn't really find much in the text about x-rays.
x-ray, radiation, 3-D image
Beau Lotto: Optical Illusions show how we see
1) I picked this video because the title Optical Illusions show how we see really jumped out at me. I am very interested in Optical Illusions and how they work. The picture was him and a bunch of optical illusions, some I recognized from the book and that really caught my attention also. Optical illusions are very interesting, and I wanted to learn more about how they work.
2) I expected to see pretty much what I saw. I expected to see a lot of different optical illusions, and he did show us a lot of optical illusions. What surprised me were the types of optical illusions that he showed. They were very interesting, and they were optical illusions that I hadn’t seen before. It was very interesting to see the illusions that weren’t so “everyday” types, and something that would push our reality.
3) Beau started out with a game. There was two colored panels there a black and white one with colored dots on it. Then he asked us to pick out what two dots were the same color, it turns out the dot gray was the dot that was the same color, the other two colors were extremely different from each other when they were on the same color background. The different background black and white changed the colors dramatically. He says that color is necessary for us to see similarities and differences in surfaces in accordance with light. Varying color, light, and objects means that the same image can have an infinite number of shapes, sizes, and illusions. Some things that are completely different can look the same to use depending on how we view them. He says we see by learning to see. The brain develops mechanisms that will associate the things we see with relationships and meaning. As an example he shows us that we can ready things even when they have missing letters in the word or sentence. Beau says that the simplest thing we can do is see color he puts up a picture of the desert in a mirror view and above both pictures there is either red or green box and a dot in the middle when you stare at the dot for thirty minutes and then look at the mirrored image picture they look completely different, because one has a shade of green and one has a shade of red. Beau says that we use all of the things the brain has learned through seeing things and experiencing things and that is how it creates illusions. He also shows us that we are not the only things to see illusions, bumblebees also see illusions. He says when they see blue flowers they get more of a reward or more out of it than if they go to another color of “flower”, but the things that look green to us the bees can see are blue underneath the light. We see by continually redefining reality. He demonstrated that we can also see by using sound, ex- finding a plate on the ground by using sounds, which can help the visually impaired.
4) The thing that I found most interesting was using colors to create sound. They had kids color on a piece of paper and then turned it into a symphony. It was amazing that a piece of paper that just had colors on it could turn into music.
5) The reader and text have mentioned a lot about optical illusions. There are many different types of optical illusions, but the ones that I think most correlated with this ted talks is the neon worm. The neon worm is a worm that we construct with our eyes, and in areas that are white we actually see neon blue and construct the worm completely in our brain. This reminded me a lot about what he was showing us in this ted talks. Also, the color shuffle. Beau shoed us a version of the color shuffle only he used dots where as the book uses blocks to represent the colors. This ted talks also reminded me of rules 21 and 21. Rule 21 states that we interpret gradual changes of hue, saturation, and brightness in an image as changes in illumination. Rule 22 states that we interpret abrupt changes in hue, saturation, and brightness in an image as changes in surfaces. The book and this ted talk relate together in many ways.
Terms: rule 21, rule 22, optical illusions, color shuffle, neon worm.
1) I picked this video because the title was intriguing, and I thought it would be interesting to learn how different cultures perceive things differently than how my own culture perceives things.
2) I expected to see more concepts and things that were really weird or unthinkable. I also expected for the video to be longer than it actually was.
3) What I actually saw was a fairly short video on how other cultures do things differently than how we may do them. It discussed how something that may seem normal and make the most sense in my culture may make absolutely no sense to someone living in another culture and vice versa. I did enjoy the video, but I would have liked to hear more on the topic, especially more examples on how cultures perceive things differently.
4) The most intersting part to me was the information on how the U.S. labels streets for addresses and the Japanese labels blocks and houses. I found this interessting because it's something that you never really think about unless you have the oppurtunity to live in a culture that does do things differently than your own. I think that our system makes much more sense and is easier to follow, but they probably think the same thing about their own system. If I went to Japan and had to find a building by following directions to an address, I would most definately get lost, so it would be important for me to try and understand how their way of perceiving something makes sense to them.
5) The text does not necessarily discuss much that was in the video, but it does discuss some on perception and how the way that we view things may be different than how others view things. The text discusses how perception is the gateway to understanding our world. It talks about how our perception of things allows us to survive in our world. Going back to the difference between the US and Japan on naming streets vs. blocks, perception plays an important role. It's important for people in the US to know that streets are named and that that's how you find places that you need to be. The same goes for those in Japan. It's important to one's survival because everyday people are traveling. We live in a world that is very mobile, whether it's traveling to a job, an important meeting, or to a grocery store, it's essential to know how to get to these places successfully. Although perception is usually taken for granted, we need to realize that the little things, like the ones that were described in the video, may need to be perceived differently, according to the culture that you are in at the time.
