Laser Beams to the Brain Help Us Understand How We Perceive Illusions
Optical illusions spoil our eyes – and our brains – in the strangest way. Looking at a one generally makes us perceive something that is not really there. Take the Kanizsa Square, a visual with four black circles with cut slices to make everyone look like PAC-Man. Immediately, we also see something else: a white square, the illusion in question.
A new study published in Nature neuroscience revealed what makes the brain the gaps of illusions such as Kaniza Square. Testing brain activity in mice, the researchers discovered that a specific group of cells called COCEURS IC (“IC” representing “illusory contours”) receives instructions to ensure that the brain recognizes the external edges, or “contours”, many illusions.
How the brain perceives illusions
The brains have been able to decipher illusory contours for ages. And humans are not the only ones who can perceive these illusions; Non -human primates, mice, fish and even insects can also.
Kaniza square used in optical illusion experiences
(Image Credit: Creative Commons Assignment 4.0 International/Researchgate and https://www.illusionSindex.org/)
This capacity probably emerged from the need to deduce objects based on incomplete information, helping us to understand the space around us. It is useful when the objects are occluded, which means that they are partially hidden in sight. Faced with something that is occluded, the brain comes into action to fill the missing details.
Similar in Kaniza square, the Kaniza triangle puts this capacity to the test. In this visual, there are three discs with Pac-Man mouths and three pairs of lines. Based on the configuration of these elements, we do not see one, but two secret forms: an inverted triangle pointing down and a solid white triangle pointing up, appearing almost as a top layer of the visual.
However, no triangle, however, exists. It is simply the edges of the discs and lines that give the impression that there are two triangles. The treatment of an illusory outline like this becomes an attempt for the brain, which must take into account all kinds of details, such as color, lightness and texture.
Learn more: Optical illusions are stranger than you think
Instructions for illusions
In order to perceive illusory contours, our brain requires the help of IC-Encoder neurons, which facilitate the completion process of recurring models (in other words, see things that are not really there in many illusions).
But the IC encoders themselves need a small thrust of the visual areas of the brain which are higher in the chain of command. The appearance of an illusion first occurs in these visual zones, then information is transmitted to COSORS IC in the primary visual cortex.
According to a press release on the new study, this process is like a manager telling entry -level staff to complete a task. And in this case, the instructions received by the IC coders are to see something in an illusion which is not really present – as imaginary triangles.
The active brain visual system
The researchers behind the study saw IC encoders at work while they were monitoring the mouse electric brain activity models that have been shown illusory images such as the Kaniza triangle.
To better understand how the neurons work, they have turned their light bundles, in a process called holographic optogenetics with two photons, when there was no present illusory image. When struck with the beams, the IC encoder neurons have reproduced the same brain activity models that occur when an illusory image was present.
Now that researchers know how active the brain is when treating an illusion, they are interested in seeing how this work can influence the treatments of diseases that have an impact on brain capacity to perceive visual stimuli.
“In certain diseases, you have models of activity that emerge in your brain which are abnormal, and in schizophrenia, these are linked to representations of objects that appear at random,” said author Jerome Lecoq, investigator associated with the Allen Institute. “If you do not understand how these objects are formed and that a collective set of cells works together to bring out these representations, you will not be able to treat it; Understanding the cells and in which layer this activity is useful.”
Learn more: Why mirages are like the turn of the magic of nature
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