Science Forums 2

[alexander]

Michael, the detection of motion is not a male or female trait, its in our nature. Back in time, in hunter-gatherer society, detecting motion was both predatory, when men hunted, and defensive, women could be attacked by animals just as easily as men, thus the mind tuned to detect moving things and focus on them. Another reason why, is because our eyes also help us balance, we see and smell and hear in 3d, our eyes constantly adjust to range things, which helps the body ballance. This is the reason why astronauts, while their inner ear might not work, use eyes much more when they get back on earth. It is shown that if you present them with a horizon that moves, the body does not know how to balance at all and completely fails at that task, while if they look out on a stable horizon, they may still have problems walking, but its much easier for them to stay up.

Actually this motion detection and ranging is such an intrinsic part of our vision and perception system, that a significant amount of brain power is set aside for that very process. In an experiment, in which scientists were tracking brain activity, if a subject is asked to focus on the words that appear on an empty screen, you could see visionary response, once a word is shown, you see how the brain processes the information and track that to vocalizing, in a pretty clear pattern. If you add random moving pixels to that screen, you can see constant activity of the brain, regardless of whether the human is trying or not trying to pay attention, the brain is constantly interpreting those moving pixels subconsciously. This makes it a lot harder to concentrate on the words, too...