{"title":"Using Illusions to Track the Emergence of Visual Perception.","authors":"Patrick Cavanagh","doi":"10.1146/annurev-vision-103023-012730","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Everybody loves illusions. At times, the content on the internet seems to be mostly about illusions-shoes, dresses, straight lines looking bent. This attraction has a long history. Almost 2,000 years ago, Ptolemy marveled at how the sail of a distant boat could appear convex or concave. This sense of marvel continues to drive our fascination with illusions; indeed, few other corners of science can boast of such a large reach. However, illusions not only draw in the crowds; they also offer insights into visual processes. This review starts with a simple definition of illusions as conflicts between perception and cognition, where what we see does not agree with what we believe we should see. This mismatch can be either because cognition has misunderstood how perception works or because perception has misjudged the visual input. It is the perceptual errors that offer the chance to track the development of perception across visual regions. Unfortunately, the effects of illusions in different brain regions cannot be isolated in any simple way: Top-down projections from attention broadcast the expected perceptual properties everywhere, obscuring the critical evidence of where the illusion and perception emerge. The second part of this review then highlights the roadblocks to research raised by attention and describes current solutions for accessing what illusions can offer.</p>","PeriodicalId":48658,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Vision Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Annual Review of Vision Science","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-vision-103023-012730","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"NEUROSCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Everybody loves illusions. At times, the content on the internet seems to be mostly about illusions-shoes, dresses, straight lines looking bent. This attraction has a long history. Almost 2,000 years ago, Ptolemy marveled at how the sail of a distant boat could appear convex or concave. This sense of marvel continues to drive our fascination with illusions; indeed, few other corners of science can boast of such a large reach. However, illusions not only draw in the crowds; they also offer insights into visual processes. This review starts with a simple definition of illusions as conflicts between perception and cognition, where what we see does not agree with what we believe we should see. This mismatch can be either because cognition has misunderstood how perception works or because perception has misjudged the visual input. It is the perceptual errors that offer the chance to track the development of perception across visual regions. Unfortunately, the effects of illusions in different brain regions cannot be isolated in any simple way: Top-down projections from attention broadcast the expected perceptual properties everywhere, obscuring the critical evidence of where the illusion and perception emerge. The second part of this review then highlights the roadblocks to research raised by attention and describes current solutions for accessing what illusions can offer.
期刊介绍:
The Annual Review of Vision Science reviews progress in the visual sciences, a cross-cutting set of disciplines which intersect psychology, neuroscience, computer science, cell biology and genetics, and clinical medicine. The journal covers a broad range of topics and techniques, including optics, retina, central visual processing, visual perception, eye movements, visual development, vision models, computer vision, and the mechanisms of visual disease, dysfunction, and sight restoration. The study of vision is central to progress in many areas of science, and this new journal will explore and expose the connections that link it to biology, behavior, computation, engineering, and medicine.