Notes from April 9th

Just brought out of the archives...notes from April 9th.
This is a day when I was considerably late to class (in large part due to a screwy RTS schedule, but let's not go there)

On this day, Jeff (Pelz) and Andy (Herbert), the Vision and Mind lecturers respectively, came in to answer some of our questions.

This is based on the notes from another student who was there the whole time; while looking at the notes, I am trying to convert her note style into mine.
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* The world is broken down into little pictures, which your brain then puts together
* Since the system as a whole is so complex,. it helps to look at simple individual signals
* Yet, how does the brain combine these inputs into what is perceived as a smooth image? We don't know.

There exists something called the "binding problem" - action potentials [of the signals a neuron sends] are all-or-nothing, so the rate code (data speed and built in redundancy) is important
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[Editor's note: The following section has to do with a question I brought up often during this topic; i.e. what happens when something goes wrong in the system; and conversely, when someone has a sensory deficiency, what brain components are malfunctioning?

The prominent existence of NTID here at RIT has brought this type of question to the forefront of my mind. (yes, I know that the topic refers/referred to vision problems, but that is something I commonly find, that one topic jogs my memory on a somewhat-related topic. Furthermore, I recall from the lectures that several sensory areas are located in the same brain lobe, implying to me that they have interconnected or similar functions.)

Colorblindness was the main thing discussed in response to this question.

* With cataracts, the cornea is yellowing, warping the perception of certain wavelengths, especially on the blue end of the spectrum
* A lot of colorblindness has to do with errors in the retina's system of cones, which perceive color
** Some colorblind people don't have any, or the cones are not wired together properly

* Humans are trichromats, which perceive three different colors (R, G, B), and have different sets of cones that specialize in each. [this presumably in addition to light/dark white/black]. Soem humans are dichromats, which would logically mean a form of colorblindness compared to normal human perception.

Many animal species are bichromats or tetrachromats.

(At about this point of Andy & Jeff's talk, I show up and begin taking my own notes, that original post being located here: http://alan-labbook.blogspot.com/2008/04/questions-answered-by-andy-jeff.html)

[With the following comments, I'm not knocking the person who have me notes for 4/9, just stating facts/observations]

I notice that her style has more data fragments than mine does. (Granted, in the interest of keeping up the pace during the lectures, I often didn't use 100% complete sentences)

I find that different details are pulled out, but with the same general areas covered.

Note-taking is basically summarizing, and that's a task that different people ar eobviously going to approach differently.