PSYCH 403: Advanced Perception Websites

PSYCH 403

ADVANCED PERCEPTION

Advanced Perception Websites

Introduction to Vision Science: Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology — website for Stephen Palmer’s book; Vision Science — internet resources for research in human and animal vision; Secrets of the Parthenon — companion website for this episode of NOVA; The Optical Illusions That Make the Parthenon Perfect — secrets uncovered by architects, archaeologists, and art historians; How Greek Temples Correct Visual Distortion — article from Architecture Revived; Foundations of Cognitive Science — online lecture notes from Dr. Michael Dawson’s PSYCO 354 website; Definitions for Theoretical Issues (from the UofA Dictionary of Cognitive Science)
  • functional architecture
  • primitive
  • Ryle’s Regress
  • cognitive penetrability; Marr’s Three Levels: A Re-evaluation — an explanation and evaluation of David Marr’s three-level approach; Vision Sciences Society — organization for vision scientists; Best Illusion of the Year — annual contest hosted by the Neural Correlate Society
Theoretical Approaches to Perception: Hermann von Helmholtz — brief bio and some of his accomplishments, from the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres; Silhouette Illusion — shows the spinning dancer illusion, by Nobuyuki Kayahara; Rotating cube — another bistable illusion, but made up of only 4 coplanar points; Webvision — online "book" on the organization of the retina and visual system
Neuroscience: Review of the Action Potential — concise summary; uses animations; Neuroscience For Kids — great basic information on neuroscience; not just for kids!; Neuropsychology Central — excellent collection of links; The Whole Brain Atlas — see cross-sections of the brain, plus much more; Introductory Biological Psychology Tutorials — very useful for review purposes!; The Retina to the Cortex — from McGill’s very good site, The Brain from Top to Bottom
Vision: "Visionary" — a dictionary for the study of vision; How vision works — from HowStuffWorks.com; Eye, Brain, and Vision — David Hubel’s book online; Tricks of the eye, wisdom of the brain — explains how lateral inhibition works; Receptive Field Tutorial — with explanations and diagrams; Diffraction of light — explains wave properties of light; To See and Not See — Oliver Sacks’ account of Virgil (Shirl Jennings) and his struggle to see following cataract surgery; Structure from motion at equiluminance — change the luminance until the rotating sphere is just moving dots; Stepping feet — blocks appear to “step” at equiluminance (also see radial version); Stepping Feet — another version of the stepping feet, from Stuart Anstis; Lightness Perception and Lightness Illusions — many demos of lightness illusions; Mondrian generator — just click to make your own Mondrians!; Tilt Aftereffects — try this adaptation effect for yourself; How the Blind Draw — suggests common factors in perception; from Scientific American magazine
Edge Detection: Learn About LED Lighting — explains LED lighting; Edge Detection: Gradient Operators Demo — you can upload your own images to this interactive edge detection demo; Kornia Edge Detection — interactive edge detector can do Laplacian processing of edges; Canny Edge Detector — another interactive edge detector demo
Time Perception: An Odd Sense of Timing — Scientific American Mind article by Pascal Wallisch, from the coursepack; Time by Michio Kaku: Daytime — online video of the Time documentary; Clockwork Genes: Discoveries in biological time — online webcast, demos, and resources from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's BioInteractive; Biotiming Tutorial — covers circadian rhythms, the sleep-wake cycle, plus industrial and medical applications; How it really feels to be time-blind with ADHD — article explaining this phenomenon experienced by those with ADHD; Symphony #1 For Dot Matrix Printers — listen to this and see how fast time drags (or flies); Symphony #2 also available; The Possibilian — New Yorker article describes David Eagleman’s research on time perception; David Eagleman — David Eagleman’s academic page (and his personal website); Brain Time — essay on time perception by David Eagleman; The Experience and Perception of Time — article on temporal experience, duration, and time perception; How your brain can control time — not really, but this Discover article does talk about time perception; Frontiers: Time Perception — listen to BBC radio program Frontiers on the topic of time perception; The Time Paradox — book about "The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life"; Droodles — official home of the original Droodles; Droodology — the psychology of “doodle riddles”; Why Does Time Fly as We Get Older? — Scientific American Mind guest blog on time perception
Depth Perception: Stereoscopic Media — discusses research related to all forms of stereoscopic media, including movies and VR; The Science of Forced Perspective at Disney Parks — the Art of Engineering YouTube channel shows how various depth cues can be applied to create illusions of depth, distance, or size; The Story of Community Bridge — a “trompe l’oeil” illusion; Magic Eye — many single-image random-dot stereograms; Stereoscopic Correspondence — explains compatibility, uniqueness, and continuity with interactive examples (start with Heuristics for Correspondence, Part 1)
Illusions: Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions — 132 visual interactive illusions by Prof. Michael Bach; The Illusions Index & interactive curated collection of illusions (try to pass the Master of Illusions quiz and earn a certificate!); Perceptual Science Group — this MIT lab has a gallery of illusions that reveal the workings of the visual system; Professor Richard Gregory — has papers on the nature of visual illusions and implications for perception; Poggendorff Illusion — example and a history of its discovery; Ponzo Illusion — interative demo proves the lines are the same!; Müller-Lyer Illusion — interactive demo; Mighty Optical Illusion — actually, they’re mostly visual illusions; Online Exhibits: Seeing — from the Exploratorium
