Wertheimer-Kolloquium

Dancing chickens and gorillas in the lung: If I can see so much, why do I miss so much?

Jeremy M. Wolfe
PhD, Professor of Ophthalmology & Radiology, Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's Hospital, Visual Attention Lab, 64 Sidney St. Suite. 170, Cambridge, MA  02139-4170

Termin: 28.01.2015 Zeit: 16 Uhr c.t. Ort: Campus Westend, PEG 3.G129

When you open your eyes on a new scene, you immediately see something. You can understand the basic ‘gist’ of that scene within a fraction of a second. You can remember that scene for days after a just a few seconds exposure. Nevertheless, we can easily show that you are ‘blind’ or at least remarkably amnesic about very basic aspects of what you have just seen. I will attempt to explain this seemingly contradictory collection of abilities and limits. Moreover, I will discuss the impact of these aspects of normal human vision and attention on important tasks like airport security and cancer screening.