1.) I chose Beau Lotto's Optical Illusions because it is on a topic that is very interesting to me and although we have discussed many illusions in lecture and have read about them in the reader, I still feel that some illusions are kind of a mystery to me on how they work and want to learn more. Also, a lot of other people have also watched it and enjoyed it so I figured that I would too.
2.) Just going off the title, I expect to see several optical illusions, and how and why your brain sees them like it does, similar to how the reader shows examples like the neon square, or the glowing triangle, and then gives an explanation at why we perceive these illusions the way that we do.
3.) He did show a few different illusions, mainly dealing in the area of color. He started out by showing a sort of color shuffle, which we talked about in the reader and in our class lecture, and asked the audience to pick out which colors were the same. He showed one that I thought was very interesting and kind of similar to the illusion that was shown in the "How Your Brain Lies to You" with the images with Kerry and Bush. When you stare at something for an extended period of time and than an image that didn't look like something else before it changes to look like the opposite image.. if that explanation made sense. He also showed how different filters could make things look different colors when they were actually the same, and how different backgrounds could make things that actually were the same color look different.
4.) I thought all the illusions he showed were pretty interesting, but one that I didn't mention before was he spun an object shaped like a diamond and while you were looking at it, it would appear to be switching the direction that it was moving, usually whenever you blinked. This is very similar to the Necker Cube and how sometimes you can perceive the image as having one side on the back of the cube, or you can look at it as having that same side on the front of the cube.
5.) One of the major points that Lotto attributes to our perception of knowledge is how we construct them. I feel that that is sort of the overall theme of the reader, that everything we see, hear, touch, smell, taste is constructed by our brains. Lotto also stresses this point and instructs listeners that if they remember anything from his talk, to make it this idea. Lotto says that all sensory information on it's own is meaningless because it could be very ambiguous and depends on the situation or context that it is in and what we do with this information is the thing that matters. We learn to do things, partly because of our past experiences and because it is advantageous for us to do so. He says that the brain hasn't evolved to see the world as it actually is, the brain has evolved to see the world in the way that is useful to us, and we constantly change how we define this.
Terms: Optical Illusion, Neon Worm, Glowing Triangle, sensory information, perceptual construction, Necker Cube
My Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/pawan_sinha_on_how_brains_learn_to_see.html
1) I chose this video because it struck me immediately as relevant to one of the things that most interested me as we began learning about sensation and perception in our reader – specifically, the case of the blind boy who was operated on by Cheselden as told at the beginning of chapter two of our reader. The video description summary explains that it is a presentation of current research on the restoration of sight, and how the brain learns to interpret visual data.
2) I expected to see more information about the way doctors and researchers are giving vision back to blind children, and helping them learn to see in meaningful ways. I wanted more information about how effective this procedure is, and hoped to learn as much as I could about this endeavor.
3) I really enjoyed everything about this video! I learned about Project Prekash – Sanskrit word for light. This project is a humanitarian mission as well as a mission to test the limits of visual plasticity. The researcher believes that “by bringing light into the lives of children, we also have a chance of shedding light on the deepest mysteries of neuroscience… through outreach, treatment, and study” (Piwan Sinha).
The study found that children could develop significant visual functionality through scaffolding visual skills: The research of how the children developed visual capability showed the researcher more about how our brain does image parsing – integrating regions of our vision into a comprehensible image. Initially the images shown to the newly sighted appear as image patchworks (more regions are seen than are there – such as a shadow becoming its own object), but within a few months, the sighted person begins to distinguish individual and overlapping object more similarly to the normally sighted person. Through this process, the researchers discovered that the answer to how these study subjects gained the ability to distinguish objects is through motion! Thus the visual system needs dynamic information to visually parse the world.
The researchers are able to take this information to help engineers at M.I.T. develop A.I. that may be capable of autonomously discovering visual input through this new understanding of dynamic movement in integrating visual information. Pawan used his own infant son to further understand how the visual inputs should be given to the developing A.I. system (more closely mimicking an infant’s visual acuity).
Additionally, the research has huge clinical implications for understanding autism. Taking the information form the findings, the study found that autistic children lacked the efficiency of use of dynamic information as compared to non-autistic children. The hope is that this will lead to further understanding of the autistic syndrome leading to better treatments.
4) The most interesting things were the humanitarian efforts and the clinical applications and possibilities for autistic children. The least interesting aspects were in regard to artificial intelligence, but I still found this interesting, and can see how it is illuminating for the field of science in many regards.
