Multistability In Perception

This book starts with an introduction to the basic concepts of multistability, then illustrates how multistability arises in different systems and explains the main mechanisms of multistability emergence. A special attention is given to noise which can convert a multistable deterministic system to a monostable stochastic one. Furthermore, the most important applications of multistability in different areas of science, engineering and technology are given attention throughout the book, including electronic circuits, lasers, secure communication, and human perception. The book aims to provide a first approach to multistability for readers, who are interested in understanding its fundamental concepts and applications in several fields. This book will be useful not only to researchers and engineers focusing on interdisciplinary studies, but also to graduate students and technicians. Both theoreticians and experimentalists will rely on it, in fields ranging from mathematics and laser physics to neuroscience and astronomy. The book is intended to fill a gap in the literature, to stimulate new discussions and bring some fundamental issues to a deeper level of understanding of the mechanisms underlying self-organization of matter and world complexity.

Media literacy is often focused on evaluating the message rather than reflecting on the medium. Bringing together postphenomenology, media ecology, posthumanism, and complexity theory, Richard Lewis’s book offers a method for such a reflection and shows how our everyday media environments constitute us as (post)human subjects: one that is becoming and constitutes through relations – also with our media technologies. An original interdisciplinary effort – including for example the term 'intrasubjective mediation' – and a must-read book for everyone interested in how we become with and through technologies. Prof Mark Coeckelbergh, University of Vienna Technology, Media Literacy, and the Human Subject is a clearly and concisely written book that employs a fruitful transdisciplinary approach. It at once offers an excellent grounding in the literature, whilst simultaneously developing a useful tool for students to reflect deeply and critically upon their own engagement with media. Thoroughly recommended. Alexander Thomas, University of East London What does it mean to be media literate in today’s world? How are we transformed by the many media infrastructures around us? We are immersed in a world mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs). From hardware like smartphones, smartwatches, and home assistants to software like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, our lives have become a complex, interconnected network of relations. Scholarship on media literacy has tended to focus on developing the skills to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages without considering or weighing the impact of the technological medium—how it enables and constrains both messages and media users. Additionally, there is often little attention paid to the broader context of interrelations which affect our engagement with media technologies. This book addresses these issues by providing a transdisciplinary method that allows for both practical and theoretical analyses of media investigations. Informed by postphenomenology, media ecology, philosophical posthumanism, and complexity theory the author proposes both a framework and a pragmatic instrument for understanding the multiplicity of relations that all contribute to how we affect—and are affected by—our relations with media technology. The author argues persuasively that the increased awareness provided by this posthuman approach affords us a greater chance for reclaiming some of our agency and provides a sound foundation upon which we can then judge our media relations. This book will be an indispensable tool for educators in media literacy and media studies, as well as academics in philosophy of technology, media and communication studies, and the post-humanities.

This textbook goes beyond introductory sensory perception by incorporating supplementary electronic materials to demonstrate the parallels between both hearing and seeing. Each chapter intermixes seeing and hearing processes so that students can easily understand that perceptual organization is the same across different kinds of sensations and modalities. Figures illustrating visual organization are paired with sound files demonstrating the analogous auditory organization. While most books on sensation and/or perception treat the senses individually there is growing awareness of just how important multisensory integration is to understanding the connection between sensory perception and cognition.

"Nervous systems do not live by the rate code alone. The ceaseless activities of groups of neurons are choregraphed into waves, oscillations, synchronized rhythms, and transient coalitions; it is these that underlie behavior, memory, and conscious perception. This exuberant manifesto masterfully summarizes and reflects upon the relevant evidence of these patterns from all manner of brains, small and large." --

Ambiguity in Mind and Nature is the result of cognitive multistability, the phenomenon in which an unchanging stimulus, usually visual, gives rise in the subject to an oscillating perceptual interpretation. The vase/face picture is one of the most famous examples. In this book scientists from many disciplines including physics, biology, psychology, maths and computer science, present recent progress in this fascinating area of cognitive science. Using the phenomenon of multistability as a paradigm they seek to understand how meaning originates in the brain as a consequence of cognitive processes. New advances are achieved by applying concepts such as self-organization, chaos theory and complex systems to the latest results of psychological and neurophysical experiments.

This book examines the interconnections between art, phenomenology, and cognitive studies. Contributors question the binary oppositions generally drawn between visuality and agency, sensing and thinking, phenomenal art and politics, phenomenology and structuralism, and subjective involvement and social belonging. Instead, they foreground the many ways that artists ask us to consider how we sense, think, and act in relation to a work of art.