Was the Shoe Thrown at George W. Bush Life Imitating Science?
Posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 and is filed under Political & General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Was the shoe thrown at George W. Bush life imitating science? Well, former President George W. Bush participated in a scientific experiment without even knowing it, the human’s dual vision system.
Neuroscientists at the University of Washington were delighted when the former president ducked when shoes were thrown at him, while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki didn’t flinch. It’s not very polite to be happy about shoes being thrown at another person–or any living creature, for that matter–but these scientists had a good reason: George W. Bush confirmed an experiment they were working on.
The scientists suggest that there are two independent pathways in the human visual system. “The original idea proposed is that one system guides your actions and the other guides your perception,” said Jeffrey Lin, a UW psychology doctoral student and lead author of a paper. “The interesting part is the ‘action’ system allows the brain to ‘see’ things your eyes do not perceive.”
“When we throw two balls at you with very similar trajectories, they may look the same to your perceptual system, but your brain can automatically calculate which one is more threatening and trigger a dodging motion before you’ve even realized what has happened,” said Lin.
The scientist had conducted other experiments, similar to a baseball player’s experience when he goes up to bat. If the ball comes at him (and not the bat), he would flinch to get out of harm’s way.
The National Eye Institute funded the research. Co-authors of the study are Scott Murray and Geoffrey Boynton, UW psychology assistant and associate professors.
