I am very interested in the human brain and how we, as species, interact with our surroundings whether it be beneficial or harmful. What factors lead to what a human feels? What leads to the interaction between human and and its surroundings? What can the human give back to its surroundings- vice versa? What persuades the human to act a certain way? What is the present? What is the past? Bw knowing this, can this be presumed to predict the future?
The linkage in the human brain indicated specific perceptions. Ones memory, adaption, and the current trends leads to a persons actions. People are hesitant to go off on their own and go against the grain. It is because of ones past and present that leads people to act a certain way but what needs to happen to get to the future? There are human restrictions-what is the extent of our 5 senses- to help us perceive and understand out environment?
vision- 1/4 of human brain is involved with visual processing
hearing- vital part from communications to risk- avoidance.
taste+smell- closely related, lose smell= senses diminish
touch- different sensations in different body parts b/c more/less touch receptors. ex: more touch receptors in fingers= prone to more feeling.
immediate memory is approx 7 items, no matter how complex.
absolute judgement is limited by amount of information.
we remember things because of verbal recoding
human perceptions and memory are in turn related to 5 human senses.
How do the surrounding excite certain senses. what conditions take away, heal, influence, “emotionize” its user?
Specific use of senses allow us to experience our surroundings differently. Ex: large space, lots of sounds, resonating off the walls, might be a harmful to user and too much; small space=less sound different emotions run through human.
there is also an interconnection of spaces including how one can smell space, and taste architecture.
by use of a specific sense, this can also trigger linkages in the human brain and can lead to memorizing a condition in which it happened in the past. ex: smelling a cologne links/reminds the human of the states or person.
perception: architectural piece to be fully understood, it is necessary to combine the sequences “collected” by moving through and around the object- may be considered the “fourth” dimension. perception has to be supplemented by memory.
http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~matt/courses/cs563/talks/perception.html
The primary issues are how objects are remembered in the brain so that humans can recognize and manipulate them as well as how the information from different sense organs is integrated to create a consistent representation of the “world in the head”.
Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs. Perception involves these “top-down” effects as well as the “bottom-up” process of processing sensory input.The “bottom-up” processing is basically low-level information that’s used to build up higher-level information (e.g., shapes for object recognition). The “top-down” processing refers to a person’s concept and expectations (knowledge) that influence perception.
Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness. (wikipedia)
There are 3 factors that can influence his or her perceptions: experience, motivational state and finally emotional state.
Johnson “Emergence”
—cells collectives emerge because each cell looks to its neighbors for cues about how to behave.
—SimCity: uses grow their virtual cities, but the cities evolve in unpredictable ways, and control over the city’s eventual shape is always indirect.
“Vision and hearing are now the privileged sociable senses, whereas the other three are
considered archaic sensory remnants with a merely private function, and they are usually suppressed by the code of culture.” (Pallasmaa, J. 1994) As a result, architecture is meant to please this sense.
Open space gives us a sense of freedom and on the other hand it can be too noisy for us. Sound is a primary source of our world.
Touch can also reveal the history and the origin of the matter. “A pebble polished by waves is pleasurable to the hand, not only because of its shape, but because it expresses the slow process of its formation; a perfect pebble on the palm materializes duration, it is time turned into shape.” The skin can detect the temperature, and the foot can measure the gravity gravity with the density and texture of the ground.
According to the above information, I am currently looking into systems at many different scales- human brains and their actions (internal), humans relating to other human actions, the influence of surroundings on humans (large scale)- and how they create an interwoven connections/looping networks that may change, enhance, or completely change another system. This is still a very broad topic and would appreciate any additional lee-way to support my research.
In addition, ones senses’, singularly or combined, may enhance a condition and experience. With this in mind, how can we take advantage of this feature and how can we train/teach/adapt our minds and bodies to work a certain way with the enhancement of a specific sense. If there is one sense that takes advantage of a condition, can the other 4 follow or are they depleted?