visual-perception

Study: Depression affects visual perception … making it more accurate

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The bright­ness of Fig­ures A and B is exact­ly the same, but they are per­ceived dif­fer­ent­ly due to a dif­fer­ence in the back­ground. This illu­sion was per­ceived sim­i­lar­ly by the patients and healthy con­trol sub­jects. The con­trast of Fig­ures C and D is exact­ly the same as well, but the per­cep­tion of this illu­sion was weak­er among the depressed patients than the con­trol sub­jects. (Salmela et al, J. Psy­chi­a­try Neu­rosci, 2021)

Depres­sion affects visu­al per­cep­tion (press release by Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsinki):

Researchers spe­cialised in psy­chi­a­try and psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki inves­ti­gat­ed the effects of depres­sion on visu­al per­cep­tion. The study con­firmed that the pro­cess­ing of visu­al infor­ma­tion is altered in depressed peo­ple, a phe­nom­e­non most like­ly linked with the pro­cess­ing of infor­ma­tion in the cere­bral cor­tex. [Read more…] about Study: Depres­sion affects visu­al per­cep­tion … mak­ing it more accurate

If you’re a fruit fly, tease your mind with this optical illusion. Humans welcome too.

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Rotat­ing snake illu­sion. Cred­it: Akiyoshi Kitaoka

Please move your gaze around the image, rest­ing from time to time.

Then, fix your gaze at a point, and see what happens.

You will prob­a­bly first see ‘snakes’ rotat­ing, some clock­wise, oth­ers anti­clock­wise, and then stop. [Read more…] about If you’re a fruit fly, tease your mind with this opti­cal illu­sion. Humans wel­come too.

Visual Illusions in Art and Science

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The fol­low­ing is an excerpt from “Sleights of Minds: What the Neu­ro­science of Mag­ic Reveals about Our Every­day Decep­tions.” by Stephen L. Mack­nik and Susana Mar­tinez-Conde with San­dra Blakeslee, pub­lished by Hen­ry Holt and Co., LLC © 2010 by  Stephen L. Mack­nik and Susana Martinez-Conde.

Visu­al illu­sions are fas­ci­nat­ing. They have both been used by artists and stud­ied by sci­en­tists. Read on to learn how art can help sci­ence under­stand the secrets of how we per­ceive the world around use.

Chap­ter 3. The Broth­er who Faked a Dome
Visu­al Illu­sions in Art and Science

Vision sci­en­tists like us seek to under­stand how we see, from both a psy­cho­log­i­cal and a bio­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, and our dis­ci­pline has a long tra­di­tion of study­ing visu­al artists such as painters and sculp­tors. Sci­en­tists did not invent the vast major­i­ty of visu­al illu­sions— painters did. The visu­al arts often pre­ced­ed the visu­al sci­ences in the dis­cov­ery of fun­da­men­tal vision prin­ci­ples, through the appli­ca­tion of method­i­cal— although per­haps more intu­itive— research techniques.
Like­wise, magi­cians— as the world’s pre­mier artists of atten­tion and aware­ness— have made their own dis­cov­er­ies. This is what drew us to their foot­lights, card tables, and street per­for­mances. We want magi­cians to help us under­stand cog­ni­tive illu­sions in the same way that artists have revealed insights about visu­al illu­sions. And in fact visu­al illu­sions are a bit like mag­ic tricks on the page. In this chap­ter we’ll take a brief tour of some of our favorites. [Read more…] about Visu­al Illu­sions in Art and Science