Perception
Perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory signals. It is
an interactive process. As the act of perception alters the neurological
activation pattern inducing consciousness the perception will change. So
perception is the moment to moment shifting and re-aligning of consciousness in
response to the signals being perceived. Just as "knowing" emerges from the
awareness of the similarities and differences between things, perception emerges
as clusters of neurons calculate the similarities and differences between the
signals of sensation and the catalog of experience.
Human visual perception
is a complex process. Each eye connects to the brain through an optic nerve
with about one million neural connections. These two million data channels
deliver an ever-changing signal stream first to the thalamus and then on to the
primary visual cortex in the occipital lobes. During each moment of visual
perception, billions of photons of light strike the retinas stimulating the
hundreds of millions of rods and cones responsible for generating the two
million channels of electrochemical visual data. It is almost too much to
consider. Fortunately, the mind can conceive beyond its ability to perceive as
demonstrated by the following geometry thought experiment....
|