Visual Processing

Visual Processing

A hand holds a red square above an eye shape, symbolizing the brain after blindness, with a geometric wireframe cube below on a blue circle, all set against a pale green background.
When people born blind gain sight, the hardest part isn’t opening their eyes — it’s teaching the brain how to see.
a painting of a woman avidly reading a book.
Despite the claims of speed reading apps and programs, you actually have to read the book if you want to learn.
Four images of a nebula, sculpted by a dead star, are shown side by side in radio, optical, and X-ray wavelengths; the fourth composite image reveals the so-called "Hand of God." Each is labeled at the bottom.
In our own Milky Way, a recently deceased star creates a ghostly, hand-like shape in X-rays some 150 light-years wide. Here's how it's made.
A minimalist drawing of a duck outlined in white against a gradient background, with an orange star shape marking the eye, invites you to question your perception.
“Who ya gonna believe: me or your own eyes?” Until you can assess your perception, the answer should be neither.
A person is being recorded on video by a camera mounted on a tripod, with the display highlighting visual literacy as the subject appears in focus and the background is artfully blurred.
Leaders may not realize it — they’re not just being watched, they’re being interpreted, filtered, and judged, frame by frame.
Five office chairs in different styles and colors are thoughtfully lined up against a plain background, celebrating neurodiversity by offering versatile seating options catering to diverse needs.
Temple Grandin's story reveals how embracing neurodiversity can lead to groundbreaking innovations and more successful teams.
A map with various yellow and brown faces showing different emotions, representing different regions.
50 years ago, Herman Chernoff proposed using human faces to represent multidimensional datasets. It was a good idea in theory — but a disaster in practice.
Solar total eclipse revealing the sun's pink chromosphere and prominences.
There are only a precious few minutes of totality during even the best solar eclipses. Don't waste yours making these avoidable mistakes.
A Zen-inspired painting of a group of apples on a table.
'Six Persimmons,' an ink painting by the Chinese monk Mu Qi, has long been hailed as the poster child of Zen Buddhism. But is its reputation deserved?
A girl in a blue jacket raises her hand in class, demonstrating language proficiency and recall.
Language influences how you visually process the world, which in turn influences your memory of it.
a woman with red hair and yellow glasses.
A new study from Finland suggests that we all process the behavior of others using the same neural networks.
sun photographed from space
Some say that the Sun is a green-yellow color, but our human eyes see it as white, or yellow-to-red during sunset. What color is it really?
anti-gravity mirror
If you look into a mirror, you'll notice that left-and-right are reversed, but up-and-down is preserved. The reason isn't what you think.
Our brainwaves naturally synchronize with external stimuli like flickering lights. Here's how the phenomenon might boost learning.
a collage of a monkey with a pink triangle
In all mammals, there are two brain pathways for processing information from the eyes: an evolutionarily ancient one and a more modern one.
JWST NIRCam Tarantula Nebula
The glorious sights that JWST keeps revealing are less than a millionth of the whole Universe. Just imagine what else is out there.
Your brain may notice fearful faces, even if you don't consciously realize it.
Humans are good visual thinkers, too, but we tend to privilege verbal thinking.
Don’t worry that your dog’s world is visually drab.
Solving difficult visual puzzles seems to help the brain "rewire" itself by forming new neural pathways.
Bilingualism confers various mental health and social benefits. Perhaps knowing a second alphabet confers even more.
New memories appear to be stabilized in the brain by a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA).
Like his "Mona Lisa," Leonardo da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine" depicts a woman in a way that flouted the conventions of its time.
race
A clever neuroscience experiment shows that the "other-race effect" is likely due to a lack of experience and perceptual expertise rather than racism.
mummy brown
Rare and costly paints have shaped art history in unforeseen ways. Mummy brown caused one artist to bury his paint.
consciousness
A new finding that unconsciously processed images are distributed to higher-order brain networks requires the revision of a popular theory of consciousness.