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 ...

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 ...

How does the brain perceive time? A new fMRI study identifies a three-stage neural relay from the visual cortex to the frontal regions that constructs our subjective experience of duration and timing.

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 ...

Vision shapes behavior and, a new study by MIT neuroscientists finds, behavior and internal states shape vision. The research, published Nov. 25 in Neuron, finds in mice that via specific circuits, ...

The 1950s were a relatively rudimentary era for experimental neurophysiology. Recording the electrical activity of neurons wasn’t uncommon, but the methods often demanded considerable patience and ...

Most optical illusions last for a few fleeting moments when you're staring at the book, screen, or whatever medium the illusion is presented in, but the normal rules don’t apply to the McCollough ...

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 ...