Another forum I visit had a topic on this article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all It's about a woman who had a head scratch that was so irritating she couldn't stop. But it has some really interesting things about the brain. Including a little snippet about how we view the world around us. Basically what you view around you on a daily basis is potentially 90% memories, and only 10% real new data delivered to your brain. Perception is a strange thing to think about. That wall in your house that you just see out of the corner of your eye... probably just put there by your brain from what it remembers of the area on previous occasions that you walked through that room.
so presumably when a born blind person receives a bionic eye, the images they see are poor not necessarily because of the limitations of the technology in the implant, but also because they lack that stored information?
One anomaly with perception that I've had several times is when I'm practicing piano in one of the college practice rooms, I think I'm seeing people watching me as I play, and then when I look, it's some inanimate object. I'm not paranoid about people watching me, I've been in several recitals, and even had my own senior recital, even though I'm not a music major (yet, possibly. I'm flipping between music and civil engineering. I kinda prefer CE, but with how I've done in math... Of course that was just my first semester, so I'll see how I do in math this semester, and base my decision on that. I can't do both because the CE course is 3+2 with a different college). Although this only seemed to start after I was told by some people that they heard me playing, and decided to just sit nearby and listen, so that might be a part of it.
