#visual cognition

[russellmoreton]

Camera Obscura : Reflections and the dark room. by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: pictify.com/user/russellmoreton

[defectivegembrain]

Me: *struggling to interpret visual data*

BBC Ghosts Mary, appearing in my head: Some of them lines be like great mountains, while the others is just little hills

[unbfacts]

[zoetica]

The Institute for Psychogametous Life: A Novel Approach to Investigating Symbolic Alien Replication and Human Cognitive Response

Just published: The Institute for Psychogametous Life: A Novel Approach to Investigating Symbolic Alien Replication and Human Cognitive Response. Read the paper. Abstract

The discovery of the "Alien Botany" archive from the ill-fated Novy Mir mission has unveiled a unique and perplexing phenomenon: the apparent replication of alien botanical imagery within the human mind, manifesting as vivid palinopsia and an ideomotor compulsion to recreate these forms. This paper describes the establishment of the "Institute for Psychogametous Life (IPGL)," a novel research and public engagement facility designed to investigate this phenomenon. The IPGL employs a multi-faceted approach, combining controlled sensory environments, physiological and psychological monitoring, and public interaction to elucidate the mechanisms underlying image germination and its potential implications for understanding symbolic alien life and human cognitive susceptibility. We argue that treating the human public as active participants in this process is crucial for advancing our knowledge of this extraordinary phenomenon.

[tangy-soup]

I need to add something! I know AI image creation has been seen as bad across the board bc of how it's used to replace artists, but putting capitalist greed and the environmental impact aside, there are also some incredible medical potentials out there. Again this is super long!

To explain this we have to understand that neural signals can be detected from early visual cortex (this is in the back of your head, where we think of when we say "visual cortex") and can be graphed or mapped. When we look at different things, we get different outputs. Scientists have been able to use this fact to train computers to recognize different neural patterns and their corresponding visuals. Not only that, they've been able to have these computers then reconstruct images from neural signals with great accuracy. For example:

Image source: (Takagi & Nishimoto, CVPR 2023)

This study is recent, but even a while ago scientists found that this type of decoding and reconstructing imagery can be done when people are unconscious too. For instance, a study in 2013 found that when people were dreaming they could decode their neural patterns and figure out what they were dreaming about (simple things like there being a key, a chair, or a door).

Now what I want to talk about is the study done in 2006. (If the link doesn't work, it's titled "Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State" and you can google it and get the full pdf, it's a short read). So basically they had a patient in a vegetative state but with preserved sleep/wake cycles. To jump to the most exciting part of this study, they put her in an MRI machine and gave her verbal instructions to either imagine a tennis ball, or imagine visiting all the rooms of her house. Brain regions are often specialized, and the regions that are in charge of navigation are different from those in charge of imagining a tennis ball. And her brain activity lit up according to those different verbal instructions.

Isn't that crazy!! That's SO cool because we can possibly communicate with those who are unconscious. And that 2006 study was just using the idea that brain regions are specialized, not decoding brain signals to figure out what they are thinking of, but now that we do have examples of computer models being able to recreate imagery, think of all the potential!!

Im also curious about how mental imagery neural decoding would apply to those with aphantasia (people who have no mental imagery) and if the same kind of reconstruction can be done but that's a question for another day!

🌻

Since i get to tell u anything for this ask game im going to tell u about visual cognitive psychology. Strap in. This is long so feel free to scroll past if u dont care.

So you know those captcha tests that ask u to identify objects to see if ur a robot? Have u ever wondered why that was the test and how come a computer isnt able to identify those objects? Well fun fact, human visions turns out to be incredibly complicated. Human vision has various impossibilities yet we find a way. For us, object recognition is not only about recognizing individual parts and pixels of our world, but also it's our brains guessing what something is based on context. One object has infinite ways of presenting itself, from lighting to orientation to color to angle, so recognizing an object quickly should be difficult. But not for us!! Because our brains are very good at object recognition not only by objects parts but also the larger environment. For example, if you see a blurry image and is asked to identify a yellow taxi, while you may not he able to recognize the taxi if I only gave you that part of the image, seeing streets, buildings, and street lights would have told ur brain that the yellow thing is a taxi. And this is apparently VERY hard for computers!

