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Even though my birthday isn't until Sunday, some of my favorite people in the world decided to surprise me by celebrating it today. Lately I've been hooked on watching episodes of the Golden Girls..... hence the surprise theme! But these ladies have been my "Golden Girls". They've inspired me, encouraged me, and at times endured me (sometimes I can be a little high maintenance). But a guy couldn't ask for two better sidekicks! "Thank you for being a friend!" #goldengirls #bettywhite #birthday #collegelife #idahostate #pices (at ISU Student Union Building)

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Holiday Dinner | Union Program Council 2016 #collegelife #idahostate #friendsforever (at Fuji Japanese Steakhouse and Sushi Pocatello)

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Looking fly like a Canadian....Working hard like a Communist. #comrade #ocanada #shovelingsnow #makeamericagreatagain (at Pocatello, Idaho)

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Tree Lighting Festival 2016 🎄----- ☑️ #christmastree #christmaslights #idahostateuniversity #collegelife (at Idaho State University)

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A visual nudge can disrupt recall of what things look like

Interfering with your vision makes it harder to describe what you know about the appearance of even common objects, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

This connection between visual knowledge and visual perception challenges widely held theories that visual information about the world — that alligators are green and have long tails, for example — is stored abstractly, as a list of facts, divorced from the visual experience of seeing an alligator.

“We can perceive the world, and then know things about the world, and a lot of those things we learn through the senses,” says Gary Lupyan, an associate professor of psychology at UW–Madison. “But once we learn them, do they still continue to depend on the senses? That seems to be the case.”

Pierce Edmiston, a graduate student in Lupyan’s lab, had volunteers answer questions that required them to quickly verify simple information about common objects.

Some of the knowledge he asked for was visual: Do alligators have tails? Are strawberries red? Do tables have a flat surface? And some was encyclopedic: Is a table furniture? Do alligators live in swamps? Are strawberries fruits?

While study volunteers answered these questions, Edmiston would deliver a burst of “visual interference” — colorful static noise — in an effort to disrupt the parts of the brain that process visual information.

“Visual interference selectively interrupted their ability to answer questions about the visual properties of objects. They had trouble trying to recall that kind of information,” Edmiston says. “But it didn’t change how good they were at accessing what they knew about the nonvisual properties of the same objects.”

Previous studies exploring the recall of visual information typically employed brain scans showing visual circuitry in the brain activating when people were asked to recall what things look like.

“That suggested a connection between recalling visual knowledge and visual processing in the brain. But it didn’t show that the visual processing centers were necessary — just active,” Edmiston says. “We’ve shown more than a connection. Visual processing appears necessary for recalling visual information because disrupting perception, even subtly, disrupts people’s ability to report what something looks like.”

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Look who finally decided to come out of the closet......It's the Bissell Big Green Carpet Cleaner! The Dyson and I are fully supportive! 😉 #bissell #dyson #ihaveadream #thatadysonandabissellcanworktogether #toworktowardsacleanerworld #equallove (at Pocatello, Idaho)

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Just a few of my favorite people! ❤️🍦 #brothers #twins #ldsconf #priesthoodsession (at Shelley, Idaho)

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Just another annual ISU Homecoming Parade selfie! #2016 #isu #homecoming #parade (at Idaho State University)

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Clean Air = Clean Smile #smile #hondalife #collegelife #streetsmart (at Pocatello, Idaho)

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Just sitting here thinking about how wonderful my first day of school was... It's going to be a great semester! 🤔🤗📚✏️ #collegelife #isu #firstdayselfie (at Idaho State University)

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Here's this years Idaho State Board of Education "selfie"! 🎓📝 #mydirectionalsignsgetbetterandbetter #idaho #isu #education #businesscasual #2016 (at ISU Student Union Building)