I'm "crazy" about how my brain "cooks" these images.

An illusion that "exploits our brain’s strategy for making sense of the visual world: uniting what it actually sees — known as bottom-up processing — with what it expects to see based on prior experience — known as top-down processing."

What is Your Fashion O/S?

Photos by Laura O'Brien

I have always admired my friend Laura's fashion sense. Her look is whimsical, eclectic, quirky and always chic. Recently she confessed that her clothes selection is almost always based on nostalgia. In all her clothes purchases, there is a wistful desire to return to her childhood.

On the evening of our discussion she was sporting an 80's dress with drawsting waist and cuffs. Black with thin stripes in primary colours, she could not resist the purchase because of its visual reference to the LightBrite© she loved as a child.

I had been wondering about the knowledge issues implicit in fashion purchases prior to our conversation.

When I attack a thrift store bin, I clear a three foot space at the far right end and pull items one by one from the pile I have created. If bins are too full to accommodate my method, I curse the over-zealous bin stockers and move on.

As a general rule, other shoppers tend to give me sole custody of the bin during the procedure. I do, however, have occasional visitors.

What I note about these shoppers is that they seem guided by a more intuitive approach and inspect only garments of interest to them. I do an initial screen based largely on colour and many items are simply "moved" to the right, but I do feel compelled to touch and sometimes even hold to my cheek (no wonder my son finds me embarrassing at times) items of interest.

In a chapter titled "The Burning House", in the 1994 publication by the same name, Jay Ingram writes about the implications of decisions made by patients suffering from neglect. He makes reference to experiments conducted in the 70s by Timothy De Camp Wilson and Richard Nisbet which demonstrated that in everyday life most people are unaware of the influences that prompt their decisions. When asked to list possible factors influencing their choices in word-association experiments the carefully engineered word cues which had an "obvious and potent influence on the answers these subjects gave" where seldom mentioned as reasons for the decisions.

What was interesting about the experiments was that, "not only (were) most people unaware of the factors that are truly influencing their decisions -- they just don't know -- but they are also more than willing to identify a set of bogus factors --they tell more than they know.

Texture, as the cheek rubbing attests, plays a role in the decisions I make in the thrift store. Laura seems to have a more global and nostalgic connection with her purchases. What I wonder now, however, is the influence the LightBright© dress conversation has had on me. I do think about it when I clear the end of the bin and I will, no doubt, one day make such a purchase. When I do, I am certain I will recognize the influence which prompted the decision, but I wonder how many garments in my closet are mine now without my knowing why.

"Growing Your Way", Ginn And Company, 1954

Visual Focus on Connotea

Most articles on Connotea- a reference management system for clinicians and scientists - are not for the faint of heart. The system may be of use, however, depending on your choice of topics for presentation or essay .

Here you will find referenced articles on Visual Focus.

More on Smell and Memory

Shigeyuki Ito
answers some of
my questions
in his article
"Smell and Memory"
for
Serendip's Website.

John Sutton
writes about "Memory"
for Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Malleability of Touch Perception

An experiment led by neuroscientist Patrick Haggard of University College London.

Brave New World

I am re-reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Last night I finished Chapter XVI which has many interesting things to say about both Art and Science. I will, no doubt, have more to say about this novel and will update this post in due course. What I wish to share, at this time, is something perhaps far less important on any literary level.

I absolutely adore the smell of this book.

I am reading a copy which was purchased when I was about your age. I bought it in a musty secondhand bookstore following my first year of IB, and it has been stored in equally dank surroundings pretty much ever since. It's smell is intoxicating to me and, had my nose left a mark each time I leaned in to indulge, very few chapters would remain unsullied.

For now then, my reaction to the novel is limited to a few scattered thoughts and connections about olfactory senses:

-What role do olfactory senses play in "sense perception"?
-As a way of knowing, why is its connection with memory so strong?
-Phantoms in the Brain by V.S Ramachandran was my favourite Christmas read of 2007.
-Vilayanur Ramachandran speaks about synesthesia
in his Ted Talk, A journey to the center of your mind.

La trahison des images (The Treachery of Images) by Rene Magritte

La Belle captive (The Beautiful Captive) by Rene Magritte

La Belle captive (The Beautiful Captive) by Rene Magritte

Richard Dawkins

The following links may be helpful when considering the role of Sense Perception in knowledge aquisition.


The universe is queerer than we can suppose. Evolutionary Biologist, Richard Dawkins makes a case for "thinking the improbable" by looking at how the human frame of reference limits our understanding of the universe. We live, he explains, in a middle-sized world and have difficulty understanding anything very large — like solar systems — or very small, like atoms.



For more information on Richard Dawkins