Object Perception: magnetic ink character recognition — MICR codes are printed a the bottom of cheques; Innovations from a Robot Rally — full Scientific American article on the DARPA Grand Challenge; DARPA Urban Challenge — info on, well, DARPA’s Urban Challenge; Say Hello to Stanley — Wired magazine article about Stanley; Stanford Racing Team — home of Stanley & friends; The Great Robot Race — companion website for this this episode of NOVA on DARPA’s Grand Challenge; Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here — Wired magazine on autonomous vehicles; Waymo — has videos and FAQ (formerly the Google Self-Driving Car Project); Advanced Driving Support System — info and video from Toyota
Face Perception: Take This Quiz to See If You Are a Face 'Super-Recognizer' — this SciAm article has a link to a (20-minute) test of face perception; Prosopagnosia — FAQ about “face-blindness” from someone who has it [archived]; Faceblind.org — Prosopagnosia Research Center at Harvard University; Thatcher Illusion — flip her face!; Giuseppe Arcimboldo — includes biography and gallery; Kanwisher Lab — website of Nancy Kanwisher and colleagues; Martha J. Farah — website and list of publications for Martha Farah; TarrLab — home of the Greebles!; Object Perception Lab — home of the Perceptual Expertise Network, researching object recognition (using Greebles!); Study explains how car fans recognize their loves — research by Isabel Gauthier on the fusiform gyrus; The Emerging Mind — V.S. Ramachandran lectures on Capgras’ Syndrome, prosopagnosia, and more, from a series of BBC Radio lectures; Face Recognition Homepage — resource site for information on face recognition; alittlelab.com — UK lab researching facial attractiveness; has online experiments; Perception and Judgment Lab: Demonstrations — Todorov’s website has a demo videos of “trustworthy” faces; Attractive Face Scale — these faces are averaged in categories based on the “Hot or Not” website
Synesthesia: The links for this topic are posted on my blog in Anatomy of a Lecture: Part 3
Perception and Art: Andrew Lipson’s LEGO Page — check out the LEGO versions of Escher’s drawings; International Guild of Realism — promotes trompe l’oeil, photorealism, surrealism, and super-realism art styles; Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Prints — interactively change the colours of Warhol’s famous Marilyn Monroe portrait; Enigma — interactive version of Léviant’s The Enigma; Perceptual Art — the amazing art of Michael Murphy; Hybrid Images — gallery of high/low spatial frequency double images; Rotating Snakes Illusion — interactive version of Kitaoka’s illusion; From Mirror Neurons to the Mona Lisa — symposium given to the New York Academy of Sciences by Ramachandran in 2006; The Emerging Mind — V.S. Ramachandran on “the artful brain”; The Herring Gull Test — Ramachandran again, from the PBS series How Art Made the World; The neurological basis of artistic universals — Dr. Ramachandran explains his "laws of art" (archived); Unlocking the Mysteries of The Artistic Mind — Psychology Today interviews Rama about his universal laws of art; The Rule of Thirds — take better photos by not centering the subject; Fibonacci Numbers and The Golden Section in Art, Architecture and Music — after a title like that, what more can I say?; GoldenNumber.net — info on The Golden Section, Ratio or Mean, The Divine Proportion, and The Fibonacci Series; Marquardt Beauty Analysis — Marquardt Beauty Analysis describes the “Golden Mask” and how it relates to facial beauty (?); The Psychology of Beauty — ongoing blog on the scientific study of beauty; Making Impossible Objects with Mirrors and Dissecting the Magic behind the Looking Glass — Illusion Chasers blog posts on our trouble with mirrors; Kokichi Sugihara — cool illusions using mirrors
Food & Eating: How Sugar and Fat Trick the Brain into Wanting More Food — a look at “hedonic hunger”; Accounting for Taste — Psychology Today asks why some people are picky eaters and others are adventurous gourmets; The Blue Steak Experiment — podcast episode from Decoder Ring about blue food; Can music change the taste of chocolate? — take this test to find out how different sounds trick your tastebuds (chocolate not included); The Psychology of Eating and Drinking — website for Dr. Alexandra Logue’s book; Small Plate Movement — Dr. Brian Wansink applies his research to get people to eat less...by using smaller plates; From Mindless Eating to Mindlessly Eating Well — fun TED^x talk by Brian Wansink; The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food — explains how psychophysics can make things yummier
Neuromagic: Sleights of Mind — companion website to the book on neuroscience and magic; Science of Magic Association — SOMA promotes research on understanding the nature, function, and underlying mechanisms of magic; Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion — Teller explains how magic is about exploiting the gaps in human perception; “ESP Experiment” — interactive Pickover test is not ESP, it’s magic!; Rob Teszka: Cognitive Psychology and Magic — video on misdirection and change blindness; Apollo Robbins at the Magic of Consciousness — video of the Gentleman Thief applying misdirection; Mind Attention and General Illusions in Cognition Lab — Gustav Kuhn’s MAGICLab uses magic to study questions about human cognition; Psychology of Magic — website for collaborators from UBC and McGill University; Martinez-Conde Laboratory — has information on the neuroscience of magic; Anthony Barnhart — blog on the science of magic (old blog here); Canada's Magic — updates on the art of magic in Canada