Researchers at the Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC) at the University of Granada, in collaboration with Martin N. Hebart (Justus Liebig University Giessen and Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences), have published a new study exploring how the brain makes sense of ambiguous visual information.
In everyday life, what we see is often incomplete or unclear. For example, it is usual that objects are partially hidden, seen in poor lighting, or reduced to a shadow. Yet, we are usually able to recognize it. How the brain achieves this remains a central question in cognitive neuroscience.
In this work, a team formed by CIMCYC researchers Juan Linde-Domingo, Javier Ortiz-Tudela, Johannah Völler and Carlos González-García, developed a large dataset of more than 1,800 ambiguous images derived from the THINGS database and collected over 100,000 responses from nearly 1,000 participants. These images, known as Mooney images, are initially very difficult to recognize, often appearing as random black-and-white patches. However, once the original image is briefly shown, people can suddenly and effortlessly see the object. For example, what first looks like meaningless shapes might suddenly become a face or an animal.
The results show that when faced with ambiguity, the brain initially relies on prior knowledge to “guess” what it is seeing. After disambiguation, however, perception shifts towards a more precise matching between sensory input and internal representations. This dynamic transition suggests that perception is not a passive process, but an active interplay between expectations and incoming information.
Interestingly, the study also shows that gaining more information does not always improve perception in a straightforward way. Instead, the relationship follows a U-shaped pattern: perception improves when new information either strongly confirms or strongly contradicts prior expectations.
These findings provide new insights into how humans extract meaning from incomplete visual input and offer a valuable open resource for future research on perception, memory, and learning.
Reference
Linde-Domingo, J., Ortiz-Tudela, J., Völler, J. et al. Determinants of visual ambiguity resolution. Commun Psychol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00441-8
Contact
Juan Linde Domingo - lindedomingo@ugr.es