It's coffee time!

It's coffee time, it's coffee time, won't you drink this coffee of mine???? Sung as a dirge or a peppy morning wake-up song, it captures my mood right now...COFFEE!!! We went to the grocery store last night (finally) and bought a whole bunch of crap. YAY! Some of which is coffee. Ever since our honeymoon in NYC, I've been an avid coffee drinker, so for slightly over 2 years now. And with my being in grad school, it is a morning must. Please enjoy this picture of coffee. There's something off about the picture, let me know if you find it , hah ahah ahha {evil laugh}.

Once you've found it, it's there for life. This is an example of one-shot learning. Nathan found it super fast, like 3 times faster than me.

And now for something a little lighter

Why is the Adelson's checkerboard illusion (shown above) an illusion? Nothing looks weird about this image. Right? For instance, checker A is a darker checker and B is a light checker. View the same image below, but now with a homogeneous patch of grey overlaying the checkers. A and B are in fact identical in luminance, but our perception of them is quite different from their physical reality. This is an illusion of lightness constancy.

I'm teaching (as a GSI) a course in Perception this semester with Steve Palmer, and I taught Sensation & Perception last fall with my advisor, Bill Prinzmetal. One of the most striking things I've learned from doing this is just how many illusions there are, and not just visual (if I can figure it out, I'll post some auditory illusions I have). The more I learn about how the body is formed at the cellular level and how the body functions both biologically and perceptually, the more I am amazed by how amazing humans are (and other animals). Yes, there are a slew of illusions that humans are prey to, but we also have overwhelmingly accurate perceptions most of the time. There are so many areas and ways that our system/body could breakdown, and it does don't get me wrong, but it also doesn't a lot. I don't know, I don't really have a point except that evolution has done a pretty good job.


(images acquired from this MIT website)

Another illusion

After I posted the rotating snake illusion, I got a bunch of hits from various people. Coincidence? I think not. To test this, I'm posting another illusion, the Fountain Floor.

This one is courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

I'm working, I really am

Honestly, I'm writing these essays. But I'm referencing the lecture slides to do so, and because this a course on perception, I came across a visually interesting picture:

I've forgotten the proposed explanation for why we see illusory motion in this image, but I know it has something to do with the contrast. If you're interested in visual illusion, visit Michael Bach's website. By the way, this is just an image, it is NOT moving...that's the illusion.