Dreaming serves to protect the brain’s visual cortex from being overtaken by other sensory inputs. The brain’s peak ...

Every illusion has a backstage crew. New research shows the brain’s own “puppet strings”—special neurons that quietly tug our perception—help us see edges and shapes that don’t actually exist. When ...

Think you can trust your eyes? Think again. What feels undeniable at first glance is sometimes a surprise, an illusion, or an ...

When animals move through complex visual environments, the brain cannot afford to analyze every detail one by one. Instead, it rapidly extracts the overall structure of the scene—for example, the mean ...

Optical illusions aren’t just fun—they’re windows into how our brains construct reality. New research reveals the specific brain circuits and neurons responsible for ‘seeing’ things that aren’t there.

For centuries, vision has been one of the most essential aspects of human experience, shaping how we navigate and understand the world. But what happens when vision is no longer constrained by biology ...

Researchers at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology find that the hippocampus sends signals to the visual cortex to predict what we are about to see. Our brains are powerful prediction machines ...

To what extent has Earth’s gravity shaped our cognitive and brain functions? Utilizing spaceflight and a ground-based analog, a new study shows that the human brain relies on bodily gravitational ...

Sounds can alter the way the brain interprets what it sees. This is the key finding of a new study by SISSA researchers in Trieste, published in PLOS Computational Biology. The research shows that, ...

Allen Institute researcher Jerome Lecoq points to one of the diagrams that was used in a study focusing on how the brain interprets optical illusions. (Allen Institute Photo / Erik Dinnel) Our brains ...