Brain in Numbers for the Visuals

A little...or big taste of Alice's house :)

I hear you had a hair cut?!

Sensory illusions help us understand better how our perception works. Among visual illusions that enabled us to explain the complex functioning of visual pathways, there are also auditory illusions. Audition not only permits us to hear recognizable sounds, music and receive language input, but it is also cleverly processed by the brain. As we have two eyes to see, which enable us to perceive the world in three dimensions, we also have two ears. These two are useful to locate sounds in our surroundings. Specific temporal areas of the brain basically process and calculate the time it takes for a specific sound to arrive to each ear. That delay of time between each ear’s reception of the sound gives the brain enough information to locate the sound's source.

I believe that it is also this phenomenon that explains in part the Cocktail Party Effect. This effect occurs when in a crowded room we are able to filter sound and listen to a specific conversation across that room without interference of the other conversations or sounds. Since you can locate specific sounds by a bottom-up process, it would be logical that you can target a specific sound coming from a specific place by a top-bottom process. However, this would become even more complicated when the source of the sound is in motion...

Thus, I'll stop my brain-storming here and introduce you to the beauty of the auditory system by presenting this nice audio file (I strongly encourage you to put headphones on!):

Virtual Barber Shop

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Traces of our Passage

Here is a nice picture of the mountains in Innsbruck, Austria. I decided to insert some faces of the four of us that went on that trip last summer. There are 9 faces in total. Tell me if you find them or if it's too ambiguous :) I'll post more pictures or drawings involving competing perceptions. Hopefully, I'll get better at creating these... :D

Here I expect, but it is merely speculation, that the people involved in the picture or the people that know who they are will see more faces since there are more familiar with them.

One of the laws of Gestalt deals with familiarity in perception. In this case, it suggests that we see faces all the time and, hence, are very familiar and can recognize a human face in a picture or a landscape painting. Gestalt Psychology focuses on a holistic, overall pattern of the face, but is vague about the specificity and details of a unique recognisable face... There is new research in face recognition that I will discuss when I'll post the solution for this image locating the faces in the landscape. Enjoy :D

Family Tree

Count the number of faces that you see in the picture above...

Here is one of many drawings that challenges your perception and it takes the brain some time to perceive more faces than first observed. The tree and the two people at the bottom are obviously meant to be recognised right away. However, what we see as branches can be analysed and recognised at some point also as faces. While you are searching for faces, the brain tries to find some subtleties in the branches that could be similar to a face. The reason it takes more time to see those faces is because you ask your brain to perceive those obvious branches as something else. Once you see those faces, your are no longer able to ignore them and you cannot see the tree and the faces in the branches at the same time! I'll describe this phenomenon in more detail in later posts. Thus, there are officially 13 faces, but even I didn't see them all...

Also, another one using trees that is nice but more obvious is the cover for the movie Premonition (2007):

Ask your Doctor...

BEWARE!: What you are about to see and read are NOT tips for a healthy physical and psychological state. Sarcasm is heavily in use.
Tip Number Ein:

Tip Number Zwai:
Lay back and concentrate your pretty green eyes on this picture and the facts on the cause of your failures in life will suddenly appear. An Aha!-moment might follow.

Have a nice day ;)