Here, we see a famous illustration by Nobel Prize winners David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel of neural recordings in V1, the region that receives input most directly from the retina, through two areas of the thalamus known collectively as the lateral geniculate nucleus, or LGN. So, the most basic might simply process lines at a certain angle. Each layer handles a certain level of complexity. When scientists look at the visual cortex, they find distinct layers that function in a rough hierarchy. Of course, the brain is much more complex than this. Light falls on retinal cells and they convey that information "up" to the brain, which shows us a real-time image of our environment. We tend to think of the eyes as sensors, like a CCD in a camera. "Ambiguous figures certainly involve some of the same processes."īefore we get into the mechanics of those processes, let's step back for a minute and talk about a current hypothesis about the way the visual processing works. "I think one can describe the can't- unsee phenomenon as follows: Once you interpret visual stimulus in a certain way, you'll continue to interpret it in the same way now and the next time you encounter the stimulus," Toppino said. These are images for which there are two totally plausible alternative interpretations. Here's a famous one that may give you nightmares: One way psychologists and other people who study the brain have been probing these questions is through the use of ambiguous figures.
In short: what you know influences what you see. It also importantly involves fitting prior knowledge to the current situation to create a meaningful interpretation." "When the scene is encountered again, sensory cues will again identify high information areas, but this time the prior knowledge needed to complete the perceptual act is readily available, and the perceptual interpretation is achieved in a way that seems automatic and perhaps inevitable," Toppino said. "One general lesson of this demonstration is that perception is not the result of simply processing stimulus cues. What's interesting is that the visual stimulus (the picture) doesn't change, but once your mind knows what kind of organization to impose, it's obvious that the dalmatian is there. And if you ever encounter this image again, you will immediately see the dalmatian again.