My Perspective

I won a prize for my photo submission entitled "Hollow Mask Illusion" under "the 'why' of shapes" category (adult level) in the "Maths Inside 2023" photo competition that aims to popularize scientific thinking in the general public. My submission discusses why people do not perceive the obverse side of a mask as a concave face but as a regular face instead. This illusion is robust in general and everyone can be surprised at this trick on the brain unless they suffer from Schizophrenia. Here is my winning photo and the caption. This image shows the obverse side of a mask that has been painted to showcase a face. When people see the reverse side of a mask, they are usually unable to perceive it as concave or a hollow face, but instead see a convex regular face as seen in this image. This illusion is a classic example of how brain uses its top-down expectations to shape visual perception. The "Predictive coding account of perceptual inference&quo