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An eye-opening view of visual development
The pioneering experiments performed by Hubel and Weisel in the late 1950s and early 60s taught us much about the development of the visual system. We now know, for example, that neurons in the visual...
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You cannot be serious! Perceptual errors by professional tennis referees
The Men’s Final of the 1981 Wimbledon Tennis Championships is one of the most memorable events in sporting history. John McEnroe, who was playing against Bjorn Borg, famously challenged one of the...
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Visual images reconstructed from brain activity
Recent advances in functional neuroimaging have enabled researchers to predict perceptual experiences with a high degree of accuracy. For example, it is possible to determine whether a subject is...
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Reading the contents of working memory
Working memory refers to the process by which small amounts of information relevant to the task at hand are retained for short periods of time. For example, before cellular phones became so ubiquitous,...
View ArticleThe waterfall illusion can be transferred between vision and touch
If you look at a waterfall for about 30 seconds, and then shift your gaze to a nearby stationary object, such as a rock or a tree, that object will seem to drift slowly upwards. This well known optical...
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Nature’s fibre optics
THE retina has an inverted structure which seems ill-suited to its function: the rod and cone cells, which are sensitive to light, and which convert light energy into electrical impulses, point...
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Visual analgesia: Seeing the body reduces pain
VISION is now well known to modulate the senses of touch and pain. Various studies have shown that looking at oneself being touched can enhance tactile acuity, so that one can discriminate between two...
View ArticleThe illusion of time: Perceiving the effect before the cause
A novel temporal illusion, in which the cause of an event is perceived to occur after the event itself, provides some insight into the brain mechanisms underlying conscious perception. The illusion,...
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Implied motion in Hokusai Manga
Click to enlarge images ARTISTS employ a number of different techniques to represent implied motion in two-dimensional works. One of these, commonly used in posters, comics and animation, is the...
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Box jellyfish stable-eyes vision to hunt prey
Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature) was a landmark in biological illustration. Published in 1904, it was lavishly illustrated with 100 exquisitely detailed lithographic plates,...
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