So that's why captchas like that exist to test if you are a robot. Partly. The next part of the story is less fun because those captchas are all made by reCAPTCHA since Google acquired CAPTCHA a long time ago. So yes. ALL of those captchas you see that ask you to do that are from Google. And Google is using reCAPTCHA to train computers to get better at object recognition for undisclosed projects. Your responses help teach their computer models how to identify cars, or parts of cars, from images. And lately I've seen that AI-produced images have been used, which I assume is also to train AIs how to PRODUCE more realistic images... blegh.

Now to end on a happier note, computer object/image recognition can be very good for things like restoring historical text! Ever read a crusty ass pdf that the computer doesnt even recognize as text? This type of visual recognition could help with things like that, and also historical archival purposes. So there u go!

[lisowa]

Hi guys! This post is not related to arts, but I will be very grateful to you for sharing it.🌸

This is a survey for my university's research. I study the problems of disabled people in tourism and recreation. This survey is anonymous.

The statistics collected in the surveys will be used for my university project.

I will be very grateful to everyone who completes the survey and sends it to their family members or friends✨️

The more people complete the survey, the more detailed statistics i will get, so it is important to spread it as much as possible.

You can scan it or use links below:

Ukrainian 🇺🇦

English 🇬🇧

Polish 🇵🇱

[earthling-wolf]

Ni Translocality

Ni is a function that expands the registration of an object to include its temporal totality (Pi), which is the larger episode or theme to which it belongs. It then associates this episode to all historical instances of episodes that are isomorphic to it (N), transforming the definition of the object into a thematic story that is disconnected from any particular place or time. The object is then understood as something transcending the present, as something translocal, and not following a linear, chronological path from the past while still being temporal.

Metaphors & Visual Aphorisms

The Ni function compels the individual to live a slowly paced, hands-off life of observation and reflection on the information structures of the world. First, they are data synthesizers that formulate image-encoded schemas from unconsciously woven patterns in reality. The Ni user will be very graphic in their consciousness, thinking in visuals and representing the world through visual metaphors. These dynamic but geometric relationships are registered as essential to reality's functioning and are eventually superimposed onto other life domains in a proverbial form. "A tree's branches can only grow as far up as its roots go down," "flowing water never goes stale," or "every light casts a shadow" are examples of the graphical aphorisms that may develop from this information synthesizing process. For the Ni user, the world is not comprehended through words or axioms; it is through these visual relationships that words help convey to others. Due to the abundance of symmetry observed in life, these relations are often symmetrical --as embodied in concepts like the Taoist yin-yang symbol. An elaborate worldview is inescapably developed predicated on these abstracted relationships, aimed to give life predictability and continuity of narrative. The Ni user never sees the world straightforwardly, as reality is formed from representative structures --not rational absolutes. To the Ni user, knowledge is the net awareness gained by superimposing layers of these representations on reality and mapping its landscape as far and wide as possible.

The Mind & Panpsychism

Moreover, because they view reality as representation, the Ni user will constantly experience life as a perceptual sphere built from the interactions of mind and material. The world appears as a tapestry woven together by higher forces that underpin every object and substance – causing the objects to feel like the outer shells or totems of fundamental forces. Moreover, a sense will often exist – as explored in phenomenology – that consciousness is the essential thing. In some form or another, the Ni user will come to embody the philosophy that the psyche has a degree of priority over the material. One way to imagine this is to say the world constellates itself to the Ni user as being built equally of "psyche" and of matter. Still, every Ni user will synthesize this felt sense in slightly different ways, with some believing that consciousness is the prime constituent of reality and others feeling we are co-creators of reality by our active participation in how it appears to us and how we ascribe meaning to the contents within it, which can lead magnetically to a type of panpsychism, where the Ni user views the contents of the mind seriously as entities, forces, energies and contours as perceivable as literal objects are to other people. These psychological images and forces will not only be present but will also be persistent. To them, the psyche has a steady yet fluid shape, an image, and a terrain to be explored through vision and internal perception. Moreover, while other types may arrive at similar philosophies through rationality, for the Ni user, this sensation is not something deduced but simply uncovered, as it represents the default state of their experience. This proclivity naturally leads to an interest in meditation, eastern thought, and spirituality, which emphasizes these same psychic aspects and presents a philosophy of consciousness more natively aligned to their phenomenological experience.

