Magic In The Brain, Heartbeat, And The People Could Fly

Al Seckal, who is a cognitive neuroscientist, did a Ted talk, “Visual illusions that show how we (mis)think,” in 2004 to investigate the visual illusions that are able to fool our brains. In this TED talk, he explains how eye tricks uncover how the brain is able to process visual information. He further shows that we actually kind of like to be tricked, and how illusions bring us happiness, and he tries to give the viewers happiness through the illusions as well, “You look at those sort of illusions in my book and it's not as what you'd expect. And there's something joyful about it. And it's the same thing with jokes and all these sorts of things. So, what I'm going to try and do in my lecture is go a little bit further and see if I can violate your expectations in a pleasing way. I mean, sometimes expectations that are violated are not pleasant, but I'm going to try to do it in a pleasant way, in a very primal way, so I can make the audience here happy” (Seckel, 2004). Moreover, he shows ways in which we can violate our expectations and he shows different perceptual tricks, “And we can violate your expectations in a whole variety of ways about representation, about shape, about colour and so forth and it's very primal” (Seckel, 2004).

I believe in Ghost and I believe the walls around me changes colors and I believe these things because I see it with my own two eyes.

Although it may seem feasible for an individual to generate an inaccurate memory of an experienced event based on misinformation, it may not seem feasible for an individual to create a complete false memory of an event they have never experienced; however, research has shown that imagination can be a powerful source of false memories. In the imagination inflation effect, performed actions versus imagined actions are confused in hindsight. Humans also have the ability to imagine other people’s behavior. (Decety & Grezes, 2006).

Some the earliest optical illusions date back all the way to 450 B.C. and were made by Epicharmus and Protagoras. From tricking us that a duck is actually a rabbit to making us believe that a still image is moving, optical illusions give us the sense that we are seeing something that is actually not happening. In reality, an image might be some black and white circles but, to our eyes the might look like it's moving. I believe that you can’t trust your eyes in these situations because your eyes are sending the wrong information to your brain. Optical Illusions are an interesting way in how our eyes are tricked into seeing and believing the wrong

Illusions are just perspectives, that are different from reality. Something may seem different from what it is. This often relates to the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The book involves many illusions to their characters and themes, when the reality is far different from what Scout and Jem believed. To Kill a Mockingbird, is about the lives of the daughter and son, Scout and Jem, of a well respected local lawyer, Atticus Finch.

The book The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Chabris and Simons truly makes a strong case for how six different types of illusions (or beliefs) truly disserve the human population. The six common illusions that the book discusses are the illusion of memory, the illusion of confidence, the illusion of knowledge, the illusion of cause and the illusion of potential. Chabris and Simon argue that one can see these illusions at work in a range of human interactions and current events. Sometimes these illusions demonstrate the fallibility of the human mind; sometimes they just demonstrate the need of human beings to impose meaning or order upon things or events which lack both.

Perception is not reality. Technology that once fooled our eyes are evolving into complex machines and illusions that makes it ever harder to distinguish the real from fake. From a magician’s visual trickeries to eventually complete simulation, our perceptions, starting from our eyes, are becoming impossible to put our faith in.

False memories have been the subject of many studies since Deese (1959) investigated their effects.

Memory does not work like a video camera, smoothly recording every detail. Instead, memory is more of a constructive process. We remember the details that we find most important and relevant. Due to the reconstructive nature of memory, the assimilation of old and new information has the ability to cause vulnerable memories to become distorted. This is also known as the misinformation effect (Loftus, 1997). It is not uncommon for individuals to fill in memory gaps with what they assume they must have experienced. We not only distort memories for events that we have observed, but, we may also have false memories for events that never occurred at all. False memories are “often created by combing actual memories with suggestions received from

“Seeing is believing” means you don’t believe what someone is saying until you see it yourself with physical proof. In “The People Could Fly” by Virginia Hamilton, the Overseer could not expect the people who could fly to escape the plantation by flying and in “Sorry, Wrong Number” by Lucille Fletcher, Officer Duffy and the operators had to see it to believe the murder plan that Mrs. Stevenson reported. Therefore, I think that seeing is believing is true.

We can make ourselves believe anything the mind is very powerful. At the same time it is very easy to manipulate the mind. For the last century American Psychology Association started to put a focus towards repressed memory recovery, and a lot of attention on memories from adults who had made allegations about memory that they did not remember before about sexual abuse. Most of these accusations are made from patients who have experienced psychotherapy. Which is the cause of many debates that deal with being able to recovery such memories. Psychotherapy allows an individual to go into a different frame of mind to help express a situation that they may not be able in a conscious frame of mind. The problem with this is that someone can create

Illusions are one of those things that will allow the human brain to play tricks on them and giving them the ability to see things that aren’t really there. Illusions can be detriment’s. The reason for this is that you can believe that something is real but little do you know, the whole thing is imaginary or just a simple trick on your mind. For instance, say that you are craving some chocolate chip cookies. You want the cookies so bad to the point that you imagine that the cookies are in front of your face even though they are not really there. Things like that can cause you to crave the cookies more and more as long as you are sitting there and thinking about them. Examples like that show you exactly why illusions are detriment’s instead of being values.

In the story “Another Place, Another Time,” author Cory Doctorow hints at this message, specifically when a boy named Gilbert and his friends are in a handcar, and they see infinitely many hand cars, all from alternate realities surrounding them. An interesting example is on line 391, where “Seeing is believing” is symbolized with,” To either side of the car, stretching into infinity, were more tracks, running across the endless harbor…(line 410) And out there, somewhere, there was time like space and space like time.” In my opinion, Gilbert and his friends saw the hand cars, and they believed they were all from other realities. Their belief may or may not have been accurate, but what was before their eyes was enough to convince them. Without a doubt, “Another Place, Another Time” nicely incorporates “Seeing is believing” into its plot, and supports the fact that our current situation and mindset help us believe what we

No. I believe that perception is not reality. When you believe in something, your perception takes precedence over the reality of it all. I see shadows sometime out the corner of my eyes, for the longest time, I thought I was seeing ghost. When I finally asked the ophthalmologists, they said it is called floaters. It was to the point that I would ask people did you see that. My perception knew I was seeing something, my reality did not want me to believe it was ghost, but since it was a shadow, I keep doubting

Optical illusions are believed to be possible because our brains are good at recognizing patterns and familiar objects; therefore our brains make an image from different pieces, causing us into seeing things that aren’t there.