How Does the Eye Figure Out CAPTCHA Codes?

Medical News Today in a recent post asks how the eye figures out lettered and numbered CAPTCHA codes we complete online. "The apparent simplicity of this task is an illusion.... [A] team of neuroscientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has taken on the challenge of exploring how the brain accomplishes this remarkable task. Two studies published within days of each other demonstrate how complex a visual task decoding a CAPTCHA, or any image made of simple and intricate elements, actually is to the brain. The findings of the two studies, published recently in Neuron and in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), take two important steps forward in understanding vision, and rewrite what was believed to be established science. The results show that what neuroscientists thought they knew about one piece of the puzzle was too simple to be true." Read more.