Narrowness & Convergence

However, for all their openness towards surreal ideas about consciousness, the Ni user is not random or unstructured in their views. They are scarcely persuaded of most things and are instead highly cautious of ideas. The Ni user will have a keen eye for identifying the improbability of things and will not be prone to jump on board with things unless their inner imagery already maps out an inescapable trajectory in that direction. The Ni user is not an inciter or generator of novel things, nor is their specialty a spontaneous creativity. Instead, it is the holistic assimilation of trends over time and a convergence of perspectives along the most reinforced trendlines. They generally see only one or a few trajectories stemming from a given situation and are magnetically drawn to the likeliest interpretations. Thus, the ideas the Ni user arrives at are not things they create but things they discover to be already "the case," often sourcing from an inside-out evaluation of being but just as well from a panoramic evaluation of society. In this way, the Ni user is a sort of investigator or excavator of the primordial imagery in themselves and society. More than any other type, the Ni user receives a linear and direct feed of the imagery of the unconscious, and because of this convergence of focus, many Ni users across time continue to re-discover and re-articulate the same things as they unearth the same territory. As Ni users from all ages inquire into questions of being, their convergent intuition guides them to parallel answers and to convey those understandings in imagery --since image is the primary means by which that information is discovered and encoded. A canonical historical archive, therefore, has developed over time in the form of symbology, the encrypted patterns and representative structures that underpin reality, as collectively uncovered over time.

Symbology

In this sense, the Ni user may often find camaraderie in the symbology laid down by previous pioneers for its capacity to articulate that felt inner content. Strange as it may seem to others to believe or seriously consider such archaic and outdated emblems, the Ni user is drawn to these old images like the Si user is drawn to information encoded in the old earth. The Ni user may not wish to be a mystic and, when not fully individuated, may shrink away from this imagery for fear of academic reprimand. Still, they may feel that their awareness style drafts them inescapably into these ideas. They emerge out of themselves when any intense investigation is done or even when no investigation is done. The realm of alchemical symbolism, the Tarot, ayurvedic medicine, and Astrology may be studied intently for their capacity to superimpose a representation of life. Shapes also contain a powerful influence over them, and they may be drawn to sacred geometry and mandalas. Numerology may also be investigated. Over time, by studying these emblems to discover their true meanings, they are slowly transformed into the likeness of those who built them. As they unearth the contents of this domain, they often become affiliated with the taxonomies used by their predecessors to try to express this underworld. However, their dabbling in these ideas may earn them a reputation as a mystic and confuse family and friends who may not understand the significance of such concepts.

Archetypes & Stereotypes

These observations form a vast archive of typicalities as the Ni user matures into their worldview. Each pattern of life is epitomized in the psyche as a general rule or process, which leads quite inescapably to the formation of stereotypes at the local level and archetypes at the universal level --both of which are used to map reality by providing a sense of predictability. In the positive sense, this stereotyping tendency makes life an iconic series of interactions between previously indexed forces and entities. The Ni user will overlay their schema onto the world and see iterations of the same substances everywhere. From this vantage point, certain social or political interactions will appear to them as clockwork, a series of eventualities stemming from two or more colliding forces. The interactions in a neighborhood may be seen through the same light, as categories are applied to each class of person, and their collisions cause transformations through a sort of necessary chemistry. However, as often captured by the negative sense of the word stereotype, this can lead to errors in perception where a pattern or schema is superimposed over a situation too prematurely. A person is anticipated to be a given way due to the symbol they represent while turning out to be quite different. Moreover, at the archetypal level, the same simplification may occur where the Ni user reduces the global situation as something emergent from a conflict between the light and dark, the masculine and feminine, an interaction of four or five elements or some other schema which neglects certain subtleties and details, which may be infuriating to those who live with the Ni user as they may feel the Ni user is oversimplifying them, or worse that they are pigeonholing people into their categories --whether of culture, class, race or gender. Many may scoff at the Ni user for depending on what they feel are outdated prejudices and not seeing things at the individual level. However, the Ni user cannot ignore what larger pattern someone or something generally belongs to and will tend to incidentally synthesize life from that lens without any actual investment or commitment to any dogma or belief system.

