PSYCH101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Visual System, Curare, Retina

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Alan Morgan

Document Summary

Visual system tends to assume that the small thing is the thing that is moving (i. e. when large clouds move past the moon, it appears as though the moon is moving). There is an illusion that causes us to underestimate the speed of large things (i. e. trains). Distinguishing real movement from motion that is produced by voluntary eye movements: Corollary discharge theory: when you give your eye muscles a command to move you also send out a corollary signal (a copy of the signal) to the comparator (a thing that makes comparisons in the brain). Because the position on the retina stays the same, but you are making an eye movement: curare experiment: curare gets in the way of acetylcholine being picked up and causes paralysis. Curare prevents you from making an eye movement. Experimenter paralyzed himself and formed an intention to move his eyes, he tried to move his eyes (but couldn t), and the image jumped.