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visual perception

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.

This shows a face covered in different colored paints.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·June 13, 2024·6 min read

Facial Expressions Alter Memory of Color

Facial expressions influence memory color effect, with angry and fearful faces more strongly affected than neutral faces. Participants perceived achromatic angry and fearful faces as red-yellow, indicating that expression impacts color memory. This research highlights how emotions and memory color are interconnected. Future studies aim to explore attention toward different facial expressions and colors.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·June 11, 2024·5 min read

Brain Misleads Sight: New Insights on Visual Illusions

Researchers discovered new variations of the visual saltation illusion, where rapid light flashes in peripheral vision create perceptual errors. Their study shows that our brains misplace the second flash near the midpoint, regardless of its actual position.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology Visual Neuroscience

·June 11, 2024·5 min read

Trauma Shapes How We See: Negative Life Events Linked to Imagery Perception

Personal trauma impacts how people perceive distressing imagery, like decorated masks. The study showed that those with traumatic histories had stronger emotional reactions to trauma-related images compared to neutral ones.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·May 17, 2024·5 min read

Brain’s Arousal Fine-Tunes Visual Signals

Arousal levels directly influence how the brain processes visual information. Researchers found that the firing patterns of neurons in the thalamus, a key relay station for visual signals, change in response to pupil dilation and constriction, indicators of arousal. This modulation of neural activity provides a mechanistic explanation for how our internal states shape our visual perception.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·April 16, 2024·5 min read

Decoding the Rainbow: New Secrets of Color Perception

Researchers made significant progress in understanding color perception by identifying non-cardinal retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the human fovea. These cells may explain complex color perceptions beyond the traditional models established by the cardinal directions of color detection.