Synchronicity & Parapsychology

Another effect often emerging from the Ni function is a belief in synchronicity. Because of how Ni registers life through a delicate tracking of "significance" --not by the rigidity of causal chains-- the Ni user will instinctively see the value in data associations that converge in theme and motif, even when the cause is unknown. As is often the case for both intuitive processes, the pattern is recognized first without needing to have the sensory points explicitly traced, and neither does the absence of a sequential explanation make the information alignments vanish. Moreover, when Ni is especially strong, seemingly disconnected layers of existence are woven together through an entangled point, compelling many Ni users to contend with the possible existence of the acausal. Certain events or datasets may be felt as crossing different planes of reality and inexorably related even when a surface examination would see no trace between them. They may be struck by compelling evidence for the existence of extra-sensory perception or remote viewing, which allows us to see through the eyes of others or predict their thoughts. For some, relationships may be intuited to exist between oneself and previous lives. Areas of the body may be associated with certain psychic energies through emotional tapping, chakras, iridology, or palmistry. Certain recurring numbers may be felt as omens of blessings or catastrophes. If these intimations persist, they can become highly suspicious and feel that certain events will shortly happen when a given number, detail, or sign suggests a strong karmic force is at play.

-Behaviors Under Stress

Conspiracy Theories

When the Ni user falls out of mental health, their suspicions degrade further into superstitions, death omens, and a persistent state of anxiety. Life becomes chaotic and unpredictable. The world will feel utterly uncertain to them, and they will be unable to see the cause of their suffering or that of society. As they struggle to intuit their situation through perceptual projection, the misfortunes they experience are not interpreted as localized occurrences but are instead epitomized as emerging from some extra-personal force looming over all things. They will start to perceive a woven network of intentions behind everything, pulling the strings of society at large. Here, we see the Ni user fabricate conspiracy theories: extraterrestrial hypotheses, occult government sects, the imminent rise of a new world order, and the like. A sense exists that something unseen is making all this happen, and for once, the Ni user loses their non-committal nature and becomes utterly fixated on certain interpretations of life, which will cause them great difficulty in their daily lives as the Ni user may be quickly ostracized from society for their bizarre premonitions. More than a few distressed Ni users throughout history have been branded as local lunatics, eventually growing morose and resentful for what they feel is the lack of foresight and idiocy of the common person.

Apocalyptic Visions

A different effect we often see in a distressed Ni user is a series of apocalyptic visions. They may experience nightmares, either when asleep or awake, vividly depicting scenes of war, destroyed buildings, massacres, and the end of civilization. Moreover, the Ni user may experience these sudden flashes with the same level of physicality with which they experience their waking life --making it difficult to discredit them as illusions. Here, we see an unconscious projection and intrusion of their polar sensory function into their mind, causing literal sensations to trigger their nervous system without an actual cause. The relationship between intuition and sensation is a two-way street, where one can seep into the other unbidden when excessive repression is at its breaking point --allowing their intuitions to unconsciously fabricate sensory experiences that are patterned after their thematic convergence. These unsettling images may cause them to feel that their visions are pending actualities. A memento mori will settle over them. Society is on the brink of collapse; everything is headed in the worst direction, and anything short of immediate correction will lead to an irreparable catastrophe.

[nicohverse]

Little Lion, Baby Bea...

(Art by @kiwifie !)

Who's curious about this sweetheart? This cute lion has been the topic of lots of discussion lately- For somebody with so little going on in her head, she sure is mysterious! And what little she does have going on in her head is wonderful- It's not a pejorative, the girl's genuinely been lobotomized. Luckily, it's not quite as bad as it sounds- She was pretty airheaded to begin with. The part of her brain she lost made it so she can't do magic to hide her animal features, and gave her a lot of cognitive difficulties.

