ImageDescription: Mit Hilfe der Wasserfall-Illusion konnten Wissenschaftler in Zebrafischen Nervenzellen identifizieren, die für das Bewegungsehen relevant sind. ImageSource: (c) MPI für Neurobiologie / Kuhl
Seeing is not the same as believing
"Illusions remind us that our perception is a processed version of reality. That's why we should always question our perception," says Yumin Wu in an interview The aim of an experiment was to investigate whether all the nerve cells that are required for movement and its direction and that appear to be involved in a perception process are actually necessary. If you look at an object for a particularly long time, the receptors of the eye are overstimulated. The result is that we project the object we have been looking at for a long time onto another object when we switch our gaze to it. This effect is called successive contrast.
The same thing happens when observing movements over the long term. If you avert your gaze, you observe fictitious movements. Movements where there are none. However, the effect does not take place in the eye, it is only perceived there, but in the brain. Yunmin Wu explains the experiment in an interview with Christina Bielmeier: "We built a kind of "movie theater": The fish sits in the middle and watches a movie of moving striped patterns while we record its eye movements. This allows us to see whether and in which direction the fish perceives movements. In this way, we found that the fish sees pig movements in the opposite direction as soon as the film stops."
Using technical tools and measuring instruments, it was possible to prove that only half of the nerve cells that react to movement are active in an illusion. It has also been shown that the other half represents reality. Far fewer nerve cells are required for pure vision than previously assumed.
Source
Max-Planck-Institut für Biologische Intelligenz Eine optische Täuschung gibt Einblicke ins Gehirn
Yunmin Wu erforscht, wie wir Bewegung wahrnehmen können. Inspiriert durch ein Katzenvideo, kam sie auf die elegante Idee, die Wasserfall-Ill
Max-Planck-Institut für Biologische Intelligenz Gene - Schaltkreise - Verhalten
Nervenzellen, auch Neuronen genannt, bilden weitverzweigte Netzwerke, durch die Signale mit hoher Geschwindigkeit und in komplexen, sich stä
