Illusions: Aristotle's Error; March / April 2010; Scientific American Mind; by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran & Diane Rogers-Ramachandran; 3 Page(s)

Although our perception of the world seems effortless and instantaneous, it actually involves considerable image processing, as we have noted in many of our previous columns. Curiously enough, much of the current scientific understanding of that process is based on the study of visual illusions.

Analysis and resolution of an image into distinct features begin at the earliest stages of visual processing. This was discovered in cats and monkeys by a number of techniques, the most straightforward of which was to use tiny needles—microelectrodes—to pick up electrical signals from cells in the retina and the areas of the brain associated with vision (of which there are nearly 30). By presenting various visual targets to monitored animals, investigators learned that cells in early-processing brain areas are each sensitive mainly to changes in just one visual parameter, not to others. For instance, in the primary visual cortex (V1, also called area 17), the main feature extracted is the orientation of edges. In the area known as V4 in the temporal lobes, cells react to color (or, strictly speaking, to wavelengths of light, with different cells responding to different wavelengths). Cells in the area called MT are mainly interested in direction of movement.