Perceptual Science Group (Adelson Lab)

Founded in 1994, the Perceptual Science Group of the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT does research in human visual perception, machine vision, and image processing. Research areas are as follows: motion analysis, brightness and transparency, surface perception, stereopsis, perceptual similarity , gesture recognition, event perception, image data compression , image enhancement, object recognition and image database indexing.

Research within the Perceptual Science Group include:

Music Universals Study -- This web-based experiment is an attempt to compare how people from different parts of the world perceive music. You can help us by taking the test yourself; it takes just a few minutes.
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Checkerboard Illusion -- A light check in the shadow is the same gray as a dark check outside the shadow.
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Motion, Form, and Mid-Level Vision Tutorial -- The motion of the two bars to the left remains the same, but the addition of the occluding frame causes the bars to appear to move in a circle. The Mid-Level Vision Tutorial contains similar illusions that shed light on the interactions between motion and form.
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Lightness Perception and Lightness Illusions -- This interactive tutorial demonstrates how lightness illusions provide insights into the underlying mechanisms of the human visual system.
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Munker-White Illusion -- All of the small blue bars are actually the same color. The lightness differences you are experiencing are massive