The Scotsman.com reports that scientists are starting to understand the physiology of optical illusion. This will, of course, impact magic tricks. On a deeper level, it could influence everything from design of instructional materials to treatment of brain disorders.

It could even lead to a new generation of art.

Researchers in psychology at Glasgow University have recently completed a study. They monitored the brainwaves of volunteers who were viewing surrealist images. (Surrealism is a type of art perhaps best represented in the works of Salvador Dali.)

The subjects’ brains processed images from a painting by dividing it into separate “brainwaves,” tiny electrical impulses in the brain.

The test subjects’ brains were only able to process one of these sub-images at a time. (Dr Phillipe Schynes, head of the project, says this is why the brain accepts optical illusions that are later easily penetrated once understood.)

What kinds of illusions? Consider the famous instance of the “face” of the young girl and the older woman, available here with others:

http://www.funnyjunk.com/pages/optical_illusions.htm

Essentially, as you will see when trying this yourself, your brain can hold one interpretation of the pattern but not multiple ones. It will switch from one to the other.

The research indicates that our brains must, in effect, change channels between competing brainwaves to understand different parts of the same image. The next focus of the research will be on faces.

The hypothesis is that when the face of someone you know — or who closely resembles someone you know — appears, it generates a set of brainwaves that are themselves familiar. This causes recognition that, in the case of the resemblance, may be deceiving.

Dali often painted with such multifaceted images in his paintings, thereby adding to the surreal quality. The researchers had test subjects look at his picture, “Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire.”

Looking at this, some saw two nuns while others saw Voltaire. A key observation was that no one could hold both images at once, even after understanding that both were possible interpretations.

Interestingly, the brainwaves associated with one interpretation may differ significantly from those associated with the other interpretation. In the case of the Dali picture, nun-related brainwaves were very fast while the Voltaire-related ones were slow.

While this may only seem to be of academic interest, the real-world applications are potentially vast. For example, it should now be possible to begin mapping certain types of brainwaves to certain types of visual patterns.

When the researchers understand why slow brainwaves correspond to a Voltaire-like image and fast ones to the nun-like images, it will offer important clues as to how the brain processes information and recognizes patterns.

One huge application should be in instructional design. Research has found that most of our time spent reading is actually consumed by the eyes attempting to discern a pattern.

Recently, a software package has been developed that displays single words in succession at blazing speed on the computer screen. It reportedly increases reading speed manifold by eliminating the need for our eyes to wander or seek word boundaries.

A further use should be in helping students with problems such as dyslexia (which I often refer to as “lysdexia”) and attention deficit disorder (ADD). By designing images to take advantage of tendencies in such brains rather than fight theses tendencies, it should be possible to help these students learn faster with better retention.

Equally important will be the rigorous definition process needed to distinguish “Voltaire-like” from “nun-like.” No doubt other such distinctions will then be hypothesized, tested and established.

Eventually this definition process will lead us in the direction of a direct mind-to-reality interface, wherein certain thoughts will translate into control of prosthetics for the handicapped. I see it as a boon for persons suffering from certain neurological disorders where the nerves and muscles function but the brain’s direct control has been impaired.

In addition, as researchers are able to more precisely understand the human brain’s pattern recognition processes, it should become easier to program these into robotic systems. This will bring us closer to the long-awaited dawn of functional machine vision.

The lack of machine vision is one of the main obstacles to a robotic society in which manual labor is performed by machines rather than people.

The investment implications of that are huge indeed. Oh, and magic tricks?

Consider that when a David Blaine or (my personal favorite) Cris Angel understands exactly how optical illusions fool the observer, it will become possible to design even more spectacular tricks than those they perform today.

To your profitable future,

Jonathan Kolber
May 24, 2006

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