Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 100 of 171
Top-down attention and the invisible gorilla
In cognitive science Kant and Nietzsche are mostly ignored and the view of the mind as representational prevails.51 The closest we might find to Kant’s idea is sometimes referred to as top-down and bottom-up processing. Top-down processing includes our expectations, our attention, our prior knowledge, and our goals, which are all somehow represented by our brains, typically in the more frontal regions. This includes the model we have of ourselves. These then constrain the bottom-up signals we get from our visual cortex, auditory cortex, and olfactory cortex. The interplay of top-down and bottom-up processes determines whether we become conscious of something. There is the well-known example of the video with the gorilla and the basketball team. Viewers are given the task of counting the number of times a group of players pass the ball. Meanwhile, a person in a gorilla suit runs between the players in plain sight. Viewers are good at counting the passes, but most do not notice the gorilla.