异域文化 How Art Made The World 人、艺术、世界 12

All our brains work the same way regardless of who we are or where we are from. Physically, our brains haven't changed since humans first evolved. This means that if our brains are stimulated, say, put into a trance, they'd respond in the same way as the brains of our ancient ancestors. It's an intriguing explanation for the strange patterns, but could it be true?

I've come to London to the Institute of Psychiatry to find out. They are going to try to induce a trance-like effect in my brain.

So Dominic, can you tell us what's inside this box of yours?

Well, what we have here is an apparatus that allows me to stimulate the visual part of your brain in a very specific way.

Dr. Dominic Fitch treats people with a rare type of visual disorder. They don't have a problem with their eyes or such, but with the part of their brain that deals with vision. To investigate their condition, he's designed an unusual device.

That's very simple, essentially sort of goggles with some high intensity LEDs, light emitting diodes that is collected up to the computer which allows me to control the number of flashes I am presenting to you per second. So you just place them over the eyes.

Yeah.

You are going to beam things into my eyeballs.

That's right. Now, you have to keep your eyes close because, as I said, the flashes are rather bright.

Yup.

His patients had reported seeing peculiar shapes and patterns appearing before their eyes. The goggles are designed to induce these images in the brain.

Is it going to hurt?

It's not going to hurt. So, if you had your eyes closed...

Gotten closed.

What are you seeing now?

Right, what I've got now is sort of throbbing blobs if that makes any sense. With a sort of network of very fine, black lines. I'm all right, OK, very very vivid colors. All sort of colors and spectrums seem to be... popping up here. And behind all the color, I can't explain it , sort of like a fishing net, or, very fine black lines linking up, like a honeycomb effect I guess that's what it's like .

Now what happens when I just stimulate one eye?

Ah, electric check board, sorry, chessboard electric chessboard, and that sort of dark reminds me of dance floor as one saw.

Is there color in it or is it black and white?

It's black and white, yeah, very very bright, black and white.

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words to remember:

1. goggle: 防护罩，眼罩， 眼睛突出

(eg.) a goggle-eyed weirdo

2. blob: a big and amorphous mass 大而无形状的块体