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visual perception

·October 15, 2025·7 min read

Why Your Brain and Mine Agree on What We See

A new study reveals how uniquely wired human brains can perceive the world in strikingly similar ways. Researchers recorded live neural activity in epilepsy patients and found that while each person’s neurons respond differently to the same image, the relationships between those neural responses remain consistent across individuals.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·October 6, 2025·6 min read

AI Images That Change When Rotated Reveal How the Mind Sees

Researchers have developed AI-generated “visual anagrams” — images that transform into entirely new objects when rotated — to explore how the brain processes perception. Unlike traditional optical illusions, these rotating images allow scientists to isolate how people interpret size, emotion, and animacy in visual information.

Featured Neuroscience

·September 15, 2025·5 min read

Illusion-Making Neurons Show How the Brain Constructs Reality

Scientists have discovered specialized IC-encoder neurons that make the brain “see” illusions, such as squares or triangles that aren’t truly there. These neurons receive top-down instructions from higher brain areas and then fill in missing contours in the visual cortex, actively constructing what we perceive.

This shows electrical outlets that look like faces.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·July 25, 2025·3 min read

Face-Like Objects Hijack Our Attention More Than Real Gazes

Seeing faces in objects—known as face pareidolia—triggers a powerful attentional response, according to a new study. Researchers compared how people react to real averted gazes versus imagined gazes from face-like objects and found both draw attention, but through different mechanisms.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·July 11, 2025·5 min read

Inverse Graphics: How Your Brain Turns 2D Into 3D

Researchers have uncovered how primate brains transform flat, 2D visual inputs into rich, 3D mental representations of objects. This process, dubbed “inverse graphics,” works by reversing the principles of computer graphics — starting from a 2D view, through an intermediate stage, to a 3D model.

Featured Neuroscience Neuroscience Videos Visual Neuroscience

·May 12, 2025·5 min read

How Your Brain Splits Space to Double Its Perception Power

Despite popular myths about left- and right-brain thinking, research shows the hemispheres truly do divide up certain tasks—especially visual spatial perception. A new review reveals how each hemisphere processes the opposite side of your field of vision, not only early on but even in higher-level cognition like attention and memory.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·February 21, 2025·4 min read

Every Breath You Take Alters Your Visual Perception

Researchers have discovered that breathing affects pupil size, with the pupil being smallest during inhalation and largest during exhalation. This newly identified mechanism is independent of external stimuli and could influence vision by alternating between detail enhancement and object detection.

Autism Featured Neuroscience

·December 9, 2024·6 min read

Why Autistic Children View Faces Differently

Children with autism exhibit distinct eye movement patterns when viewing faces, particularly in the initial stages of visual processing. A new study found that autistic children are more likely to use an exploratory eye movement pattern, focusing on broader areas rather than immediately fixating on facial features. This behavior may be linked to reduced visual sensitivity to social cues and is associated with autism-related challenges in social communication.

This shows an ape looking at a computer monitor.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Visual Neuroscience

·November 26, 2024·3 min read

Great Apes’ Gaze Reveals Human-Like Event Perception

Great apes track events involving agents and patients, like humans, suggesting shared cognitive mechanisms. When watching video clips, apes alternated their gaze between agents (e.g., a cat) and patients (e.g., a mouse), similar to adult humans, though apes paid more attention to background details.

This shows a person playing a trumpet with sound waves coming out of it.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·October 4, 2024·4 min read

Can We Hear Magic? The Struggle to Create Auditory Illusions

A new study explores why magic tricks based solely on sound are rare, despite the many auditory illusions we encounter in everyday life. Researchers suggest that the difficulty lies in how the brain processes visual versus auditory information, with vision being more trusted.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·July 15, 2024·6 min read

OpenScope Project Unveils Brain’s Secrets

The OpenScope program is investigating neural activity through four new projects, exploring topics like psilocybin's effects, motion perception, visual texture recognition, and subtle changes in appearance. By using advanced imaging techniques in mice, researchers aim to understand how the brain processes these complex functions.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology Visual Neuroscience

·July 8, 2024·6 min read

Handedness and Vision May Reveal Hidden Social Strengths

A new study shows that human biases in handedness and visual field processing have social and cognitive implications. Researchers found that people with a reversed bias (left hand, right visual) are more likely to have social difficulties and conditions like autism or ADHD. The study reveals that aligning biases may have social benefits, much like in animals. These findings could lead to early screening and interventions for neurodevelopmental disorders.