1. How do we gain knowledge through our senses?
TOK

2. What are our senses? Vision Hearing Taste Smell Touch Balance
Kinesthesia

3. But the senses are half the story…
Information coming through our senses is transformed by our brain into meaning;
Sensation---noise, light, smells---gets organized by our brains into perceptions.

4. Sensory Organs and Brain
Perception depends both on mechanics of the sensory organs and brain processing.

5. Example of eye mechanics problem (color-blindness)…

6. Example of brain processing problem (amblyopia)…

7. How does the brain organize sensations into perceptions?
Gestalt psychologists: German psychologists who were interested in this question: How does the brain turn visual stimuli into something meaningful?

8. “Rules” for visual perception
To perceive an object, we must see it as different from background---Figure vs Ground

9. Figure-Ground

10. “Rules” for visual perception
We perceive similar objects as going together.

11. “Rules” for visual perception
We perceive objects that are close to each other as going together.

12. “Rules” of visual perception
We fill in gaps to create a complete object.

13. What do you perceive?

14. “Rules” of visual perception
When one object blocks our view of another, we perceive it as closer.

15. “Rules” of visual perception
We perceive hazy objects as farther away than sharp objects.

16. “Rules” of visual perception
We perceive fine texture to be farther away than coarse texture.

17. “Rules” of visual perception
The more parallel lines converge, the greater the perceived distance.

18. Which red line is longer?

19. More illusions…
Munker-White Illusion

20. Can you trust what you see?
Adelson -- Checker-shadow illusion

21. Can you trust what you see?

22. Jennifer Thompson

27. Innocence Project
Organized through the law school at Yeshiva University in New York City; Dedicated to proving innocence of wrongfully accused people through DNA testing; Website: innocenceproject.org

28. Take-Home Points Brain makes meaning from what you see;
There are rules that the brain uses to organize what you see;
The brain can be fooled.