Given that we see the world through two small, flat retinae at the backs of our eyes, it seems remarkable that what each of us perceives is a seamless, three-dimensional visual world. The retinae ...

When humans look out at a visual landscape like a sunset or a beautiful overlook, we experience something — we have a conscious awareness of what that scene looks like. This awareness of the visual ...

Given that we see the world through two small, flat retinae at the backs of our eyes, it seems remarkable that what each of us perceives is a seamless, three-dimensional visual world. The retinae ...

Color awareness has long been a puzzle for researchers in neuroscience and psychology, who debate over how much color observers really perceive. A new study finds that people are aware of surprisingly ...

A new survey of the activity of nearly 60,000 neurons in the mouse visual system reveals how far we have to go to understand how the brain computes. The analysis reveals that more than 90% of neurons ...

When your eyes scan a room, why doesn't the world appear to bounce like the real image on your retina? WHY IS THE STUDY of perception so appealing? One reason is that you can gain deep insights into ...

NOT long before I watched The Story of Looking, I was shown an image of the inside of my eye. At my annual sight check-up, I’d agreed to something called an optical coherence tomography scan, ...

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in ...