Fun Facts! II

Our Brain Can Make Us Blind to the Unexpected

There are times that you have an argument with your friends that you saw a particular object like a big foot in your backyard which they did not notice. But you persistently convince them that what you saw is real and not an illusion. But sometimes, our smart brains can trick us. Allowing us to see something that is not actually there. That is also the reason why texting while driving is a dangerous practice. You are expecting that there is no object in front of you but then you hit another car or a deer unexpectedly. This psychological phenomenon is called inattentional blindness. Our efficient brain is selective in taking information thus we miss things that are right in front of our eyes.

There are three stages of how our brain interprets the surroundings. Stage one is "selection", where it picks what we fully attention to, thereby missing the conspicuous or noticeable events. Stage two is "combination". At the back of our brain where our visual cortex is located, it distinguishes the shape, color, distance, and movement of the object seen. It gets the important detail of the object and combines it with expectations. Lastly, the defined image will go through the evaluation stage. Our prefrontal cortex interprets the processed information and makes a decision about what to do next. So, even though our brain contains billions of neurons, it has finite computing power. It is selective in getting information from the environment. Specifically, the thing that is focused on, therefore, picking up less information about everything else. We fail in perceiving the major events happening in front of us.

In fact, in 1999, a popular experiment conducted by Harvard University showed how not good our brain in sensing our environment accurately. Participants were shown a film of two basketball teams, one team were wearing black shirts while the others were white. They were instructed to count the ball passed between one team, ignoring the other team. Then a woman carrying an open umbrella walked through the scene for several seconds and 79% of the participants did not notice that girl.

So sometimes, we have to doubt ourselves even ifpeople tell us that we should believe in ourselves. We have to doubt but notexcessively if our brain created an illusion, which we expected to see. Andunderstand that your peers did not see what you saw because they are notexpecting your normal backyard has a monster living. Perhaps, you overlookthat particular object and it might be your hairy naked dad after all.