What You See Ain't What You Get!!!

What  you see ain't always what you get--as far as your visual cortex is concerned. How, then, does this massive region of the brain right the world we see?

"What we see is not only based on the signals that our eyes send to our brain, but is influenced strongly by the context the visual stimulus is presented in, on our previous knowledge, and expectations," goes the writeup on Medical News Today. "Optical illusions, as the one shown here, illustrate how important such non-visual, contextual information is for our perception. The visual cortex receives this additional information from other brain areas and uses it to allow us to understand and interpret the visual world. Prof. [Sonja] Hofer and her team [at the biozentrum at the University of Basil, Switzerland] measured the specific signals transmitted to visual cortex from the Thalamus, and found that the Pulvinar not only conveyed visual signals but is also one of the brain areas that provide additional information about the context of visual stimuli." Nature Neuroscience published their results. Read more.