Deceptive Perception: Do You Trust Your Senses?

During most of our lives, you walk around fully trusting what you see. Every now and again, you can't quite believe your eyes: maybe something seems too beautiful, or someone is tricking you with an illusion. You question your eyes. But what happens when your eyes and your visual system cannot determine what you are seeing? I'll talk about what happens, and how we can use it to study the brain.

Human listeners are much better than machines at perceiving and comprehending speech. This is particularly true when we hear speech that is degraded, ambiguous or spoken in an unfamiliar accent. In this talk, I’ll explain what we know about how the brain processes speech. I will also play some auditory illusions that illustrate when and how perception of speech succeeds or fails.

Choosing what to eat is one of the more common choices we make... and we typically rely on what we can see and remember about a food to tell us important things we need to know to make a choice. This talk will show you some common illusions in food choice – and how you can use these illusions to eat indulgently and with fewer calories.