Illusions: What's in a Face?

This is the ninth article in the Mind Matters series on the neuroscience behind visual illusions

Coffee Face Our face-detection neural machinery can be overloaded. There’s a man’s face hidden in this image. But before we spill the beans about its location, look around and see if you can find it yourself... Image courtesy Frits Bonjernoor
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
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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...
Happy Pouting Hybrid effects can be also created with realistic photos, as in this image by Oliva and Antonio Torralba at MIT. The three women look sad at close range, but happy when observed from far away... Aude Oliva and Antonio Torralba, MIT
Dr. Angry and Mr. Calm MIT vision scientist Aude Oliva and University of Glasgow researcher Philippe Schyns created this illusion by producing hybrids of two images. The left picture shows Dr. Angry, and the picture on the right Mr... Aude Oliva, MIT and Philippe Schyns, University of Glasgow
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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)
The Illusion of Sex The Illusion of Sex, by Harvard psychologist Richard Russell, won Third Prize at the 2009 Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest. The two side-by-side faces are perceived as male (right) and female (left)... Richard Russell/Gettysburg College

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