RE – CREATING THE REAL WORLD

“To what extent do we truly experience reality?”

By: Bruce Hood

Published: Scientific American Mind; the September – October 2012 issue;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=re-creating-the-real-world 

Level of Difficulty: ***

BEFORE YOU READ

It is suggested you watch the film The Matrix either at home before tackling the text or better still, as a class, and discuss it. You will be amazed when you discover the significance.

QUESTIONS

1.       What is the implied similarity between what takes place in The Matrix and the workings of our minds? You will need to tweak the text!

2.       What does the phrase “These findings” in paragraph 3 refer to and what conclusion can we draw from this?

3.       What conclusion can we draw from the views of Plato and Descartes expressed in the text?

4.       What conclusion as to the workings of the mind was reached as a result of the studies by Hermann Helmholttz and Richard Gregory?

5.       Read the story of the Ames room and look at the picture. What is the reason for the brain’s misinterpretation?

6.       Why does the moon seem larger on the horizon than it does in the sky? There are two possible answers; find them both.

7.       What is the ultimate aim of the male bower bird’s specific arrangement of stones and shells?

8.       The habituation of the visual cells that perceived motion in the original direction and the continued activity of the cells processing motion in the opposite direction combine to form what is known as …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

9.       What does “this initial discovery in paragraph fourteen refer to?

10.   The brain reacts to both …………………………………. and ……………………………………. in the same way according to Villayannur S. Ramachandran. You will need to teak the text!

11.   What was the surprising result of Thor Endedstad’s study?

12.   Which sentence in the concluding paragraph best summarizes the overall conclusion to the text?

RE – CREATING THE REAL WORLD KEY AND TEACHER’S NOTES

This is one of those science texts that is guaranteed to appeal to just about anyone in terms of content. I rate it as top notch. Another advantage is that the questions it lends itself to  are relatively straight forward – I did try believe you me but I couldn’t get up to my usual tricks. My feeling is that it will fly but take the laptop to class to show them pictures of the experiments; it is much more affective that way. You will have a lot of fun.

1. In both cases human minds run on virtual reality.
2. There is neural activity in the brain underlying – or corresponding to – several types of illusory perceptions; we are perpetually recreating the world around us using the matrix inside our head.
3. For centuries, philosophers and scientists have floated the idea that the mind creates its own version of its surroundings.
4. The world does not passively impose itself on our mind; it has to be actively interpreted.
5. The room is a trapezoid.
6. On the horizon, the eyes compare its size with known landmarks, whereas the sky contains no such visual landmarks. The brain calibrates its estimates of the size of objects using other features of the environment.
7. To capture the female’s attention long enough for the male to enter the bower and mate.
8. Motion after-effect.
9. The activity of endstopped cells causes the brain to interpret the illusory boundaries as real.
10. Real motion, illusory motion.
11. The subjective interpretation of brightness – not actual luminance – governs the pupils’ constriction.
12. As far as the brain is concerned, if an event is an illusion, it might as well be real.