Change Blindness: A Grand Illusion

At a symposium devoted to the crossover theme of Art and Neuroscience earlier this year, Jeremy Wolfe of Harvard Medical School demonstrated a phenomenon known as change blindness: the frequent inability of our visual system to detect alterations to something staring us straight in the face. Studies strongly suggest that the brain is a master at filling gaps and making do, of compiling a cohesive portrait of reality based on a flickering view. "Our spotlight of attention is grabbing objects at such a fast rate that introspectively it feels like you're recognizing many things at once," Dr. Wolfe said. "But the reality is that you are only accurately representing the state of one or a few objects at any given moment." As for the rest of our visual experience, he said, it has been aptly called "a grand illusion."

READ FULL STORY