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Note: it may help to view this video full screen on a larger monitor, or to view the screen from closer than normal to get the full effect of the illusions.
Researchers at the University of Rochester's Center for Visual Science used some well-known illusions to test a hypothesis. What they found was that when objects in motion are seen in the peripheral vision, where the information is less clear, the human brain works a lot like a global positioning that is struggling with a weak signal.
When your phone's GPS has a strong signal, it's very good at locating where you are and where you're going, but when the signal is weak, it needs to use an algorithm, known as the Kalman Filter, to estimate your direction and position. With the weaker visual signal in the peripheral vision, the brain also uses the same algorithm to estimate where moving objects are, and in both cases, the results aren't always perfect.
These animations illustrate the concepts that the researchers were looking at, such as the "curveball illusion". This deals with the sudden, sharp break that batters perceive when a curveball is quickly approaching the plate and enters their peripheral vision. The actual motion of that pitch is a much more steady, gradual curve, but it's this imperfect processing of the information that happens in the brain that causes the illusion.
This research was conducted by Duje Tadin, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, as well as Oh-Sang Kwon, assistant professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea. The senior researcher was David C. Knill, professor of brain and cognitive sciences and associate director of the Center for Visual Science at the University of Rochester.
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