The Oxford Compendium Of Visual Illusions

Visual illusions are compelling phenomena that draw attention to the brain's capacity to construct our perceptual world. The Compendium is a collection of over 100 chapters on visual illusions, written by the illusion creators or by vision scientists who have investigated mechanisms underlying the phenomena. --

If you find visual illusions fascinating Programming Visual Illusions for Everyone is a book for you. It has some background, some history and some theories about visual illusions, and it describes in some detail twelve illusions. Some are about surfaces, some are about apparent size of objects, some are about colour and some involve movement. This is only one aspect of the book. The other is to show you how you can create these effects on any computer. The book includes a brief introduction to a powerful programming language called Python. No previous experience with programming is necessary. There is also an introduction to a package called PsychoPy that makes it easy to draw on a computer screen. It is perfectly ok if you have never heard the names Python or PsychoPy before. Python is a modern and easy-to-read language, and PsychoPy takes care of all the graphical aspects of drawing on a screen and also interacting with a computer. By the way, both Python and PsychoPy are absolutely free. Is this a book about illusions or about programming? It is both!

How the human visual system determines the lightness of a surface, that is, its whiteness, blackness, or grayness, remains--like vision in general--a mystery. In fact, we have not even been able to create a machine that can determine, through an artificial vision system, whether an object is white, black, or gray. Although the photoreceptors in the eye are driven by light, the light reflected by a surface does not reveal its shade of gray. Depending upon the level of illumination, a surface of any shade of gray can reflect any amount of light. In Seeing Black and White Alan Gilchrist ties together over 30 years of his own research on lightness, and presents the first comprehensive, historical review of empirical work on lightness, covering the past 150 years of research on images ranging from the simple to the complex. He also describes and analyzes the many theories of lightness--including his own--showing what each can and cannot explain. Gilchrist highlights the forgotten-yet-exciting work done in the first third of the twentieth century, describing several crucial experiments and examining the brilliant but nearly unknown work of the Hungarian gestalt theorist, Lajos Kardos. Gilchrists review also includes a survey of the pattern of lightness errors made by humans, many of which result in delightful illusions. He argues that because these errors are not random, but systematic, they are the signature of our visual software, and so provide a powerful tool that can reveal how lightness is computed. Based on this argument and the concepts of anchoring, grouping, and frames of reference, Gilchrist presents a new theoretical framework that explains an unprecedented array of lightness errors. As both the first comprehensive overview of research on lightness and the first unified presentation of Gilchrists new theoretical framework Seeing Black and White will be an invaluable resource for vision scientists, cognitive psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists.

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible represents a comprehensive resource for researchers and practitioners interested in an emerging multidisciplinary area within psychology and the social sciences: the study of how we engage with and cultivate the possible within self, society and culture. Far from being opposed either to the actual or the real, the possible engages with concrete facts and experiences, with the result of transforming them. This encyclopedia examines the notion of the possible and the concepts associated with it from standpoints within psychology, philosophy, sociology, neuroscience and logic, as well as multidisciplinary fields of research including anticipation studies, future studies, complexity theory and creativity research. Presenting multiple perspectives on the possible, the authors consider the distinct social, cultural and psychological processes - e.g., imagination, counterfactual thinking, wonder, play, inspiration, and many others - that define our engagement with new possibilities in domains as diverse as the arts, design and business.

A full-color celebration of stunning visual illusions and the science behind them In Champions of Illusion, Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik present a smorgasbord of mystifying images, many selected from their Best Illusion of the Year Contest. Whether it’s false motion, tricks of perspective, or shifting colors, Champions of Illusion is packed with adventures in visual perception. If you have ever found yourself face-to-face with an utterly bewildering illusion, you know the powerful effect such images have on the mind. The question we often ask ourselves is, How is that possible? Martinez-Conde and Macknik, who study the intersection of neuroscience, illusions, and stage magic, explain just why we think we see the things we see. The Best Illusion of the Year Contest draws entries from vision scientists, artists, magicians, and mathematicians bent on creating today’s most beguiling illusions. Featuring the contest’s most bizarre effects and unbelievable mind tricks, along with classic illusions and illuminating descriptions of what is actually going on in your brain when you are deceived by visuals on the page, Champions of Illusion is an electrifying mix of science and magic that you will not soon forget.

In this ground-breaking synthesis of art and science, Diana Deutsch, one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of music, shows how illusions of music and speech--many of which she herself discovered--have fundamentally altered thinking about the brain. These astonishing illusions show that people can differ strikingly in how they hear musical patterns--differences that reflect variations in brain organization as well as influences of language on music perception. Drawing on a wide variety of fields, including psychology, music theory, linguistics, and neuroscience, Deutsch examines questions such as: When an orchestra performs a symphony, what is the "real" music? Is it in the mind of the composer, or the conductor, or different members of the audience? Deutsch also explores extremes of musical ability, and other surprising responses to music and speech. Why is perfect pitch so rare? Why do some people hallucinate music or speech? Why do we hear phantom words and phrases? Why are we subject to stuck tunes, or "earworms"? Why do we hear a spoken phrase as sung just because it is presented repeatedly? In evaluating these questions, she also shows how music and speech are intertwined, and argues that they stem from an early form of communication that had elements of both. Many of the illusions described in the book are so striking and paradoxical that you need to hear them to believe them. The book enables you to listen to the sounds that are described while reading about them.