During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading from John Medina’s Brain Rules, Vision chapter. Before our next class, type up your summary and post it as a comment to this blog entry.
ENG1101 D371 English Composition I, SPR2015
Official site for ENG1101 D371
According to John Medina’s chapter “Vision”, he implied that we learn and remember best through pictures. He stated that we even learn better that way than through written or spoken words. Based on the chapter, vision is our most dominant sense. Vision takes up more than fifty percents of our brain. We do not see what is really in front of us, we only see what our brain tells us to see. That is why people have different opinions, thinking capacities and varying perspectives about a subject.
According to John Medina’s “Brain Rules: Visual”, visual processing dominates the perception of our world. We see through our brains rather than our eyes. As Medina mentioned, we have three “movie tracks” that our nerve cells interpret as photons which allows us to see what surrounds us. Those are Eye Meets Wireframe, Eye Meets Motion, and Eye Meets Shadows. There are steps in how we process the visuals in our brain which leads to the visual cortex registering the visual information as color, motion, or edges. Medina also mentioned that people learn best by pictures rather than words because of color and motion. Pictures and videos or animation takes less effort to comprehend.
While reading John Medina’s “Brain Rules” Vision chapter, Medina discusses how we don’t see with our eyes, we see with our brains. Say for instance we hear yelling and screaming, most of us would quickly think that there’s a fight going on when really it could be that the people could be watching their favorite sport or have their tv turned up really loud where there are people yelling in a show or movie. Most of us could simply see something or someone that brings up a memory of what we have experienced from just seeing what we have saw. We are very good at remembering images. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. But if there was a picture with that information, you would remember 65% of it. Our brain sees words as small pictures, and we have to identify them as letters to be able to read them which takes a little time to process but it seems like it happens so fast. Our vision is important to us because it its how we’ve always grasps major threats, food supplies, and generative possibility.
In John Medina’s “Brain Rules” on the chapter, “Vision”, the author explains that our visions are the most complex, and non-accurate perception that us normally don’t think about. It contradicts my idea of how vision works, which is why I found this chapter really interesting. Our vision is based on how our brains try its best to interpret the things we actually see. Once our eyes detect light, it goes through multiple stages where the light is collided to generate electrical signals, after which, it is then traveled to the brain for further analysis. It does not stop there, the information that is collected will go through, which the author calls it “collection of movies”. This is where all the specific details such as, shadows, edges, and outlines will be analyzed in the specific area of the brain. During the process, the brain tries its best to register all the information gathered, and that’s when we actually see how our eyes perceived through the lens of how our brain interpreted these information. Vision is necessary in our memory as well. We recognize better with pictures instead of words, because our brain stores information through lots of tiny pictures. I agree with this because, I found out that it is easy to study with pictures rather than showing words. For example, in my circuit class, it is impossible to study without drawing pictures. It helps me to visualize the problem, and understand the concept much quicker than the ones that only use words.
In the chapter, “Vision” Medina talks about how vision is a very important factor into how we solve “problems”. These problems can vary to perceiving things to, differentiating two different colors in two different pictures. Medina emphasizes the importance of Vision by giving some examples of how powerful it is. Vision perception is so powerful that it can make an amputee think his missing limb miraculously returned. This vision perception can also influence a person’s senses like the feeling of the amputee’s arm. How he can suddenly move it around and manipulate it all of a sudden. Our minds can learn better through pictures, than written or spoken words. If you can associate everything with a particular event that happened to you, you will never forget about it, due to the power of vision. In the “Memory” chapter medina talks about the power of emotions, when an event is stored and considered “Long term Memory”. Images show many emotions, with the variety of colors, and different shades of the color, thus making images and the human being’s vision becomes our vital sense to interact and remember past memories.
