Your Brain Is Playing Tricks On You

human beings tend to blindly trust their perception, to the point of considering it to be shared by everyone.

Without thinking, does the black figure seem to be facing us, or does it have its back to us? Are you above it, or below? You’re hesitating…

Now look at the image below: the individual clearly seems to be facing us, their elbows leant on the barrier, and they’re located above you. And now that you have this image in mind, look at the first version of the image again. The interpretation you make of it will copy the scenario that image (a) led you to see, and now the black figure appears to be facing you at a low-angle shot

brain, which shelters our knowledge, operates through estimates. The outcome is that our knowledge of things and of the world is always relative.

something unreal has just happened. This is what we call “magic”.

perception goes through our senses first.

“We don’t see the world as it is, but rather as we are

Corpus callosotomy was performed on epileptic patients until recently. It is a surgical procedure which consists in partially or fully sectioning the corpus callosum in order to disconnect the left hemisphere from the right hemisphere. This practice was first developed in the 1950s following the work of neuropsychologist and neurophysiologist Roger Sperry, who had discovered, while sectioning the corpus callosum of a monkey, that this had practically no significant impact on its general behaviour.

work of cognitive science confirms today: the world constantly reflects a multitude of signals, and we reduce their ambiguity by choosing what we want to see. Thus, little by little, our interpretation of the world shapes us psychologically, culturally and socially.

We don’t see the world as it is, but rather as we are.”

The brain has a need to interpret the signals the world sends its way in order to create a coherent and stable representation of the latter. This is called reduction of ambiguity: as soon as it’s denied stability by being presented with ambiguous images (bistable or multistable), the brain proceeds to choose among the various options that reality contains.