#visual perception

• track movement visually

• perceive multiple wavelengths of light around 500-900nm

• perceive rotation and translatory acceleration

• produce simple and complex language

• bite and gnaw

• move paws for locomotion and play

We like to believe our eyes are cameras and our brains are recording devices, faithfully capturing the world around us. This comforting idea suggests that what we perceive is simply what’s there — objective, unfiltered reality delivered straight to our consciousness. Yet this assumption about human perception is not just wrong — it’s misleading. The truth is far more fascinating. Perception…

Visual Presentation Of Midnight Bloom

Hi. I’d like you to learn about visual acuity, saccadic movement,and how humans actually read, because if you put your pretty words outside of a certain area around where your imagined subject is going to be staring at the spiral then they’ll have to willfully break their focus and let their eyes read.

Which, well, ruins the whole vibe.

Science Saturday

Bust out the 3D-glasses for this week’s Science Saturday, Foundations of Cyclopean Perception by Hungarian-born neuroscientist, psychologist, and pioneering computer artist Bela Julesz. Published in 1971 by The University of Chicago Press, the futurist think tank The Millennium Project listed Julesz’ book as among the 20th century’s top 100 most influential works on cognitive science. It is considered a classic in visual science; despite that, it has been out of print for decades with the exception of an MIT Press facsimile edition in 2006.

The book transformed the way scientists conceptualized binocular vision, primarily through its use of stereograms: pairs of static images that, when viewed through a stereoscope, are combined by the brain to create a perception of three dimensionality. While Julesz did not invent the stereogram, he is credited with the creation of the random dot stereogram as a means of testing and studying depth perception to support his work at Bell Laboratories. Julesz’ random dot stereograms would later give rise to autostereograms, invented by a student of Julesz and perhaps more familiar to readers as Magic Eye posters. 

When the stereograms are printed in two chromatically contrasting colors and superimposed upon one another, a 3D anaglyph is created. All of the sterograms from Foundations of Cyclopean Perception are preproduced as anaglyphs in an appendix. The book comes with an anaglyphoscope (commonly known as 3D glasses) tucked into a pocket in the back cover for viewing the red-green anaglyphs at the back of the book. If you happen to have one of those cheap pairs of cardboard 3D glasses laying around, see what hidden figures lurk in the last three images above! 

Find more Science Saturday posts here.