你看到的不一定就是你"看"到的

俗話說，一朝被蛇咬十年怕井繩。現(xiàn)在，人們可以用科學(xué)來解釋這句話了。

Led by neuroscientists from NYU School of Medicine and published online July 31 in eLife, the study argues that humans recognize what they are looking at by combining current sensory stimuli with comparisons to images stored in memory.

7-31發(fā)表在Elife網(wǎng)的一項由紐約大學(xué)醫(yī)學(xué)院的神經(jīng)科學(xué)家領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的研究，認(rèn)為人類當(dāng)前的感官刺激會和刻印在記憶力的圖像相比較，最后識別所看到的東西。

"Our findings provide important new details about how experience alters the content-specific activity in brain regions not previously linked to the representation of images by nerve cell networks," says senior study author Biyu He, PhD, assistant professor in the departments of Neurology, Radiology, and Neuroscience and Physiology.

神經(jīng)科學(xué)系副教授Biyu He博士表示，這項研究發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個關(guān)于經(jīng)驗如何改變大腦中某一區(qū)域特定活動的重要細(xì)節(jié)。在之前的研究中，人們就已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)這塊區(qū)域與通過神經(jīng)網(wǎng)絡(luò)傳輸進(jìn)來的圖像沒有關(guān)聯(lián)。

"The work also supports the theory that what we recognize is influenced more by past experiences than by newly arriving sensory input from the eyes," says He, part of the Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Health.

NYLangOne健康神經(jīng)科學(xué)研究所的他說：“我們所謂“看見”的東西，實際上更多地受到過去經(jīng)歷的影響，而不是來自視覺的輸入。。”

She says this idea becomes more important as evidence mounts that hallucinations suffered by patients with post-traumatic stress disorder or schizophrenia occur when stored representations of past images overwhelm what they are looking at presently.

這個結(jié)論對于現(xiàn)今來說變得越來越重要，因為它可以作為證據(jù)來證明，患有PTSD和精神分裂癥的患者產(chǎn)生幻覺的原因是，烙印在腦海中過往經(jīng)歷壓倒性地戰(zhàn)勝了他們眼前的事物。

A key question in neurology is about how the brain perceives, for instance, that a tiger is nearby based on a glimpse of orange amid the jungle leaves. If the brains of our ancestors matched this incomplete picture with previous danger, they would be more likely to hide, survive and have descendants. Thus, the modern brain finishes perception puzzles without all the pieces.

神經(jīng)學(xué)中一個關(guān)鍵的問題是，大腦是如何感知事物的。例如，我們的祖先發(fā)現(xiàn)茂密的灌木中露出一絲橘色，他們便認(rèn)為老虎就在附近。如果他們的大腦能夠?qū)⑦@一小塊圖像與之前所遇到的威脅相比較，他們就能提前感知到危險的逼近，從而迅速作出反應(yīng)獲得生存的機(jī)會。

Most past vision research, however, has been based on experiments wherein clear images were shown to subjects in perfect lighting, says He. The current study instead analyzed visual perception as subjects looked at black-and-white images degraded until they were difficult to recognize. Nineteen subjects were shown 33 such obscured "Mooney images" - 17 of animals and 16 manmade objects - in a particular order. They viewed each obscured image six times, then a corresponding clear version once to achieve recognition, and then blurred images again six times after. Following the presentation of each blurred image, subjects were asked if they could name the object shown.

在過去的視覺研究中，提供給受試者的圖像都是清晰而且光照很好的。He表示，新的研究分析了視覺的感知能力，受試者會看著黑白的圖像逐漸變模糊，直到看不清楚。總共有33張這種“門尼圖像”被展示給受試者，受試者們首先會看六次模糊的圖像，然后再看一次清晰的圖像，接著又看六次模糊的圖像。在這么一個過程之后，研究人員會詢問受試者能否說出圖像的名稱。

After seeing the clear version of each image, the study subjects were more than twice as likely to recognize what they were looking at when again shown the obscured version as they were of recognizing it before seeing the clear version. They had been "forced" to use a stored representation of clear images, called priors, to better recognize related, blurred versions, says He.

試驗結(jié)果表明，受試者們在看過清晰圖像后識別出來的可能性是之前的兩倍多。他們會不自主地使用腦海中儲存的清晰圖像來對應(yīng)，從而更好地識別模糊的圖像。