New research by psychologists at Queen Mary, University of London has revealed that the way we see the world might depend on reflexes in the brain. Writing in the Journal of Vision, Dr Michael Proulx from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, and former student Monique Green, explain how an optical illusion known […]
A study using a procedure called the rubber hand illusion has found striking new evidence that people experiencing schizophrenia have a weakened sense of body ownership and has produced the first case of a spontaneous, out-of-body experience in the laboratory. These findings suggest that movement therapy, which trains people to be focused and centered on […]
Scientists have come up with new insight into the brain processes that cause the following optical illusion: Focus your eyes directly on the “X” in the center of the image in the short video below. The yellow jacket (Rocky, the mascot of the University of Rochester) appears to be expanding. But he is not. He […]
Gestalt psychology contends that the human brain organizes what the eyes see based on traits such as similarity, common background, and proximity. But a new illusion that took second place in the 2011 Best Illusion of the Year Contest — a competition held annually by the Neural Correlate Society — illustrates that our brains can […]
University of Utah psychologists have learned why many people experience “inattention blindness” – the phenomenon that leaves drivers on cell phones prone to traffic accidents and makes a gorilla invisible to viewers of a famous video. Included in this report is the now famous Monkey Business Illusion video utilized in this research.
A serendipitous discovery by academics at The University of Nottingham has shown that a simple illusion can significantly reduce — and in some cases even temporarily eradicate — arthritic pain in the hand. By tricking the brain into believing that the painful part of the hand is being stretched or shrunk, the researchers were able […]
How we experience our own bodies is a classical question in psychology and neuroscience. It has long been believed that our body image is limited by our innate body plan – in other words that we cannot experience having more than one head, two arms and two legs. However, brain scientists at the Swedish medical […]
A new study finds that those who know that an unexpected event is likely to occur are no better at noticing other unexpected events – and may be even worse – than those who are not expecting the unexpected. The study, from Daniel Simons, a professor of psychology and in the Beckman Institute at the […]
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