We have no choice but to rely on our five senses. No matter what we do (or don’t do), our brain is told how to perceive the world around us. Your reality is cobbled together from a bunch of different parts of your brain working in conjunction, trying really hard to make sense of what’s going on around you. To make it even more complicated, try adding your own prejudices, current mood you’re in and your unique way of understanding the world. That’s some nasty mess!

Your brain picks and chooses what you notice

You probably know this one already, but let’s try it one more time. Look at the dot in the middle for about 10 seconds and realize how blind you are.

This is called a Motion-Induced Blindness. Your brain is simply ignoring or discarding extra information once you focus on just one thing. This may be one of the brain’s useful tricks, but tell it to someone that needs to drive at night. This green dot is a street and yellow disappearing dots are cars and pedestrians. So now you know car accidents aren’t always about drinking and reckless driving!

Sight and hearing overlap

Did you know that your eyes can mess up your hearing? It’s not their job to get involved but as sight is a dominant sense in humans, they’re rather pushy. Want to try the McGurk Effect?

Your body isn’t fond of your limbs that much

Because of the way our brains work (or fail to work properly), it’s easier than you think to trick ourselves into “misplacing” body parts or feel something we shouldn’t feel at all. Do you know the Rubber Hand Illusion?

The worst part is that once your brain adopts the rubber hand as its own, it “forgets” about the real one – temperature of your own hand will drop, indicating that blood flow is being restricted.

The worst thing is, we can’t really help any of these from happening!