Article:Return of the mental image:are there really pictures in the brain
From unthinkMedia
"Famous thinkers are frequently quoted as saying that their ideas did not come to them logically but appeared to them in mental pictures"(pg. 113) this is sometimes called "seeing with the mind's eye". There are 2 main difference between visual reasoning:
- what thoughts are about
- the forms that they take
This could be clearly a defined by identifying between how something looks and then thinking about what it means.
Contents |
picture theories
‘...a type of picture, which specifies the locations and values of configurations of points in a space. ... [in which] each part of an object is represented by a pattern of points, and the spatial relation among these patterns... correspond to the spatial relations among the parts themselves.’
Research supports the assumption that images are pictorial entities that are examined by the visual system, however the author feels that this may be more naturally explained by the hypothesis that when asked to imagine something, people ask themselves what it would be like to see it, and they then simulate as many aspects of this staged event as they can and as seem relevant.
- because it is your image you can make it have very nearly any property, or exhibit any behavior you wish
- nothing is gained by assuming that images are pictorial in form because context-dependency by itself has no implications for the format of images.
Are there ‘functional’ pictures in the brain?
Theorist often say no, however explaining experimental phenomena requires such a literal picture.
The format of a mental image helps people understand a task, this is why imagining something arguably means considering what it would look like if you saw it.
There have been claims that to perceive a mental image projects two-dimensional moving pictures onto the surface of your visual cortex.
This finding is to an increased activity in retinotopically-organized areas of visual cortex during mental imagery, which is similar to when a visual patten is presented to the eye.
- mental images are in allocentric coordinates and are panoramic in scope, reportedly even extending behind the head.
- not only experienced as 3D
- mental rotation occur equally in depth or in the plane
- shorter reaction times arise because details in bigger pictures are easier to discern.
- mental images take much of it's spacial characteristics from the real space around us which we ‘superimpose’ images on the perceived real space.
With blind people superimposing images on a scene can lead to visuomotor adaptation.
Quotes
"Famous thinkers are frequently quoted as saying that their ideas did not come to them logically but appeared to them in mental pictures"(pg. 113)
"...a type of picture, which specifies the locations and values of configurations of points in a space. ... [in which] each part of an object is represented by a pattern of points, and the spatial relation among these patterns... correspond to the spatial relations among the parts themselves."
"Wittgenstein is credited with the following story that puts this question in perspective. Two philosophers meet in the hall and one says to the other, ‘Why do you suppose people always thought that the sun went around the earth, rather than that the earth was rotating?’ The second philosopher replies, ‘Obviously because it looks like the sun goes around the earth.’ To which the first philosopher replies, ‘But what would it look like if it looked like the earth was rotating?’ There is much we don’t know about what it means for something to ‘look like’ what we describe in words."
Resources
Return of the mental image: are there really pictures in the brain? Zenon Pylyshyn Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903, USA
