Post #3068915

@cczona@hachyderm.io Filling in for parts of the brain, or neural network, that are missing, either temporarily or permanently, by hallucinating (when a machine) or confabulating (the polite word we use for human brains doing the same thing) up something that 'seems to fit', if only superficially so, appears to be a fundamental mechanic of how networks of neurons work. It's not intended, at least for the synthetic ones, but it emerges fairly reliably. Covering up the blind spot in mammalian eyes is probably the most common use case, but in rare edge cases, extreme outcomes such as the Anton–Babinski syndrome, or anosognosia of cortical blindness, have been known to arise. This particular one is associated with focal damage to specific parts of the occipital lobes, and manifests itself as a patient being blind, but their brain pretending that they can still see, by confabulating an entire simularcrum of the patient's ordinary environment. It's the weird kind of brain condition where a clinical sign can be found on the patient's legs, because if the patient is capable of walking, this condition typically leads to them frequently bumping into things and getting unusually many hematomas on their legs. (The brain may also try to confabulate away the high rate of bumping into things, btw.) @pojntfx@mastodon.social