Illusions: What's in a Face?
This is the ninth article in the Mind Matters series on the neuroscience behind visual illusions
Illusions: What's in a Face?
- Mooney Faces Our nervous systems are hardwired to detect and process faces rapidly and efficiently, oftentimes with very scarce details available. The pictures in the accompanying slide are often referred to as Mooney faces, after cognitive psychologist Craig Mooney, who used similar images in his research on perception... Aaron Schurger, Princeton University
- Tony Blair Illusion Vision scientist Stuart Anstis of the University of California, San Diego, created this illusion in 2005 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Thatcher illusion. Anstis reasoned that if face-neurons prefer right-side up face-features, they should also be selective for other evolutionarily stable aspects of faces... Stuart Anstis
- Margaret Thatcher Illusion This illusion by Peter Thompson of York University (UK) was a critical discovery in our understanding of face perception. When the illusion was discovered in 1980, scientists already knew that faces were difficult to recognize upside-down... Peter Thompson/University of York
- The Da Vinci Code of Perception Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that images are blurred in the periphery of our vision, and her smile is only seen when blurred. Livingstone solved this mystery by simulating how the visual system sees Mona Lisa’ smile in the far periphery, the near periphery, and the center of our gaze (panels left to right)... Margaret Livingstone, Harvard Medical School
- Mona Lisa Smile Mona Lisa’s captivating smile is perhaps the most renowned art mystery of all time. Margaret Livingstone, a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School, showed that Mona Lisa’s smile appears and disappears due to different visual processes used by the brain to perceive information in the center versus the periphery of our vision...
- Yang’s Iris Illusion This illusion, by vision scientists Jisien Yang and Adrian Schwaninger, was a TOP 10 finalist in the 2008 Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest. It shows that context, such as the shape of the eyelids and face, affects the apparent distance between the irises... Jisien Yang & Adrian schwaninger (University of Zurich)