In this NY Times article, researchers discover that "lost-hiker déjà vu" does exist.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/science/21circles.html. An excerpt: Dr. Souman, who studies multisensory perception, and his colleagues tracked the movements of volunteers sent into the wilds of a German forest and the desert sands of Tunisia. As long as the sun or moon <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/moon/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> was out, the volunteers were able to walk in a straight line, more or less. But on cloudy days or when there was no moon, they looped back on themselves, often several times. Under those conditions, Dr. Souman said, the brain appears to be lacking a fundamental visual cue to help make sense of the jumble of other data it is receiving. "The brain has different sources of information for almost everything," said Dr. Souman, who admitted to having walked in circles for hours once in the urban jungle that is Istanbul. There is a complicated interplay of different senses, he said. Those cues - images flowing over the retina, the sense of acceleration or turning in the inner ear, even how the muscles and bones are moving - are combined in the brain to give a sense of where the body is going. "But all those information sources are kind of relative," Dr. Souman said. "They don't tell you you are moving in the same direction as an hour ago." For that, a view of the sun or moon or a prominent landmark like a distant mountaintop seems necessary. "You need those kinds of absolute cues," he said. -- Sue Frantz <http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/> Highline Community College Psychology, Coordinator Des Moines, WA 206.878.3710 x3404 [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology, Associate Director Project Syllabus <http://teachpsych.org/otrp/syllabi/syllabi.php> APA Division 2: Society for the Teaching of Psychology <http://teachpsych.org/otrp/syllabi/syllabi.php> APA's p...@cc Committee <http://www.apa.org/ed/pcue/ptatcchome.html> --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
