#perception

#perception

Creepy Expanding Black Hole IllusionJust look at this black hole! Is it expanding, are are you coming closer to it? It makes you feel as it you are moving toward the void, doesn't it? Spoiler: you aren't moving forward. Even more surprising is that that is a static image, and doesn't move at all. It's just your perception preparing to move toward the black hole. Your visual perception tricks the brain into getting ready for a change ahead. In developing this illusion, 50 subject were exposed to the picture rendered in different colors, and to nonsensical images as a control. The image that produced the most illusory effect was the black hole. Researchers even detected that the subject's pupils dilated somewhat when confronted with the black hole. Read more about this illusion and why our brains react the way they do at ScienceAlert.(Image credit: Laeng et al., Front. Hum. Neurosci., 2022)#illusion #blackhole #perception #visual perception #optical illusion

Gender Bias in Face Pareidolia: Illusory Faces Tend to be Seen as MalePareidolia is a phenomenon where your eyes play a trick on you by showing you a face that isn’t on the area you were staring at. A new study discovered that while we usually see an illusory face, we also tend to see age, emotion, and gender.According to one of the researchers, Jessica Taubert, the study was done to find out if the examples of the perceived illusions from the phenomenon carry social signals, such as gender and expression. From the 3,815 participants, Taubert and her colleagues found a pattern. The pattern showed a bias in gender perception– more illusory faces were seen as male than female. When it comes to emotions, the responses were varied, with 34 percent of the images perceived as happy, 19 percent surprised, 19 percent neutral, and 14 percent angry.Image credit: Harry Grout, Taubert et.al #research #pareidolia #illusion #genderbias #perception

How Do We See Color?From light to object to our eyes to our brains, the process of perceiving color in our environment is pretty complex. This video from the American Museum of Natural History breaks the process down into its steps in a fairly thorough yet understandable way. Oh, and it's beautiful, too.