Professor Kang Lee, from the University of Toronto, explained to Bored Panda that our imaginations have a very strong impact on our perception. Our imaginations come from our frontal cortex in our brain, meanwhile, our perception takes place first in the visual cortex, found in the occipital lobe in the back of our head.
One of the more common phenomena that people tend to come across in their daily lives is pareidolia, or rather, seeing faces where there aren’t any. Perhaps you’ve spotted a cloud that looks just like your loved one or you’re looking at the trees and the leaves make them look like a stranger’s staring right back at you.
"Pareidolia illustrates the interaction between the visual cortex and the frontal cortex of the human brain. It suggests that our brain is highly sensitive and expecting to encounter and process some special classes of objects in our environment because they are biological and socially important to our adaptions to the environment," professor Lee told Bored Panda during an earlier interview.
"For example, when you are walking in a dark street in the evening, your brain is on high alert to detect whether any threat will jump out any moment. In this case, you are more likely to have face or human pareidolia because it is important for you to err on the side of caution if you mistake a tree as a human being,” he said.
“However, for some people, their frontal cortex’s expectation for certain objects (e.g., faces) become so high that they see faces in many situations where no faces exist."
He continued: “Even in this kind of situation, it is normal. There is nothing wrong with these individuals," he stressed. "Pareidolia is different from paranoia or delusion or abnormal vision of individuals with psychosis. In fact, a recent study shows that those people with pareidolia tend to be more creative. Also, people who are religious may be able to see religious icons in nonface objects as well."
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Professor Lee reiterated that our imaginations greatly affect our perceptions. “What we see are not things over there in the world but actually the co-creation of what is out there physically and what is in our mind mentally through our expectations and imaginations,” he said.
"Pareidolia is a broader phenomenon as it extends to touch and sound and other sensory channels. For example, you sometimes sense your phone vibrating when it is not, it is a tactile form of pareidolia. When you hear voices in a noisy environment, it is an auditory form of pareidolia."
