Something Made Your Brain Think These Dots Are a Dog [pic]
Moving dots in the image above might be placed at random, and have no intention or inclination to be a part of a group. Yet, when we see them, the brain sees them as part of a group and tells us we are looking at a Dalmatian. Cute, except it isn’t a dalmatian and our mind is totally seeing things. This happens because of the Law of Closure, a subcomponent of the Gestalt psychology concept.
Apparently, the mind draws and remembers connections between things, seeing them all as patterns, rather than individual information, and arranges it to reduce chaos and come to a more meaningful result. Most of the time, we are unaware of this going on, yet the response happens very easily in the mind. This is all a result of evolution, where our ancestors might have had better chances at survival if they noticed and calculated the movement of predators.
As this excellent video by Bobby McFerrin shows, humans will move to fill gaps in information and use familiar patterns to bridge the gaps in information. Actually, just watch the video, it is remarkable.
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