Profs & Pints DC: How Our Brains Blind Us

Profs and Pints DC presents: “How Our Brains Blind Us,” a look at our minds’ ability to skew what we see and why we miss what’s right in front of us, with Arryn Robbins, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Richmond and cognitive scientist who researches visual attention.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/brains-blind .]

We like to think of vision as a reliable window into the world, but much of what we “see” is actually constructed by the brain, and much of our visual experience is filtered out without us even noticing.

Learn how visual attention works—and how it can fail us—with Dr. Arryn Robbins, who studies the interaction between the visual stream and representations in memory and whose investigates ways to improve the performance of professional searchers like radiologists, search-and-rescue teams, and airport baggage screeners.

Drawing from current research in visual cognition, neuroscience, and applied perception, she’ll discuss how attention guides perception and how we tend to miss even obvious things when our focus is elsewhere.
You’ll learn how expertise can change what we see (for better or worse) and why birdwatchers and radiologists literally see the world differently.

Dr. Robbins will cite interactive examples and demonstrations that reveal just how much we take for granted in what we “see.” She’ll discuss studies and experiments that have deepened our understanding of how visual perception works and leave you entertained by what we’ve been able to learn from chicken sexers and an experiment involving an “invisible” gorilla.

Important for life in a polarized, digital age, you’ll learn how the same brain processes that filter our vision can make us vulnerable to AI-generated image deception, and how you can train your eye to detect fakes.

It’s a talk you won’t want to miss. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: From “Vertumnus,” a 1591 portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II by the Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo.