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illusion
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An illusion is a distortion of the senses, which can reveal how the mind normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. Although illusions distort the human perception of reality, they are generally shared by most people.
An illusion is a distortion of the senses that shows how your mind typically organizes and makes sense of what you see, hear, or feel. They matter because even though illusions bend your perception of reality, most people experience them the same way, which teaches us about how perception actually works.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Research
16,757 papers- The Fork-and-Knife Illusion.Perception · 2021Balas B, Balas BDOI: 10.1177/0301006620988847
- Merry-or-Worry, Illusion.Perception · 2022Bachmann TDOI: 10.1177/03010066221086080
- The mirror illusion's effects on body state estimation.ReviewCognitive neuropsychology · 2016Soliman TM, Buxbaum LJ, Jax SADOI: 10.1080/02643294.2016.1187591
- The Motion-Silencing Illusion Depends on Object-Centered Representation.Psychological science · 2024Wu Q, Flombaum JIDOI: 10.1177/09567976241235104
- Positive and negative implications of the causal illusion.ReviewConsciousness and cognition · 2017Blanco FDOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.08.012
- Mirror-Brush Illusion: Creating Phantom Tactile Percepts on Intact Limbs.IEEE transactions on haptics · 2023Singhala M, Brown JDDOI: 10.1109/TOH.2023.3279012
- A Continuous Illusion of Having a Sixth Finger.Perception · 2020Cadete D, Longo MRDOI: 10.1177/0301006620939457
- Pupil dilation underlies the peripheral drift illusion.Journal of vision · 2025Mather G, Cavanagh PDOI: 10.1167/jov.25.2.13
via PubMed
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Encyclopedic overview
9 sectionsContents
- Visual
- Auditory
- Tactile
- Temporal
- Intersensory
- Disorders
- Neuroscience
- References
- External links
An illusion is a distortion of the senses, which can reveal how the mind normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. Although illusions distort the human perception of reality, they are generally shared by most people.
Illusions may occur with any of the human senses, but visual illusions (optical illusions) are the best-known and understood. The emphasis on visual illusions occurs because vision often dominates the other senses. For example, individuals watching a ventriloquist will perceive the voice as coming from the dummy since they are able to see the dummy mouth the words.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “illusion” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.