What happens when a person sees something bizarre, like a UFO?

Copyright 2017, InterAmerica, Inc.

Gilles Fernandez has noted, not blatantly however, that the Zamora drawing of what he saw in 1964 was interceded by neurological patterns and behavior from the time he saw an insignia on the egg-shaped craft and when he drew it for investigators.

I mentioned the significance of this at the Facebook page where he mentioned this but there was no follow up, as far as I can tell, by Gilles or anyone else.

(Gilles is a cognitive behavioral psychologist, so the topic is right up his alley.)

But that is not the point of this effort (posting).

It seems to me that when a person sees something so far out of the ordinary that their brain compensates for the strange thing they have perceived, and there has been studies indicating that this exactly the neurological case.

Thus, when a UFO is witnessed, the person’s brain witnessing, by way of visual perception, will endow the UFO with an assortment of details that are more subjective than objective:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080703145849.htm

“It is well known that a powerful perceptual experience can change the way a person sees things later.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_perception

“The major problem in visual perception is that what people see is not simply a translation of retinal stimuli (i.e., the image on the retina). Thus people interested in perception have long struggled to explain what visual processing does to create what is actually seen.”

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150615

“Everyone has their own unique version of the visual world and there has been growing interest in understanding the way that personality shapes one’s perception.”

That there has been little or no (ufological) studies of the neurological phenomenon is almost baffling, almost because UFO investigation (or research) has been pathetic in the extreme, then and now.

Even persons who are steeped in the appropriate disciplines are disinclined to study what happens when and after a UFO is witnessed.

Jacques Vallee has stated that the UFO witness is key to the explanation of the odd phenomenon, but there has been no rush to really drill down into a person’s observation and how their personality or psychological (neurological) make-up affects their observation.

Not much can be done with past UFO sightings, although there may be a scintilla or residue of information that can still be gleaned.

And today’s UFO sightings are so bland that they don’t bespeak odd or strange allowing for a prosaic (mundane) witness account but, still, a few may be open to neurological scrutiny.

N.B. Image at top from Human Perception Lab at UCLA

RR