Lea Peterson

2/2/2021
ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE

Lesson 3 Homework
  
Answer the following questions about the videos in this lesson: 
First video: How your brain predictions interfere with what you see | Georg Keller. 
1. What causes people to see the striped dress differently, either gold and white or black and
blue?
We see the dress differently because of the prediction our brain makes about how it will
look, which is largely due to its context. Depending on the assumptions our brain makes
we will see it as either gold and white or black and blue.
  
2. Give an example that demonstrates why it important for the brain to predict what might
happen next?
If there was an object flying towards you or falling from a great height, when you moved
out of the way that is a form of predicting what is going to happen in the future and
reacting to protect yourself.
  

Second Video: Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality | Anil Seth2.  

1. What does the ‘rubber hand’ illusion demonstrate about how we perceive our own bodies? 
It demonstrates that what we perceive as being part of our body is based on another of
these brain predictions or controlled hallucinations that are based on a combination of
what we take in through multiple senses (in this case feel and vision)
  
2. Define Interoception and explain why is it important for helping keep us alive? 
Interoception is our sense of the body from inside. It is our sense of how our organs and
the internal parts of our body are functioning. This is of course important because if we
are not in touch with our internal self we can’t know if we are in pain, in danger, sick,
anxious, etc.
  

Third Video: Time and the brain: the illusion of now | Hinze Hogendoorn 

1. In order to create a smooth conscious experience; how does the brain compensate for the
time it needs to process information? 
It makes predictions of the present moment from the future which is really the brain
predicting backwards to fill the time during which it was processing.
  
2. Why is it so difficult to hit a house fly in mid-air? 
Because a fly moves randomly and has no predictable path, so our brain cannot predict
where it will be by the time our hand or fly swatter reaches it.
  
Fourth Video: The Hosts of 'Brain Games' Trick Our Staff!  - “Ellen Show”  
1. Explain what happens in the gift shop in terms of predictions and what actually happens? In
other words, why don’t the customers notice that the cashier has changed during their
purchase? 
It’s because the people’s brains are predicting who will appear in front of them based on
what they expect to happen, and then when that reality is different they may not notice
because they have already projected what they expect.