Category Archives: Seeing

About face

June 19, 2011 – 10:55 pm

An amazing picture from Jeff Arris that plays havoc with our face perception system – grabbed from Twitter and which lives on Flickr here. If anyone knows the attribution for the piece do let me know. Thanks to commenter gsggs for finding the attribution.

By vaughanbell | Comments (8)

Alice through the crooked glass

June 2, 2011 – 11:39 pm

Not Exactly Rocket Science covers a fascinating study where participants felt they were the size of a doll or had expanded to giant proportions simply by using a headset, a camera and a bit of foot stroking. In a typical experiment, a volunteer is being stroked while wearing a virtual reality headset. She’s lyng down […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating | Comments (1)

Hearing the voices of colours

April 12, 2011 – 11:06 pm

A spectacular case of psychosis, rather oddly described as ‘Methamphetamine Induced Synesthesia’, in a case report just published in The American Journal on Addictions. The report concerns a 30-year-old gentleman from the Iranian city of Shiraz with a long-standing history of drug use who recently started smoking crystal: Six months PTA [prior to admission] (October […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Hearing and Language, Integrating | Comments (3)

Poetic sensitivities

December 27, 2010 – 7:29 pm

Perceptual psychologists have long been interested in limen – the threshold at which a stimulus becomes detectable. The following limen for the different senses, expressed in everyday terms rather than in terms of physical quantities, have a certain poetry to them. I got this information via email as a scan of an (unknown to me) […]

By tomstafford | Also posted in Hearing and Language | Comments (10)

A misperceptive critic

November 24, 2010 – 7:16 pm

It’s not often that hallucinations indulge in media criticism, but this case of Charles Bonnet syndrome recently published in the journal Optometry is a delightful exception. Everyone, it seems, is a critic, including perceptual distortions generated by, in this case, macular degeneration. A 79-year-old man presented to the clinic with intermittent hallucinations of 6 months’ […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (2)

An illusory tribute

November 17, 2010 – 4:27 pm

Richard Gregory was a much loved and hugely influential perceptual psychologist who passed away earlier this year. Tom just alerted me to a wonderfully appropriate visual palindrome on his page of remembrance where his name reads perfectly well when either the ‘right way up’ on when ‘turned on its head’. If you can’t see it […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Remembering | Comments (3)

The vision thing

October 27, 2010 – 2:15 am

The ever-interesting Oliver Sacks is interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air where he discusses cases from his new book on the extremes of visual perception. If you’re a fan of Sacks’ work, like me, this programme is an absolute treat as the conversation ranges from the science of misrecognition to his own quite recent experiences of […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in News | Leave a Comment

Sensory blending

October 22, 2010 – 3:25 am

The BBC’s science series Horizon just broadcast a fantastic edition on perception, illusions and how the senses combine with each other to the point of allowing us to integrate artificial new senses. If you’ve got a healthy interest in psychology, the first half of the programme discusses several important but well-known effects like the rubber […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Hearing and Language, Integrating | Comments (4)

The ’68 comeback perceptual

October 6, 2010 – 1:51 am

Elvis makes a fleeting comeback, accompanied by a milk drinking chimp and some well-dressed mice, in the hallucinations of a patient with Parkinson’s disease who is described in a case study published in the Southern Medical Journal. He had compulsive gambling behavior and multiple hallucinations (visual and auditory). Visual hallucinations were simple (shapes of shadows, […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Hearing and Language | Comments (1)

Visual science in the art of Chuck Close

October 1, 2010 – 2:08 pm

I’ve just found this amazing article on the work of artist Chuck Close from a 2008 edition of the Archives of Ophthalmology. It examines the visual science behind his pixelated style and how a stroke left the artist paralysed – after which he has produced some of his finest work. Chuck Close (1940- ) is […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Other People | Leave a Comment

The strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion

September 18, 2010 – 6:43 pm

An intriguing article has just been published in the journal Perception about a never-before-described visual illusion where your own reflection in the mirror seems to become distorted and shifts identity. To trigger the illusion you need to stare at your own reflection in a dimly lit room. The author, Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo, describes his […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating | Comments (237)

An Opthamologist on Mars

September 1, 2010 – 9:07 pm

Oliver Sacks is interviewed on NeuroTribes where he talks about his forthcoming book and his own experience of spectacular hallucinations that occurred after he developed a tumour behind his retina. NeuroTribes is a new blog by ace science writer and Wired veteran Steve Silberman. It is part of the new PLoS science blog network and […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Other People | Comments (3)

Distractingly attractive

August 24, 2010 – 7:22 pm

Driver distractions are a major cause of road accidents. A new study has found that just a simple conversation with someone else in the car can be enough to increase driver errors and that the risk is greater if we fancy the passenger. The research was conducted in a driving simulator by Cale Whitea and […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Attention, Integrating | Comments (5)

Flowers, falling maple leaves and wriggling dwarves

August 18, 2010 – 9:04 pm

I love this summary of a study on unusual hallucinations in an elderly Japanese lady. The full article is in Japanese but the translation of the abstract and the form of her hallucinations gives it a stylised quality that reminds me of the traditional art from the country. The last sentence is wonderfully zen-like. [Formed […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (3)

Dark restaurant alters appetite and eating

August 17, 2010 – 2:38 pm

We often assume that our appetite depends on how much food we’ve eaten, but a new study conducted in a completely dark restaurant has demonstrated that we don’t feel any more full if secretly slipped extra large portions of food. What we see, it seems, plays a big role in how hungry we feel. The […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating | Comments (4)

Purple haze: paint huffing hallucinations differ by hue

July 20, 2010 – 6:00 pm

Adolescent solvent abusers reported that different colours of paint cause different types of hallucinations, according to a remarkable study just published in Drug and Alcohol Review. The research, led by Michael Takagi from the University of Melbourne, was only a small study of 16 young people who sniffed spray paints, but the results are quite […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (5)
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