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 ...

New research shows that a deeply ancient part of the brain can process visual information on its own, without help from the cortex. Scientists found that the superior colliculus, a structure shared by ...

“Illusions are fun, but they are also a gateway to perception,” says Hyeyoung Shin, assistant professor of neuroscience at Seoul National University. Shin is the first author of a new study in Nature ...

An illusion is when we see and perceive an object that doesn't match the sensory input that reaches our eyes. In the case of the image below, the sensory input is four Pac Man–like black figures. But ...

A study of mice starts to unravel how the brain gets tricked by this kind of optical illusion, and it gives clues about how visual perception works. When you purchase through links on our site, we may ...

Whether we’re staring at our phones, the page of a book, or the person across the table, the objects of our focus never stand in isolation; there are always other objects or people in our field of ...