This week a new article on illusions from the Golden Age, written by Susana Martinez-Conde and me, came out: Scientific American Mind . The Victorian era was a watershed in brain science and the study of illusions and perception served as the cornerstone for the field of Psychology that grew from it. ...
Haunted by a deceased brother, whom he saw as a twin, the Spanish artist filled his work with double meanings
A long lost painting called "La Bella Principessa" reveals the earliest known use of his famous enigmatic smile technique from before the Mona Lisa was painted. The master seemed to intuit that the visual system is blurred in the periphery, and used the illusion to heightened effect in his art...
There is no governmental institution more dedicated to rational thought and fairness than the justice system, but a new study shows that illusory facial perception is clouding the minds of our judges and juries, who can potentially decide to kill people based on their appearance. ...
Can the output of the critters in your gut make your world illusory? Yes. And gassy, too.
Dozens of labs are investigating the internet phenomenon and developing new explanations
Our new column article (with co-author Bevil Conway, of Wellesley College & MIT)—on the topic of The Dress—came out on newsstands in Scientific American: Mind this week...
This week the first wave of research from scientific journals has begun to be published; Current Biology has posted a trio of papers by three different prominent competing color vision labs, each describing their initial studies of The Dress...
These illusions explore how magicians, photographers and performance artists lead us to see motion where none exists
To celebrate our new article on implied motion in Scientific American Mind, here's a terrific movie of a chocolate zoetrope.
Neural pathologies have shaped great art throughout history
This week is Brain Awareness Week 2015! A number of great events are taking place around the world to promote public education of the brain and to support research in neurological and psychiatric diseases...
I don't think that the reason people see the dress differently from each other is an interesting brain process. Rather, it is a mundane differences in how people have viewed the image on their electronic display screens (phones, tablets, laptops, etc)...
The brain region underlying motivation and pleasure are directly interconnected in a loop that we neurophysiologists refer to as a circuit.
One of the very strange effects of reverse perspective is that the images seem to follow you as you pass by them. As if, while you are observing them, the pictures are watching you back...
iLuminate mixes dance, light, and computerized timing to create a unique amalgam of illusory perception. Imagine that all the neon in Times Square got together and performed Stomp.
There's a new 8-week course available on visual perception taught by Dale Purves of Duke University. It's available for free and starts on January 7th, 2015.
Your brain fills in all kinds of visual gaps
Concentration affects how we detect and perceive objects and scenes
Groh launches her book with a BIG FAT LIE: she tells us that nine-tenths of our brain power is spent determining where things are. Then she immediately admits that she just made that up, but that she'd dedicate the rest of the book to explaining why she thinks its true...
