Your Brain Perceives Reality By Hallucinating

Many people assume that they perceive the world as it actually is—as if eyes and ears were windows that allow us to access an objective reality. But perception is not an accurate reflection of an externally existing world.

“In fact,” the neuroscientist Anil Seth says, “perception and hallucination have a lot in common. You could say that we’re all hallucinating all of the time, and when we agree about our hallucinations, that’s what we call reality.”

In an animated video from Carolyn Merriman of the Future of StoryTelling, Seth explains how the brain operates on implicit beliefs accumulated over thousands of years of human evolution. These, he explains, are what “turn the raw material of sensory data into our projected perceptual realities.”

Most of the time, we can all agree on these perceptions. But sometimes this consensus breaks down, such as in the case of the Internet phenomena of the white-and-gold versus black-and-blue dress or the “laurel” versus “yanny” audio clip. These are stark reminders of what Seth describes as the “neurological guesswork that happens behind the scenes.” In these moments, the curtain is lifted on the theater—not the window—of our reality.

“Our brain is doing its best to make sense of ambiguous sensory input,” Merriman told The Atlantic. “In some ways, our perception of the world is just the story our brains are telling us based on the sum of our senses.”

The mind’s ability to create this congruous narrative of reality continues to awe Seth. “I am inspired by how such a small biological machine inside my head—inside the head of everyone—can create such a rich inner universe for each of us from the raw material of sensory signals,” he told The Atlantic. “This is a monumental achievement, one that is far outside the scope of any artificial machine or computer we’ve ever constructed.”

"Neuroscience of Perception" was produced by The Future of Storytelling and Carolyn Merriman. It is part of The Atlantic Selects, an online showcase of short documentaries from independent creators, curated by The Atlantic.

[USDAselect]

Turn down the background music. It interferes with the voice over.

[sinxut]

What an amazing video. I think everyone's perception of reality can agree with that.

[jamesharris]

This should make us consider that when another percieves things differently than we do (The World, The Love of God, Political Actions) we are both experiencing the reality that is filtered through our own minds. It should make us reconsider demonizing those with whom we disagree (but that's only my personal perception).

[bradleyeric]

Brain makes inferences thousands per minute. We see a processed image. Processing can and does mess up.

[jessicaanderson]

We can never know whether or not this sentence exists, only that our perceptions of its qualities do.

[unknowntemptations]

our senses don’t make us experience reality they create it.

[pex]

Oh my God that music is treacherous. Did I end up in a casino???

[olivierdussault]

Neuroscience can appear compelling with the colorful brain images showing where this organ ''lights up'' when something is perceived, but watch out for the mereological and the localization fallacies.
A bether understanding of human consciousness must integrate the whole body into account and stop putting aside subjectivity for a independance of the brain.
We are not reduced to our brain, our brain is part of us.

[martinaee]

Fantastic video. This describes a lot of things I think are important in any kind of artistic creation too.

[PtolemyXVII]

A hallucination is different from pattern recognition. Generally the brain perceived incomplete information and attempts to form a pattern, this is different than a hallucination.

[Guus]

Very very interesting and visually well made!

[chiragshekhar]

This is one of the most beautiful videos on the web.

[eve]

The first 0:00-0:36 seconds is a basic grammar lesson on the subjunctive mood! (In English we use "filter verbs/words" while in Spanish we'd switch the vowel on the verb ending in the "subjunctive mood" conjugation) subjunctive = subjective & it makes a statement on what's agreed upon & what isn't.

[extremistcontent]

So when I'm tripping on acid am I just perceiving more of reality?

jesus christ are we talking about The Dress again

[LaurenVacula]

Awesome video!!! And so very interesting the way you guys tied this into storytelling 🙌

[KeshenMac]

Great video but perhaps don't pick a background track that sounds like police sirens next time.

[TheZchristina]

I could not see the horse and the woman

[yasashiiyuuyake]

tbh I thought this video would be about how our perception of the world is a (semi accurate) illusion/hallucination because we're lock in our skulls and need our brains to reconstruct reality based on what nerve signals come in. And like, objects don't objectively have color/smell/etc it's just how we perceive the different stimuli.

[z_a_r_c_o]

Anil Seth is such an interesting person (the narrator)