Your Brain Is "Making Up" Most of What You See

Published: October 25, 2021

Up to 90% of what you see is a hallucination created by your brain. It does this by predicting what it thinks you should be seeing and filling in the gaps into your vision to match what it predicts. Below is an example. The bottom half shows two images that are the same, just mirrored. Stare at the white dot between the red and green areas in the top half for 60 seconds. This will train your brain to think your field of vision on the left is covered by green light and your field of vision on the right is covered by red light. After the 60 seconds, look at the dot between the images. See the effect? Your brain predicted the green light still being on the left and red light on the right. So it included that expectation when you looked at the lower dot — you were seeing more with your brain adding visual information than you were with only your eyes. Your brain is "making things up" like this all the time.

Brain Hallucinating What You See

Jacob Teitelbaum, MD

is one of the world's leading integrative medical authorities on fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. He is the lead author of eight research studies on their effective treatments, and has published numerous health & wellness books, including the bestseller on fibromyalgia From Fatigued to Fantastic! and The Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Solution. Dr. Teitelbaum is one of the most frequently quoted fibromyalgia experts in the world and appears often as a guest on news and talk shows nationwide including Good Morning America, The Dr. Oz Show, Oprah & Friends, CNN, and Fox News Health.

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