Scene Seen

We may think of our eyes as cameras, faithfully photographing the things we see and projecting them directly into the brain. In fact, the visual system works more like a sketch artist, piecing together the most likely representation of reality with plenty of interpretation and improvisation. Scientists used to think that specific nerve cells in the brain created ‘maps’ of information about objects, such as how big and which way up they are, by detecting their edges. But what seem like definite shapes and structures may be tricks of the light – for example, strong shadows can fool us into thinking they are edges too. Researchers are now using sophisticated techniques to measure brain activity while volunteers watch images like these, zooming in from big picture to tiny detail or zooming out in the opposite direction, to understand more about how the brain constructs our view of the world around us.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Peter Neri, Sensory Processing and Computation, Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs
• Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs, Département d'études cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, CNRS, Paris, France
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Biology, August 2017