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Browse All TopicsWhat is happening in a person's brain when he/she recognises something? Is there some kind of 'comparison' going on, or is there another way of explaining it? And what happens when we get the 'feeling' (which often seems accurate) that something we are percieving now is something that we have percieved before?
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One of the best ways to get you started is to give you an example..... such as the 'fusiform face area' of the human brain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
The human brain is 'hardwired' to recognize human faces-----in a special area of the brain there is a concentrated amount of activity when faces are presented to the visual system.
Dr. Richard Gregory provides a stunning example on .mpg that is truly amazing called the 'Hollow Face Illusion'----and it's really not an illusion----it's your brain actually processing information in a specific area that creates the effect. You can download Dr. Gregory's example here:
http://www.grand-illusions
If you're truly interested in this question, I highly recommed two books.
Both are fairly easy reading (for the most part).
(1) "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins
(founder of Palm Computing, HandSpring, and Redwood Neuroscience Institute)
Has an interesting theory of mind involving cortical heirarchy.
You can even go directly to the chapter "How the Cortex Works",
though the background in earlier chapters will be useful.
(2) "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker
(professor of psychology and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT)
All of Pinker's other books are good, too.
Check your local library and/or a bookstore.
These are my lifetime favorite books. The mind fascinates me.
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by: Perl_DiverPosted on 2006-12-27 at 21:26:12ID: 18206451
>> What is happening in a person's brain when he/she recognises something?
electro-chemical processes somehow access stored patterns in the brain and retrieve them
Is there some kind of 'comparison' going on, or is there another way of explaining it?
There would have to be a comparison of what you are thinking about or seeing and with what you have stored in memory.
And what happens when we get the 'feeling' (which often seems accurate) that something we are percieving now is something that we have percieved before?
Misinterpretation by the nervous system. Our brains do all sorts of wonderful tricks to allow us to make sense of the world around us. In some cases there might be some actual mind/body/universe connection going on that we do not understand yet, but in most cases it's probably just your brain filling in gaps that would otherwise just make you think you were insane.