Aug 14, 2025 07:24 PM
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-b...ps-reality
INTRO: As you scroll through this article, your brain is hard at work creating the mental world you live in. You probably have a seamless sense that you’re embedded in a world full of other people, objects, and your own thoughts.
By the time you’ve read this sentence, your brain will have rapidly decoded data in its sensorium (the part that receives and interprets sensory information) – turning the shapes on this screen into a voice in your head. But that’s not all. It’s also making deeper, faster judgments.
For instance, though we’ve never met, your brain probably made some snap assumptions about me, especially after I used a word like sensorium. (Academic? Yes. Pompous? I’ll let you decide.)
Or perhaps it triggered a more inward-looking response: confidence or uncertainty about what sensorium really means. As a psychologist and neuroscientist, my job is to understand how the brain pulls off this remarkable trick – how it builds the illusion of an external world.
And, with my colleagues, I think we’ve discovered a radical answer – your brain is like a scientist. Just as scientists build theories to make sense of the world, so your brain generates its own hypotheses to interpret reality.
This may explain why your brain’s work feels so fast and effortless. But while this method is efficient, it comes at a cost: it means our brains can easily misperceive or misbelieve.
Each of us lives in a version of reality shaped by our own assumptions and predictions. Becoming aware of the tricks our minds play can reshape how we understand ourselves, and also help us better relate to those who see the world differently.
Here are the top ways your brain builds your version of reality – and how to turn them to your advantage.
1. Your world is a hallucination
We usually think our brains give us a roughly accurate picture of the world. After all, we assume that ‘seeing things’ or ‘hearing things’ means we’ve lost our minds. But the latest research suggests that’s not quite true. In fact, all of us are hallucinating all the time – and the theories our brains come up with shape what we perceive.
You can see this in the illusion on the cover of my book below. Though most people see the apple as red, it’s actually grey. You see red because your brain has a theory about apples and what colour they’re supposed to be. It’s this theory you see projected, not the actual pixels on the screen.
If we put you in an MRI scanner, we can see your brain creating its own assumptions and expectations even when nothing’s there.
For example, if we show you a photo with a big chunk missing, the visual areas of your brain that should be inactive light up with neural patterns that resemble what your brain thinks should be there. We can see, in real time, your brain filling in the blanks on the canvas of visual space.
This process is usually helpful – but it does give our brains a built-in tendency to invent. Realising that all of us can see or hear things that aren’t there offers a fresh perspective on more serious hallucinations – like those experienced by people with psychotic illnesses, or psychics who report ‘hearing’ supernatural voices.
Scientists think that people with these vivid hallucinations may be more prone to having their assumptions and theories spill into perception. Importantly, there seem to be different brain networks involved in hallucinating and in becoming mentally unwell.
So, if you hallucinate, that doesn’t mean anything is wrong with your perception. Hallucination is not a glitch – it’s a core feature of how the brain works... (MORE - details)
THE REST:
[...] 2. You don't really listen to what other people say
[...] 3. You're not really in control
[...] 4. Your body language is actually a 'body dialect'
[...] 5. What you see in the mirror is your brain's theory of itself
INTRO: As you scroll through this article, your brain is hard at work creating the mental world you live in. You probably have a seamless sense that you’re embedded in a world full of other people, objects, and your own thoughts.
By the time you’ve read this sentence, your brain will have rapidly decoded data in its sensorium (the part that receives and interprets sensory information) – turning the shapes on this screen into a voice in your head. But that’s not all. It’s also making deeper, faster judgments.
For instance, though we’ve never met, your brain probably made some snap assumptions about me, especially after I used a word like sensorium. (Academic? Yes. Pompous? I’ll let you decide.)
Or perhaps it triggered a more inward-looking response: confidence or uncertainty about what sensorium really means. As a psychologist and neuroscientist, my job is to understand how the brain pulls off this remarkable trick – how it builds the illusion of an external world.
And, with my colleagues, I think we’ve discovered a radical answer – your brain is like a scientist. Just as scientists build theories to make sense of the world, so your brain generates its own hypotheses to interpret reality.
This may explain why your brain’s work feels so fast and effortless. But while this method is efficient, it comes at a cost: it means our brains can easily misperceive or misbelieve.
Each of us lives in a version of reality shaped by our own assumptions and predictions. Becoming aware of the tricks our minds play can reshape how we understand ourselves, and also help us better relate to those who see the world differently.
Here are the top ways your brain builds your version of reality – and how to turn them to your advantage.
1. Your world is a hallucination
We usually think our brains give us a roughly accurate picture of the world. After all, we assume that ‘seeing things’ or ‘hearing things’ means we’ve lost our minds. But the latest research suggests that’s not quite true. In fact, all of us are hallucinating all the time – and the theories our brains come up with shape what we perceive.
You can see this in the illusion on the cover of my book below. Though most people see the apple as red, it’s actually grey. You see red because your brain has a theory about apples and what colour they’re supposed to be. It’s this theory you see projected, not the actual pixels on the screen.
If we put you in an MRI scanner, we can see your brain creating its own assumptions and expectations even when nothing’s there.
For example, if we show you a photo with a big chunk missing, the visual areas of your brain that should be inactive light up with neural patterns that resemble what your brain thinks should be there. We can see, in real time, your brain filling in the blanks on the canvas of visual space.
This process is usually helpful – but it does give our brains a built-in tendency to invent. Realising that all of us can see or hear things that aren’t there offers a fresh perspective on more serious hallucinations – like those experienced by people with psychotic illnesses, or psychics who report ‘hearing’ supernatural voices.
Scientists think that people with these vivid hallucinations may be more prone to having their assumptions and theories spill into perception. Importantly, there seem to be different brain networks involved in hallucinating and in becoming mentally unwell.
So, if you hallucinate, that doesn’t mean anything is wrong with your perception. Hallucination is not a glitch – it’s a core feature of how the brain works... (MORE - details)
THE REST:
[...] 2. You don't really listen to what other people say
[...] 3. You're not really in control
[...] 4. Your body language is actually a 'body dialect'
[...] 5. What you see in the mirror is your brain's theory of itself