Vision is not only what we see but it’s also what we see in our dreams or trance. We learn the most through visual presentation and we tend to remember it much better and for longer than just reading texts. People would only remember 10% of the information if they are just reading texts but if we put pictures in it they would remember about 75% of it. Also what we see we believe in that the most even if our other senses are telling us something else. That’s why it was said in the book that vision trumps all other senses. Also in the book they gave the example of the 54 wine tasting professionals. Red tasteless dye was added to the white wine and despite the smell of it was judged as red wine. Even the most professional wine tasters were betrayed by the color. Whenever we see something our brain plays a part into it, it’s not only like taking a picture with a camera. Different parts inside the brain play their part one by one to put all the little pieces of the picture together for us to see, and the brain sends us the best guess about what it thinks it is, or what it wants us to think it is. That’s where the memory comes in, the guess that the brain makes is based on our past experiences as well and we usually recall if we see something familiar. For example if we see someone we met a long time ago and saw them all of a sudden somewhere we would try to recall and remember where we saw them. So vision is a really major part in our life since not only does it help us see the world and learn but with it we learn more faster and we tend to remember things for longer.
Vision one the most important function in humans. In the chapter Vision Medina talks about how we think that we see through our eyes when in reality we see through our brain. when eye gets in contact with the light it reflects the light to the object and sends the signal to our brain start the analysis on the received information. This is where all the specific details such as, shadows, edges, and outlines will be analyzed in the specific area of the brain as Medina mentioned. During this process, the brain goes to its extreme to register all the information gathered, and that is when we actually see how our eyes received the information through the lens and how our brain interpreted these information. Visuals stay for long time in our brain than just listing or reading, Like if you read a book you may have some difficulties to recall the information after some time but if you watch a visual documentary or movie about it you will recall those visuals easily for more longer time period and whenever you hear about that topic the clips from the movie will come into your mind and you can tell others like you just studied about it. And I do agree with this information provided because it helped me to memories al my history courses and even mathematics.
Sight is a sense allowing one to see the world around them. As JM states “We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brains.” He information from the eyes is sent to the brain to be interpreted; Once interpreted this information is sent to the decision making parts of the brain to influence actions. The processing of sight information is complex, requiring many small but specific areas to defragment this information. The brain could be described as a puzzle solver. Using clues from our five senses, it wants to fill in the blanks. Let’s take watching a flying object for example, you are watching the object and also listening, the resulting combination of information tells you what the flying object is. The brain is integral to human survival. A common misconception about the brain is that the brain is a sentry watching over life as you live it. This is not true to my knowledge. I theorize the brain is using your past to predict the future. Back to the eyes and sight, previous experiences can and will influence what we see. This information could be processed differently which can cause a corruption of thought. Let’s say there is a person who cannot see at the moment but tomorrow gets his sight restored after a long period of time. This person would likely not be able to harness all the newly rekindled powers as his/her mind has adapted to work without sight. This makes me think of a real life story about a man named Ben Underwood, who had adapted to see without eyes, instead using clicks of the tongue which were heard bouncing back to navigate.
Vision is the brains most relied on sense. It allows the brain to access the data around us, bits and pieces of information each being read in and stored in a different area of the brain that allows us to see. Vision takes up more than 50% of our brains, which is why it is said that we “see with our brain.” This is because all our eyes simply do is reflect light, it is the brain that processes the color, shadows, texture, shape, and things of the sort. It is because of this that humans learn better when there are visuals present. A picture or even a color can easily spark a memory that goes along with that certain visual. People who lose their sight often have their brain redirect the focus of that sense to something else, like being able to hear extremely well when you are blind.
In John Medina’s, “Brain Rules,” Medina focuses on vision and how we see with our brains, not our eyes, which bring us to “Brain Rule #9, vision trumps all other senses.” Early in the chapter, Medina tells us of a study in which 54 wine experts were fooled into thinking white wine with red dye was red wine. Although both red and white wines have distinct smell and taste, it was their eyes that triumphed over their other senses. Due to vision dominating our other senses, the way we see the world is not 100% accurate because we only process what the brain wants us to. Medina explains the biology of the eye and steps we go through to see. It all begins with the retina. Light passes through the eye, striking the neurons in the back of the eye. Once struck, electric signals are create and sent to the brain for further review. This stream of information is gathered into what Medina called “movies.” The visual cortex then processes these streams, which then brings together all the information we need to see. Medina also states we learn better with pictures rather than text. Pictures capture us because it takes less mental effort to grasp.