Ask a Scientist - Topic: Vision and Misperception August 20, 2006

Ask a Scientist is an informative, entertaining science lecture series, held at a San Francisco cafe. Each event features a speaker on a current topic, a short presentation, and the opportunity to ask all those burning questions that have been keeping you up at night. No tests, grades, or pressure…just food, drinks, socializing, and conversation about the universe’s most fascinating mysteries! http://www.askascientistSF.com

This month's topic: Vision and Misperception

As we go through our daily lives, most of us rarely give a thought to the miraculously complex operations that allow us to understand and negotiate all the stuff we see. The field of vision research has advanced by leaps and bounds in the past two decades, with the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging. But what do those pretty pictures of highlights on the brain really tell us about how we see? Ariella Popple, a vision scientist from UC Berkeley, will demonstrate the limits of our perception and understanding with stunning visual illusions and entertaining audience participation experiments, to show that sometimes even neuroscientists don't know what they're talking about.

Official Website: http://www.askascientistSF.com