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Saba Ashraf's picture

Senses/filling in information

             In class I found it very interesting to learn about how certain senses are affected by different senses such as hearing being affected by sight. I always found it easier to understand what a person was saying as I saw them talk, but I never realized how much sight affected hearing until we saw the McGurk effect in class.  It was also interesting that while hearing the McGurk video without sound, the class unanimously had heard “ba ba.” However, when we saw and heard the video at the same time, some of the class had heard “ga ga” and others had heard “dha dha.” Also, the idea of different senses affecting each other does make sense if you take a look at other examples such as the smell of a food affecting the taste of it. I wonder if other senses have a strong relationship with one another besides sight and sound and smell and taste.

 I had also found the experiment with the cross and dot very fascinating because I wasn’t aware of the brain’s ability to fill in what’s missing. It was surprising to me that the brain knew exactly what to fill in and not fill in.   For instance, when we were shown the dot with the two lines through it, I would have guessed that you would see two separate lines, which happened to be false. The brain had the ability to remove the dot and create a small line connecting the lines that were originally there.  I wonder if all individual’s brains are filling in the same information for what’s missing or if there is difference in the way other’s brains are filling in certain information.   

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