On the Couch With ChatGPT

Created by Grok

Eugene (transcript of me incoherently expressing myself in voice mode):

Sometimes when I'm on the verge of dozing and falling asleep at the table during the daytime, it's as if my mind goes back to maybe 40 years ago and I feel like I did then. Now, I'm not sure what I mean by feel, but like it's as if, it's as if I'm back then and I can kind of remember how I felt then. Now, the feeling I'm talking about, it's not like happy or sad or angry or melancholic or joyful. It's like a kind of a, it's a different type of feeling. It's as if there are hundreds of different feelings which aren't like those main ones that we normally experience. It's like moods almost. And the other thing is, when I'm asleep, sometimes I have a similar kind of feeling that I wouldn't have during the daytime. It's not like an emotion, but it's like sensing a smell or seeing a colour. It's difficult to explain because it's not a feeling-, it's not, it's not like being angry or sad or one of the normal emotions we feel.

Big Picture Science Podcast — Your Mind on Movies

Image generated by Bing Image Creator.

Apparently your blood coagulates when you watch a horror movie, preparing you for bleeding. In this podcast episode, we hear why.

Horizontal Line Illusion

Image courtesy illusionist Victoria Skye.

More proof that things aren't always as they seem. Use a ruler to measure and confirm they are straight and horizontal.

Squint and almost close your eyes and they become straight. Or look from a distance and tilt your head sideways. Once the visual cues can't be clearly seen, your brain doesn't make false assumptions.

Robin Perception

© Eugene Brennan

This isn't really a very scientific experiment, well it wasn't really an experiment, but after hand feeding and taming robins every year during the winter, over the last 15 years or so, I've discovered they don't differentiate between people. So once tamed, I've found they'll accept handouts from anyone (well two "participants" in my experiment, so as I say, not scientific) Not sure whether this is because they can't distinguish faces (cats and dogs can), or they just don't care or don't have the mental capacity to do so. Perhaps they just perceive the overall shape of a human? Would someone dressed up in a stick-man costume work?

How do animals differentiate between trees with limbs swaying in the wind or leaves blowing on the ground and genuine threats?
I guess this is why it's safe to handle spiders and other creatures with lesser intelligence if no sudden movements are made. They just identify our hands as surfaces to walk on and don't perceive them as part of a larger organism.

Science Friday Podcast — Oliver Sacks Interview

Created on request by Bing Image Creator

In an interview from 2007, presenter Ira Flatow talks about the brain with the late Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author of Migraine and The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. The latter is a fascinating anthology of case studies of people with various neurological conditions, worth reading. The book is presented as a collection of 24 essays, dealing with loss of brain function and heightened abilities or skills in patients with autism or having prior exposure to drugs.

Ghostly Events in Kildare

The castle at the back of the Silken Thomas pub and restaurant © Eugene Brennan

My grandparents and family were evacuated off the Curragh during WWII and lived in the tower house at the back of the now Silken Thomas pub/inn. As far as I know, this is one of the remaining towers of a more extensive medieval castle, which no longer exists. I remember hearing that skeletons were discovered when foundations were being dug for the cinema, the latter now forming part of the Silken Thomas premises. When we were young we heard stories about poltergeist activity and paranormal events in the castle. According to my father, they had two terrier dogs, which used to bark at blank walls. Beds supposedly also used to move and eventually they had to get the place blessed/exorcised, or so the story goes. I visited Kildare Cathedral a couple of weeks ago and got talking to someone who was checking that there were no people remaining on the grounds before the gates were locked at closing time. I had never been there before, and still haven't seen the inside, although it's primarily a Victorian Gothic Revival structure, only fragments of medieval walls still remaining when it was reconstructed in the 1860s.  Anyway this person said she had also heard stories about supernatural happenings (although these could have been due to my stories which I had been posting on social media over the years and had just done the rounds!)

 

My grandfather Eugene Brennan in front of the Silken Thomas Castle, circa 1944 © Eugene Brennan

I'm sceptical about the paranormal. I think a lot of these type of experiences can be put down to pareidolia (seeing faces in places) which can be either visual or auditory, hallucinations, suggestion, optical illusions etc. Pareidolia is believed to be due to the way our brains are "hardwired" to pick out faces (like the way smartphones can do now) and which in primeval times gave us an edge to be able to spot predators lurking in the undergrowth. I don't believe people necessarily tell lies. They see and experience things they think are supernatural but those things aren't necessarily real. The human mind also creates what we perceive, based on input from our senses. It also interpolates, or "joins the dots", filling in what's not there and the creation in our heads isn't necessarily what's actually "out there". So it can take shortcuts or make guesses.

 

The Chequer Shadow Illusion

 

Here's an example, the chequer shadow illusion. Incredibly, squares marked A and B are the same shade of grey, but influenced by the variation of shades around them. If you don't believe me, Google "Chequer shadow illusion" and download the image. Cut out the squares in your favourite photo editor and paste the pieces onto a white background. Alternatively, use the eyedropper tool to sample the RGB components.

 

 

The Chequer Shadow Illusion. Squares marked "A" and "B" are the same shade of grey. Image attribution: Edward H. Adelson, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

 

Image attribution: Edward H. Adelson, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (Image edited by Eugene Brennan) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

What Do You Think? Is the Paranormal "Real"?

 

Maybe my father made up the stories to entertain us? My grandfather served in the British Army in WWI and although he didn't experience trench warfare (he was in the army service corps or ASC), he had vertigo and it's possible he was also shell shocked. Maybe that was responsible for the seeming movement of beds or other furniture. All those involved are dead now, so we'll never know. The castle was last occupied in 1996.

The Checker Shadow Illusion

Image attribution: Edward H. Adelson, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Our brains are constantly making assumptions as they perceive the world around us, interpreting and interpolating or "joining the dots" when parts of a scene, sound or other input to our senses are missing. Sometimes the brain gets things wrong. Here's an example, the checker shadow illusion. Squares marked A and B are the same shade of grey, but influenced by the variation of shades around them.

If you don't believe me, cut out the squares in your favourite photo editor and paste the pieces onto a white background. Alternatively, use the eyedropper tool to sample the RGB components.

This, along with visual hallucinations and pareidolia (seeing faces in places) are probably responsible for many ghost sightings. 

Image attribution: Edward H. Adelson, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (Image edited to isolate squares A and B)