Cognitive illusions are assumed to arise by interaction with assumptions about the world, leading to "unconscious inferences", an idea first suggested in the 19th century by Hermann Helmholtz.

Psychologists have long been interested in how people interpret ambiguous, bistable images, such as the examples below. Bistable images. Top left: faces or a vase. Top right: rabbit or duck. Bottom ...

From bending lines to phantom shapes, optical illusions reveal how our brains fill in the gaps, sometimes creating what isn’t really there. New research has pinpointed special neurons that help ...