TASS, August 31. Specialists of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) have discovered a peculiarity of the human brain; during visual perception of three-dimensional objects, it engages the frontal lobes (which are responsible for higher cognitive functions) when the degree of ambiguity of the image increases, the IKBFU the press service announced.
Several studies of the human brain, which were conducted by employees of the Center for Neurotechnologies and Machine Learning at IKBFU, are designed to help pupils and students to better cope with the academic load and build individual educational plans in the future and can also be used to help people with mental disorders. In pursuit of these goals, the researchers were interested in learning how the brain perceives familiar and unfamiliar information, especially three-dimensional images "with perspective." The so-called Necker cube was chosen as such an "ambiguous" image - a drawing of a transparent cube, which in principle can be perceived both "from top to bottom" and vice versa. Moreover, modern graphic technique allows designers to make the image unambiguous.
The head of the study, chief researcher of the center Alexander Khramov noted that it is typical for a person to perceive Necker's cube from top to bottom (probably based on everyday life experience, when most of the objects at home and in the office are located below human height). However, there are psychological nuances here.
"In our study, we asked observers to voluntarily determine the orientation of the Necker cube by varying its ambiguity from low to high. In addition, electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were analyzed to identify potential biomarkers that could explain the observed perceptual shift," Khramov noted.
The study confirmed that humans are more likely to perceive the Necker cube "top-down," which is evident from the shorter reaction times. However, when viewing images with a high degree of ambiguity, the observer's confidence drops. And EEG signals indicate that if a more obvious case mainly involved occipital lobes of the brain, considered to be designed for simpler operations, then an increasingly ambiguous image forced the brain to mostly use the frontal lobes.
The research results may help assess the development of spatial intelligence as well as the psychological and emotional state of students and play an important role in developing educational programs in the future. The identified EEG markers may find application in various biofeedback systems based on brain-computer interfaces for rehabilitation and training, in psychology and neuropedagogy. The research is conducted within the framework of the Priority 2030 program launched by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (National Project "Science and Universities").