7 Bizarre Things Neuroscientists Know About Reality That Most People Don’t

These revelations could potentially change how you view the world!

Normal human beings without the knowledge cannot observe these perfectly. Every mutation, and all illusions hint at some mind blowing aspect of our physical world. Often, we ignore these phenomena.

Some of them have been enlisted by Quora-user Paul King.

1. Perceptual Reality Is Entirely Generated By Our Brain

Frequency of pressure-waves carry sounds. We perceive a wide spectrum of colors and things (both animate and inanimate). These are only reflections of several photons. We are receiving second-hand signaling. The objects we perceive are a construct of the brain, which is why optical illusions can fool the brain so easily.

2. We See The World In Narrow Disjoint Fragments

The Universe is a enormous space. We only occupy a tiny portion of it. Think of the eyes as a Cardboard-box Viewer. Your frame is limited. You think you can view everything there is, but that’s far from the truth. Our eyes shift when we are reading something, because our peripherals can admit the idea of an image but not the image itself. It is blurred. Similarly, when we look around the physical landscape, our eyes shift from one thing to another. There is a lot of in-between that we miss, but our mind blocks out the blurred portions.

3. Body Image Is Dynamic And Flexible

In terms of VR or Virtual Reality, the power of the brain has been tested enormously. People have been convinced that a graphic hand is real, and that they have been transported into the screen. In a certain nervous mutation, a patient refused to believe that it was his own arm that extended from his torso. He was convinced that it belonged to a dead man.

4. Our Behavior Is Mostly Automatic, Even Though We Think We Are Controlling It

Have you ever driven your car at break-neck speed, lost in some heartbroken reminiscence? Yes? Well, you’re still alive. Our brain can handle several activities on auto-pilot. Even when you aren’t conscious, the brain is. Do not take this as an excuse for rash driving, though. Your luck might just run out. Sometimes, when somebody gives you a bottle of water, you drink from it. Irrespective of how thirsty you are. These cannot be explained and are involuntary reflexes.

5. Our Brain Can Fool Itself In Really Strange Ways

In a disease called Capgras, people who you know very well start to seem like strangers. You forget familiarity. Several women have reportedly befriended their mirror-reflections. They could not pin-point the familiarity, and believed that the reflection looked completely different from them.

6. Neurons Are Really Slow

Given the size of our brain, it performs a mammoth task every minute of our lives. There is too much the brain has to do, and yet it performs at God-speed. Surprisingly, neurons cannot boast of the same. They transmit messages only a couple of times every second. The brain’s beta wave cycles at fourteen to thirty times every second. A computer runs much faster at one billion functions every second. Ironically, these slow things make us intelligent.

7. Consciousness Can Be Subdivided

Patients with split-brain(s) experience consciousness separately in both parts. They are, however, quite distinct. In post-traumatic stress disorder, the recollection of that experience can be filed away into oblivion. A schizophrenic person keeps hearing voices that seem very different from their own, yet hold a superior control over them.

Neuroscience seems utterly interesting! This list is how you convince children to study Science.

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