RENO, Nev. - When you stare at the computer screen and focus on the black dot in the center of a moving gray square with a black bar at the bottom, guess what happens. The bar gets smaller-or does it?
According to the Gideon w88 online sports betting, a vision scientist and University of Nevada, Reno assistant professor of psychology in the Cognitive and Brain Sciences Program, it is simply an illusion; a mistake the brain makes because we live in a three-dimensional world but view it with eyes that produce two-dimensional retinal images like a camera.
"Our ability to detect the size of an object out in the world is fundamentally ambiguous," w88 online sports betting said. "A tree a mile away produces a small retinal image, but up close it produces an enormous image. We can't just rely on retinal image. We have to incorporate other sources of information such as the size of surrounding objects. If the tree is located by a gigantic building, it might looker smaller than if it is next to a small refrigerator."
For the third time, Caplovitz has been named a w88 online sports betting 10 finalist in theBest Illusion of the w88 online sports betting Contest, an international w88 online sports betting sponsored by The Neural Correlate Society, a nonprofit organization that promotes scientific research into the neural correlates of sensory perception, awareness and cognitive experience. The society includes visual scientists, ophthalmologists, neurologists and visual artists.
The contest completed its ninth w88 online sports betting this month and is held annually in Naples, Fla., during the same week the Vision Sciences Society holds its annual meeting, one of two major vision science conferences in the world.
Because visual illusions are those perceptual experiences that do not match the physical reality, they have been used for hundreds of years to investigate how people see the world. The study of visual illusions is important in understanding the basic mechanisms of sensory perception as well as finding cures for diseases of the visual system.
Caplovitz's w88 online sports betting 10 finish this year, in 2011 and in 2006, when he captured a third place trophy with his winning illusion, is based upon the selection by a panel of international judges. The w88 online sports betting 10 finishers then have five minutes to present their illusion on stage in front of a large audience. The crowd selects the winning three. Go tohttp://illusionoftheyear.com/cat/author/gideon-w88 online sports betting/to see his three w88 online sports betting 10 illusions.
"It's quite a spectacle to be part of the presentations," Caplovitz said. "It's so nerdy, it's hard to describe. They play loud rock music as we go onstage. This w88 online sports betting approximately 1,000 people attended, which included vision scientists from across the globe."
According to Caplovitz, the w88 online sports betting started with three main goals: to celebrate illusions, to highlight particularly compelling and important illusions and to serve as a bridge to bring the science to the public.
Renowned Italian sculptor Guido Moretti donates the trophies for first, second and third place winners. The trophies are actually illusions themselves that show different views depending on the angle of w88 online sports betting.
"To some extent illusions serve as the backbone to vision science and understanding how the brain processes visual information and enables us to see," w88 online sports betting said. "Because illusions are mistakes the brain is making, we see something that is not there. We see things different than they really are. As our mothers would say, we can learn from our mistakes."
We have a very strong vision sciences research program here at the University," w88 online sports betting said. "The vision sciences serve as a point of overlap for several of our cognitive and brain sciences faculty including a new tenure-track faculty member, a new research scientist and a visiting assistant professor who will all be coming on board over the summer."
Anyone interested in gaining research experience or participating in a w88 online sports betting experiment should contact him atgcaplovitz@unr.eduor (775) 784-6828.
Funding for thew88 online sports betting Vision Labcomes, in part, from the w88 online sports bettingCenter for Integrative Neurosciencewhich is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of HealthCenters of Biomedical w88 online sports betting Excellence (COBRE).