Mark Changizi

Mark Changizi (born 1969) is a theoretical neurobiologist, science writer, and author. He proposed the "Perceive the present" hypothesis to understand optical illusions.

Biography

Mark Changizi attended the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and then went on to the University of Virginia for a degree in physics and mathematics, and to the University of Maryland for a PhD in math.^[1] In 2002 he won a prestigious Sloan-Swartz Fellowship in Theoretical Neurobiology at Caltech, and in 2007 he became an assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 2010 he took the post of Director of Human Cognition at a new research institute called 2ai Labs.^[2]

Perceive the present

Changizi says that visual illusions are due to a neural lag which most humans experience while awake. When light hits the retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the world. Changizi asserts that the human visual system has evolved to compensate for neural delays by generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. This foresight enables humans to react to events in the present, enabling humans to perform reflexive acts like catching a fly ball and to maneuver smoothly through a crowd.^[3]

Publications

Books

• The brain from 25,000 feet, 2003
• The Vision Revolution: How the Latest Research Overturns Everything We Thought We Knew About Human Vision, 2010
• Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man, 2011

Articles

• Changizi M A, Widders D M, 2002, "Latency correction explains the classical geometrical illusions" Perception 31(10) 1241–1262
• Changizi, M. A., Hsieh, A., Nijhawan, R., Kanai, R., & Shimojo, S. (2008). Perceiving the Present and a Systematization of Illusions. Cognitive Science, 32(3), 459–503. http://doi.org/10.1080/03640210802035191

References