Dale Purves

A nice book, dedicated to one main idea: the way we interpret the world around us, when perceiving it through our vision, is based on picking most plausible, probable hypotheses out of all potentially possible variants. The authors call it "An empirical theory of vision". The book is full of stunning examples of optical illusions, and the text insists that the reason for this illusions to exist is not that our visual system is not really fit, but rather on the contrary - that it is really show more effective if suggesting the most probable answer in a situation of really scarce evidence. That is - they insist that the illusions are not just flukes of our machinery, not an effect of some dysfunctional low-level processing mechanisms, but rather on the contrary - a consequence of some high-level integration strategy. Very nice, and a must-read for a visual scientist. show less

This was the text for a Medical Neuroscience class that was taught by Dr. Len White of Duke University (via Coursera). I found this text to be a very useful adjunct to the course and I can highly recommend it. Of greatest utility for me was the many illustrations as I am a visual learner. Also, there is a related adjunct wenbsite with a number of useful illustrations and the book came with the Sylvius neuroanatomy software.

Some of the most eye-opening content I have seen on why we see what we see.

Het onderwerp is heel erg interessant, namelijk welke klanken vinden we mooi en wat kan daarvan de oorzaak zijn. Het verhaal is echter zeer eenzijdig opgeschreven, uitsluitend vanuit het vooroordeel van de schrijver dat alles biologisch is bepaald en dat de fysische interpretaties er niet toe doen. En dan ook nog slecht geschreven.