--- title: Perception & Attention description: This topic examines how the brain processes sensory inputs to construct our experience of reality. You will understand the mechanisms of visual and auditory perception, how the brain filters information, and the cognitive limits of human attention and focus. category: social-sciences subcategory: cognitive-science difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/perception-and-attention --- # Perception & Attention This topic examines how the brain processes sensory inputs to construct our experience of reality. You will understand the mechanisms of visual and auditory perception, how the brain filters information, and the cognitive limits of human attention and focus. ## Available Resources 1 Books • 2 Courses • 3 Websites ## Websites ### 1. Illusion of the Year Archive of the Best Illusion of the Year Contest, run by the Neural Correlate Society since 2005. Each entry is a short video demonstrating a novel visual or multisensory illusion, with explanation of the perceptual mechanism it exploits. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://illusionoftheyear.com/ **Tags:** visual-illusions, vision-science, perception, demonstrations, neuroscience ### 2. visionlab.harvard.edu Harvard Vision Lab is a research site focused on visual perception, attention, and related cognitive processes. It provides information about ongoing experiments, lab members, publications, datasets and demos, and resources for learning about vision science. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://visionlab.harvard.edu **Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, cognitive-science ### 3. michaelbach.de/ot An extensive online gallery of optical illusions and visual perception experiments by Michael Bach, featuring hundreds of images and interactive demos with explanations of how perception and attention shape what we see. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://michaelbach.de/ot **Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, cognitive-science ## Courses ### 1. Introduction to Psychology (MIT 9.00SC) **Author:** John D. E. Gabrieli Survey of human nature from mind to brain: perception, emotion, learning, memory, cognition, child development, personality, psychopathology and social behavior. Built for self-study with 24 lecture videos, a free open textbook, check-yourself questions and exams with solutions. Gives a grounded overview of scientific psychology. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/9-00sc-introduction-to-psychology-fall-2011/ **Tags:** psychology, cognition, neuroscience, developmental-psychology, psychopathology ### 2. Perception Columbia University course taught by Shree Nayar covering the perception stage of computer vision: change detection, video tracking, image segmentation, appearance matching with principal component analysis, and neural networks for object recognition. It concerns machine vision, not human perception. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/perception **Tags:** courses, humanities-social-sciences, cognitive-science ## Books ### 1. Sensation and Perception **Author:** E. Bruce Goldstein Goldstein's undergraduate textbook on the senses, linking perceptual experience to underlying physiology across vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Readers come away able to trace a percept from receptor to cortex and interpret psychophysical evidence. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0534639917?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, cognitive-science --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/perception-and-attention