5) The case presented in our reader back in chapter 2 of our reader is similar, and, as stated above, what interested me in this video in the first place. The Goldstein is lacking on the topic of visual restoration, but there is a great deal on motion perception as discussed in my compare and contrast for the motion chapter which I hope is okay to re-quote here for those who may be ever so slightly interested (In any case, I HIGHLY recommend the video I watched by Dr. Sinha!):
The Goldstein textbook discusses much of the same information as the reader, and presents it in new ways. For example, the same woman, L.M., who was impaired by her stroke, is referred to as having “motion agnosia”, a crippling disability. Goldstein also discusses the history of views on motion perception, such as those developed by Hemholtz which tells us that even our own movement allows us to distinguish and differentiate objects as we move forward in our environment. This phenomenon described by Hemholtz known in the textbook as the “optic array”.Goldstein’s text offers a number of biological explanations and theories for explaining motion perception. These include the musculature of our eyes which hold our eyes in steady fixation. As explained in the “collorary discharge theory which relies on signals reaching neurons to perceive movement. The textbook offers the experiment of this theory – by pushing on your eye to see how it effects your movement perception of the world around. I tried this, and sure enough, the world “jiggled” slightly as I pushed gently on the muscles that held my eye in place.
6) Vocabulary: Visual plasticity, image parsing, visual inputs, Prekash, dynamic information, motion agnosia, optic array, collorary discharge theory.
1. Teds Talk i choose the video by Bean Lotto.
Optical illusions show how we see. because it relates to the color and perceptions and the principles of color and how it relates to chapter 5 and chapter 6 movement.
2.3.4.) If the functionality of color can express as and illusion which we can & cannot recognize at times. If ecology is the study of ecosystems we as humans take for granted the things that give us life, as a human we are responsible for the existence of life in what we preserve, perceive, and the sensations that we get from it as a whole. what we see in the environment is a thing of beauty that most of us take for granted such as the color of the fall leaves, the smells in the spring as flowers bloom, the way the reflection of light on different objects reflections. Lotto uses bee to study the differences of color presentations as they use a false bee hive to see if the bee will conduct its everyday function as it collect nectar to create honey in a lab. he also showed who we see things as he held a triangle shape metal held by a string as he spun it he said to look from or left eye and close it and switch it to the right eye and you will see the change in directions in which the mind show that the triangle is moving in a different direction showing how the mind perceives direction. To me it was fascinating in how it works and the mind see what it wants to see in manipulating the information at hand.
chapter 7 the perception of color, how color can distinguish a better perception that can distinguishes from another, it does not only help in detecting and object it helps in identifying the object. the way the retina receive the object and sends the message to the optic nerve, and how the left and right eyes see things differently compared to what we think we see. Perceptually organized influence our perception of lightness; and the color in which we see are created by our perceptual system by way of what we know that can be either a shape, texture, object and or a structure in which we pay attention to. Whereas in the concepts of selective attention focus on a specific object by scanning objects to find detail or the in-attentional blindness in focusing one one particular thing and noticing what we are looking at.
I chose the video of Julian Treasure: The four ways sound affects us.
1.) The reason I chose this video was because being able to hear is something that I take for granted sometimes. What made me realize this is that my boyfriend's cousin who is only eight years old, got into a car accident and he hit the seat infront of him so hard that it damaged his eardrum and he is very hard of hearing now. Also, my roommate is a communication disorders major and she tested my hearing the other night and it was way above average. I was very suprised because I grew up on a hog farm and I was out there in the barn from 2 weeks old to 20 years old and the pigs high pitched squeeling can definitely do some damage, but I guess that will come in the later years.
2.) I was expecting to see many different examples of how sounds affect us in very interesting ways. The first Ted Talks video I saw was very informative and interesting so I had very high hopes for this video.
3.) The video was very fast paced because it was only 6 minutes long but in those six minutes a lot of information was given. Julian states that the four ways sound affects us is: Physiological and the sounds incorporated with this was street sounds such as cars and people talking. The next is psychological. The sound of birds chirping were associated with the psychological affect. The next way that sounds affect us is cognitively, and the example is two people talking at once and deciding who to listen to. The last way is behaviorally, and Julian states that we need to move away from unpleasant sounds and move towards pleasant sounds. I felt that he gave some great tips and knowledge that I had never even thought of before.
4.) The thing that intersted me the most was how much noise can affect productivity. Working in open offices with all the background noise can have a negative affect on productivity. Julian mentioned to wear headphones that produce a pleasant sound so that productivity can be raised.
5.) My text states that our ability to hear events that we can't see serves an important signaling function for humans. Examples would be smoke alarms, the crying of an upset baby, or a horn from a vehicle. The text also states that we hear within a specific range of frequencies called the range of hearing. This means that our ears are sensitive to different frequencies. I wonder if the range of frequencies differs with gender? That would be an interesting topic to research!
6.)Terms: Frequencies, sound, hearing, psychological, cognitive, behavioral.
I picked this one because I found it the most amazing of all the Ted talks I watched. It’s very short, only about 6 minutes so I was originally not going to use it. But he works in a TON of material and gives great examples.
