Every illusion has a backstage crew. New research shows the brain’s own “puppet strings”—special neurons that quietly tug our perception—help us see edges and shapes that don’t actually exist. When ...

A scientific dispute spanning six decades about fundamental mechanisms of visual perception in mammals has now been settled.

Researchers have settled a 60-year-old debate in neuroscience, proving that the visual cortex constructs complex images from ...

Vision shapes behavior and, a new study by MIT neuroscientists finds, behavior and internal states shape vision. The research, published Nov. 25 in Neuron, finds in mice that via specific circuits, ...

I llusions are everywhere. For example, the moon appears larger when it rests on the horizon than when it is hanging in the sky. Other visual tricks occur when a person perceives an object in an image ...

Perhaps our most defining characteristic as a species, the six-layered human cortex, hosts billions of neural connections that bestow Homo sapiens with higher-order thinking. But how does this ...