I'm trying to explain how optical illusions work to my young son, and I realized I'm not sure how optical illusions work either. Why are our eyes capable of being tricked by things like optical illusions, such as mirages?
I'm trying to explain how optical illusions work to my young son, and I realized I'm not sure how optical illusions work either. Why are our eyes capable of being tricked by things like optical illusions, such as mirages?
user
Have you heard of "localizationism"? It's a very old idea in biology that says that each part of the brain solves a problem in isolation from the others.
assistant
How does that relate to optical illusions?
user
For example, in the eye, the part that receives light information from a spot of the retina is completely isolated from the part that knows where the spot of light came from in the world.  Similarly, a signal from the touch sense might also have to travel all the way to the brain before it's integrated with signals about vision.
assistant
So that causes delay or confusion that makes us interpret these visual sights in illusory ways?
user