Rereading my last post, I kind of got cortical magnification–for lack of a better word–wrong. It’s odd, because I’ve actually had a good amount of exposure to cortical magnification. It’s pretty much the phrase to describe the disproportionately huge amount of cortical space devoted to a very small percentage of our visual field.
The training of our eyes upon a fovea is fairly important for us to distinguish details and such, but as I understand it, different people train their eyes to different degrees. For example, I understand that people who play copious amounts of video games tend to have slightly larger visual foveas, but even less cortical space dedicated to the further periphery, i.e. the space beyond a TV screen. Similarly, basketball players and boxers and quarterbacks have far more cortical space devoted to the periphery, given that their sports often require them to react to visual cues without acknowledging them with their eyes (telegraphing in boxing). There are several other examples of the plasticity of the visual system, which I will likely investigate, but only AFTER I have fully prepared for tomorrow’s test.
