Free Republic

This is the great mystery of human vision: Vivid pictures of the world appear before our mind’s eye, yet the brain’s visual system receives very little information from the world itself. Much of what we “see” we conjure in our heads. “A lot of the things you think you see you’re actually making up,” said Lai-Sang Young, a mathematician at New York University. “You don’t actually see them.” New research suggests mathematics is the key. The visual cortex has a mind of its own. “You may think of the brain as taking a photograph of what you see in your...

Back to Press Releases MEDIA CONTACT: Jonathan Sherwood (585) 273-4726 October 6, 2004 Under the Surface, the Brain Seethes With Undiscovered Activity There’s an old myth that we only use 10 percent of our brains, but researchers at the University of Rochester have found in reality that roughly 80 percent of our cognitive power may be cranking away on tasks completely unknown to us. Curiously, this clandestine activity does not exist in the youngest brains, leading scientists to believe that the mysterious goings-on that absorb the majority of our minds are dedicated to subconsciously reprocessing our initial thoughts and experiences....