Our brains are wired to fill in perceptual gaps in what we see, whether it’s a lion hiding in the trees or the shapes hidden in an optical illusion — but how does that wiring work? Neuroscientists are zeroing in on how special kinds of brain cells help us see things that aren’t actually there.
Researchers from Seattle’s Allen Institute for Brain Science and the University of California at Berkeley traced the role played by the cells, known as IC-encoder neurons, in a study published today by the journal Nature Neuroscience.
“The goal of this project was to understand the neural basis of pattern completion, or filling in when you are dealt ambiguous or missing data in your vision,” said senior study author Hillel Adesnik, a neuroscientist at Berkeley.
Such research could help scientists understand how our brains create a complete picture of the world around us from the data that our senses provide. It could also eventually reveal how hallucinations arise, or point the way to better computer vision systems.
