The Science Media Group is the media arm of the Science Education Department.

“Visualizations and Visual Illusions: How the Mind Tricks Us"
by Prof. Eric Mazur

This page contains links that will play a video recording of a talk given by Prof. Eric Mazur (Physics, Harvard) at the Center for Astrophysics on January 11, 2005, titled, “Visualizations and Visual Illusions: How the Mind Tricks Us".

This talk (and this web link) is sponsored by the Science Education Department, is to encourage support for a major new initiative at Harvard to create a "Center for Research in the Science of Visual Learning", spearheaded by the CfA.

Abstract: Neurobiology and cognitive psychology have made great progress in understanding how the mind processes information - in particular visual information.
The knowledge we can gain from these fields has important implications for the presentation of visual information and student learning.