A study of humans and monkeys published in JNeurosci has found the same subset of neurons encode actual and illusory complex flow motion. This finding supports, at the level of single neurons, what the Czech scientist Jan Purkinje surmised 150 years ago: "Illusions contain visual truth."
The Pinna-Brelstaff figure is a static image of rings that appear to rotate clockwise as one moves toward and counterclockwise as one moves away from the figure. Having previously identified particular parts of the human brain that represent the Pinna illusion, Junxiang Luo and colleagues at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences first confirmed that male rhesus macaques likely perceive the illusion similarly to people. The researchers then recorded activity from individual neurons in the previously identified brain regions, and discovered cells that signal the illusory motion similarly to actual motion. A delay of about 15 milliseconds enables the brain to register the illusory motion as if it was real. This study provides new insights into how the brain grapples with the continual mismatch between perception and reality.
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Article: Going with the flow: the neural mechanisms underlying illusions of complex-flow motion
DOI: https://www.jneurosci.org/lookup/doi/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2112-18.2019
Corresponding authors: Yong Gu, guyong@ion.ac.cn and Wei Wang, w.wang@ion.ac.cn (Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai)
About JNeurosci
JNeurosci , the Society for Neuroscience's first journal, was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.
About The Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and over 130 chapters worldwide.