How We See, How We Feel: Exploring Human Perception
By Dr. Michael West Jr., Johns Hopkins University Publication Date 4th October 2025 08:00
Image Credit: John Hopkins University
By Anne Canal
In his absorbing lecture How We See, How We Feel, Dr. Michael West Jr. of Johns Hopkins University invites us to reconsider one of science’s oldest mysteries: how the brain turns light, texture, and motion into lived experience. What begins as a simple investigation into vision and touch unfolds into a profound exploration of how perception and emotion intertwine — how we don’t just see the world, but feel it into coherence.
West’s talk bridges experimental psychology, computational neuroscience, and philosophy of mind with a storyteller’s clarity. He demonstrates how the brain integrates sight and sensation not as isolated inputs, but as a unified, dynamic prediction of what might come next. This predictive, multisensory dance, he argues, allows humans to move seamlessly through an uncertain world.
“Perception,” West notes, “is less a recording than a construction — a best guess that keeps updating itself.”
Through carefully designed experiments and vivid real-world examples, the lecture reveals how discrepancies between what we expect and what we sense — the small shocks and illusions of everyday life — help us map reality. These moments of mismatch, West suggests, are where the brain’s deepest learning occurs. Along the way, he touches on the emotional coloring of perception, showing how feelings modulate what we notice and what we ignore.
What makes How We See, How We Feel exceptional is not only its scientific precision but its emotional resonance. West’s delivery captures the humanity of neuroscience: the curiosity, fallibility, and wonder behind every perception. For viewers, the lecture offers more than information — it offers introspection, an awareness that the boundary between sensing and feeling may be thinner than we ever imagined.
For anyone fascinated by the meeting of brain, body, and experience, this lecture is a concise, illuminating journey into how perception shapes what it means to be human.