Current Mindset Impacts Future Perception Also

It is well known that a powerful perceptual experience can change the way a person sees things later. If you are startled to discover a mouse in your kitchen, you may suddenly you see mice in every dark corner - or at least think you do. Is it possible that imagining something, just once, might also change how you perceive things? To test how imagery affects perception, the researchers had subjects imagine simple patterns of vertical or horizontal stripes, which are strongly represented in the primary visual areas of the brain. They then presented a green horizontal grated pattern to one eye and a red vertical grated pattern to the other to induce what is called binocular rivalry. During binocular rivalry, an individual will often alternately perceive each stimulus, with the images appearing to switch back and forth before their eyes. The subjects generally reported they had seen the image they had been imagining, proving the researcher's hypothesis that imagery would influence the binocular rivalry battle. Read More...

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