2) I didn’t expect much more than what the name suggests given the length of the clip. I assumed he’d talk about various emotional reactions people have to music and that it can affect you behaviorally. The opening comment is “Over the next 5 minutes my intention is to transform your relationship with sound.” So this indicated that he would probably discuss one of the main points of this course which is that all sensations are constructed rather than passively experienced.
3) Naturally he discussed the four different types of ways that sounds impact our bodies. Physiologically, psychologically, cognitively, and behaviorally. He plays an incredibly loud bell which jump starts our bodies into producing cortisol or other ‘fight-or-flight’ chemicals. He mentions that pleasant sounds can also have an impact. Music or sounds which fit the 12 cycles per minute time signature (roughly the rate of a babies breating) also resonates peace, harmony, restfulness, and other soothing reactions within us.
Psychologically he demonstrates that sad and happy music has an incredibly powerful psychological effect on our emotions. An interesting addition however, since this is obvious, is that natural sounds also have this effect. We have a psychological reaction to birds singing, probably an evolutionary development, which signifies that everything is ok, when birds are not singing we need to worry and be fearful. Would be interesting to research this (though I’m sure it’s already been done) to find out exactly when the ‘lack’ of bird noises would induce the worried feelings and chemicals. Naturally the context would play an incredibly large role, since we are not forever in worry in the absence of birdsong.
Next he showed that we are able to attend to only a small amount of the sound we hear. By playing a recording of his own voice over top of his speech he demonstrated that you have to ‘pick a voice’ to listen to and attend to only that one. Similarly background noise becomes more and more bothersome the louder it gets relative to whatever ‘voice’ we are attending to. He even mentions that businesses that have open offices and thus more noise can have decreased productivity as high as 66%.
Last he mentions how we are effected behaviorally by sounds. I was happy that he mentions that with all the other ways sound effects us it would be remarkable if our behavior did NOT change to follow suit. Obviously louder music may cause people to drive faster or more recklessly, peaceful music may have the opposite effect; though your musical tastes probably influence this as well. He did mention in this section how the context plays a role, in that a study showed that ‘inappropriate retail soundscapes’ (wrong contextual sounds) can cause an almost 30% drop in sales.
He finished by providing a model for how they can analyze, predict, and control these variables very similar to the ABC’s of behavior modification. You can determine the drivers of sound (texture, pitch, time, dynamics, etc.), analyze the soundscape, which he calls ‘filters’ (function, environment, people, brand values), which allows you to then predict the four effects previously discussed. Similarly you can work backwards and determine what effects you would like to induce and create an environment which will induce them.
4) The most interesting part for me was towards the end when he put up an equation defending the position that music was the most powerful sound.
Recognition + Association = Power (Though I’m more than a little upset that this means the initials are RAP…which is the least powerful form of music…)
He gives two examples of this. He plays a 1 second sound clip from two songs and you instantly recognize them. He does the same thing for numerous brand’s and by playing a few notes we instantly imagine the product or the company. This shows how practical and applicable this knowledge is.
5) The text first distinguishes between two ways that you can talk about sound. As a physical event or perceptual experience. Both the book and TED talk discuss the perceptual experience of sound in depth. The text first spends a lot of time discussing how we in fact hear sounds. Briefly, sound is produced by vibrations which cause a change in air pressure (or water pressure, or pressure to another type of elastic medium). The amplitude is the distance between the top and bottom of a wave and determines the loudness of the sound; the frequency measures the distance from the top (or bottom) of one wave to the top (or bottom) of the next closest wave and determines the pitch. I finally found out what timbre means (since I heard it a lot during High School band), but won’t take time to elaborate on it here since it isn’t as important.
After describing the basics of what sound is the text describes how sound enters through the ear and finally causes reactions in our brain. It is here that the talk’s ‘four effects’ are better understood. The most important part of the ear for this discussion is the cochlea, the liquid filled portion of the inner ear where sound finally interacts with neurons. Here vibrations bend the celia which allows the sound wave to be transduced into electrical impulses which carry on into the brain. This finally explained to me how sound ‘enters’ the brain for interpretation. Everything up to this point seemed like ‘passive reception’ as opposed to construction.
The way the information progresses they introduce Bekesy’s place theory which states that ‘the frequency of a sound is indicated by the place along the organ of Corti at which nerve firing is highest.’ Adding to this the discovery of Fourier Analysis, which is a mathematical way of taking a complex sound and deconstructing it into the individual harmonics which make up the complex sound we can see that our brain has an incredibly sophisticated way of performing a Fourier Analysis of its own in order to organize what would otherwise be ambiguous changes in air pressure. Here deconstruction of sound helps us see how our brain constructs sound. Similarly the rate at which auditory nerves fire corresponds to frequency of sound waves.
6) Vibrations, amplitude, frequency, pitch, cochlea, celia, transduced, Bekesy’s Place Theory, Fourier Analysis, harmonics.