Visual illusions
and what happens in the brain
Bistable figures
With bistable stimuli (also known as bistable figures), the same image can be perceived in two different ways. An example of this is this global-local motion stimulus.
When looking at the red dot for a longer time, the perception starts to switch between the local motion of the dots and the global motion of two illusory squares. The stimulus was used in some of our studies to investigate the neural basis of shape perception.
Illusory surface
Why do we perceive an illusory surface in this picture? What happens in the brain when we perceive such a surface? Our research shows that many areas of the brain contribute to the perception of illusory surfaces, not only the areas of the posterior parietal cortex, but also thalamic nuclei.
Links to selected publications
Wilding et al, 2023
Arsenovic et al, 2022
Wilding et al., 2022
Zaretskaya et al, 2013