God Awful Things

From Wired:

In the hollow mask illusion, viewers perceive a concave face (like the back side of a hollow mask) as a normal convex face. The illusion exploits our brain’s strategy for making sense of the visual world: uniting what it actually sees — known as bottom-up processing — with what it expects to see based on prior experience — known as top-down processing.

I admit, that for a moment I was afraid I wouldn’t see the illusion and discover that I myself suffer from Schizophrenia, fortunately, thanks to this simple test I have a clean bill of mental health.

But patients with schizophrenia are undeterred by implausibility: They see the hollow face for what it is. About seven out of 1000 Americans suffer from the disease, which is characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and poor planning. Some psychologists believe this dissociation from reality may result from an imbalance between bottom-up and top-down processing — a hypothesis ripe for testing using the hollow mask illusion.

I won’t lie, I know a certain individual I have diagnosed as having schizophrenia, and I’d be curious to know whether he would see the face as convex or not..

The amazing things is even when we know what’s going to happen, our brains just won’t listen to what we want it to do as shown in this video.

Sigh, nothing sadder than knowing there is something out there some can see buy you can’t, like God.  Oh? but what is this piece of encouraging news?

Schizophrenics aren’t the only ones who see the concave face — people who are drunk or high can also ‘beat’ the illusion. A similar disconnect between what the brain sees and what it expects to see may be occurring during these drug-induced states.

WOO, PARTY ON FRIDAY!