"It's like... There's these things I know I knew how to do. And I don't know it at all anymore. I can't get it back. Even if I try to learn it again. It's scary... Like being trapped in a box, but the box has windows."

A girl who's new to adulthood and trying hard to assert her ability to be one in the face of her struggles, Bea might be cute and small, but she certainly won't tolerate being infantilized. She's living with a great caretaker who never underestimates or overestimates her ability- She's accommodated without being condescended to, and wants to reclaim sweetness and enthusiasm for herself while asserting her autonomy!

Some of Bea's struggles are pretty personal to me- About a year ago, I was still recovering from a lot. I'd only left an unsafe-for-me work environment a few months prior, hadn't yet hit a full year since 'recovering' from a covid infection that added to the workplace's exacerbation of my health conditions... I spent quite a while in an incredibly difficult cognitive space, actively fighting against brainfog...

Some stuff I haven't really talked about to anybody before- I could hardly make my brain remember anything I'd learned in college that hadn't been applied on the job since then. It was frightening and embarrassing to be without the information I spent so much time and money on. A lot of things I 'knew how to do' became muscle memory only- I could do them when I was doing them, but couldn't conceptualize how to do them if I sat down and thought about it. I'd find thoughts about things like solving a math problem would get stuck in my brain on loop without either progressing to the next step or going away. It was so difficult to deal with that I just about gave up on ever getting another job that utilized my mental skills without associating gross-motor movements.

But now, I'm better enough that I'm looking into getting more applicable credentials in my field, applying to data entry and medical record jobs again after recently losing my position as an art studio assistant. (Though worry not- All funds given to EF2 will be used for EF2) And better enough to be processing those feelings through Bea- A character who's incredibly precious to me. She's never going to 'get better' the same way I have- Instead, she's going to be a conduit for the idea that even if I hadn't recovered, I still would have found some kind of success. One of the many things Entropic Float is and always will be about is autonomy for the disabled community, to every possible degree that I have time in my life to portray.

If you want to help me portray that, and avoid reaching into my own recently-unemployed pockets to make Entropic Float 2 the best game it can be, the best property for Bea to find her joy in, consider supporting our stretch goals.

[russellmoreton]

Clay Work/1000 pots : Visceral Practices by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: russellmoreton.blogspot.com/ Material Agency : Carl Knappett, Lambros Malafouris Visualising Environmental Agency "Agents are defined as persons or things, which have the ability and intention to "cause" something "in the vicinity" or "in the mileau" to happen ( Gell 1998)" "These latter artefacts are described with the term "index", to remove the appellation "art" and to imply that they are indexes of agency." Some Stimulating Solutions, Andrew Cochrane. 1000 "pots" performative site 2011. The Yard, Winchester.

[manuelnunezmd]

Supercharge Your Memory: Brain Exercises to Keep Your Mind Agile

Boost your memory and keep your mind sharp with these effective strategies and engaging activities! Learn how brain exercises, physical activity, and more can enhance your cognitive health. #MemoryBoosting #BrainHealth #CognitiveWellness

Building a Strong Memory Keeping your memory in tip-top shape gets more important as the years roll by. Giving your brain a workout with activities that keep it active can really boost your memory and mental health overall. Importance of Brain Exercise Just like your muscles need a workout, your brain craves attention too. Doing things like brain exercises can pep up your mind, ward off those…

[partyswirl]

thinking so hard i accidentally invent concepts like "forgiveness"

[viraltrendsspot]

🤓 What details become clearer the longer you look?

[waterlilyvalley]

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[koilarist]

i have the plague and thus must heal my bones by doodling my original Big Bad Guy as a sweet little baby boy through the eyes of the man he loves. Caledon, you suck. And I love you.

[lemonbubble]

video: it's the holiday season! me (<-southern hemisphere): well, this is true i guess, i am not feeling excluded from the target audience just yet video, 1 second later: [stock animated snow falling overlay] me: ah. there it goes.