Grade 7

Your Brain Perceives Reality By Hallucinating

Source: The Atlantic

Are our minds playing tricks on us all the time? Click this link to watch an animated video that explains what perception and hallucination have in common.

What Causes Déjà Vu?

Source: Scientific American

It’s an eerie feeling: You walk into a place you know you’ve never been before but are overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity—a memory you can’t quite reach. Has this all happened before?
The sensation is known as déjà vu, and though it is hard to study, scientists are slowly figuring out why it happens.

This year’s Olympic flame isn’t a flame at all—and that’s a good thing

Source: Fast Company

The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris had a goal of being the most environmentally-friendly games in history. One way to meet this goal was by asking the question: “What if the Olympic flame looked like a flame, but wasn’t one?” Learn how engineers came up with the illusion at the heart of the Olympic Games

Seeing things that aren’t there? It’s called pareidolia.

Source: EarthSky

Have you ever looked at an electrical outlet and thought it looked like a face? Or looked at a cloud and seen a bunny rabbit? If so, you’ve experienced the phenomenon of pareidolia. But why does our mind create faces out of random shapes? Read this article to learn more.

The Visual Illusions that Reveal How Our Minds Work

Source: Psychology Today

Disney is known for creating magical effects on-screen, but did you know they also use tricks and deception in their theme parks, too? This article discusses a few of the ways Disney–and other theme parks and entertainment venues–use optical illusions to create magical effects in real life.

Magician Breaks Down How Illusions Work

Source: Wired (on YouTube)

Magician David Kwong breaks down magic into what he calls the “7 Principles of Illusion” and explains what goes into the execution of a magic trick.
Beware: He does give some general spoilers for how some magic tricks are done.

Eight Ways Your Perception of Reality Is Skewed

Source: Greater Good Magazine

Researchers have found that people wearing heavy backpacks perceive the hills they are climbing as steeper than people who aren’t wearing backpacks do. Read this article to find out more about how our perceptions can become distorted.

Scientists have solved a classic optical illusion–and the answer’s in your neurons

Source: BBC: Science Focus

There is a famous optical illusion with two gray lines inside a number of black and white bars. The gray bars are the same color, but they appear lighter or darker depending on which bars are around them. Science was never sure why, but it seems the answer lies in you brain’s neurons and how fast they can fire.

Can You Trust Your Ears?

Source: ASAP Science

When most people think of an illusion, they think of an image or video–but there are audio illusions that trick your hearing, too. After you watch this video, you’ll have to ask yourself “Can I trust my own ears?”

How To Make Eyewitness Testimony More Reliable

Source: SciShow Psych (YouTube)

Eyewitness testimony can be really important when investigating crimes, but how can we make them more reliable? SciShow looks at the scientific and psychological evidence around several ways in which your memory can fail–and how we may be able to minimize these effects.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect, or ‘why incompetent people think they’re amazing’

Source: TED Education

How good are you at basketball? What about playing an instrument? Psychological research suggests we’re not actually very good at evaluating our own abilities accurately. In fact, we frequently overestimate our own abilities thanks to something known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

‘Evil Genius’: Mind-Bending Illusion Built Into Skyline Confuses Internet

Source: Newsweek

Don’t let this optical illusion fool you. You won’t need to press play when you see this skyline illusion.

Memory contaminates perception

Source: The Guardian

An interesting new study that shows how visual working memory can influence our perception of events.

The Most Amazing Optical Illusions (and How They Work)

Source: Live Science

Thanks to modern neuroscience, we can understand the brain processes that take place we encounter some visual illusions. Explore this collection of popular illusions and find out how they work.

The Best Illusions of the Year Will Leave Your Brain Hurting More Than 2021 Did

Source: Gizmodo

Look at the top illusions of the past year.

Who Decided to Put 60 Seconds in a Minute?

Source: Smithsonian

Watch this video to learn how an ancient civilization still influences how we view something as fundamental as time.

Is Hypnosis Real?

Source: Medium

In this short column, a doctor dispels myths about hypnosis to finally answer that age old question: Is hypnosis real?

The Silent “Sixth” Sense

Source: Vox

Proprioception is the way the human body remains aware of itself, even in darkness. Learn more about this mysterious and fascinating function of the brain in this article.

Forget Everything You Think You Know About Time

Source: Pocket

A theoretical physicist challenges the widely-accepted linear representation of time.

How Computer-Assisted Telepathy Helps Humans Communicate

Source: NPR

Can computers allow people to telepathically communicate? Read this short article and view the accompanying video to learn more about research into computer-assisted human telepathic communication. 

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