YOU DON'T PERCEIVE REALITY:

For something as intimate to our lives as perception -- how we experience ourselves and the world -- we know remarkably little about all the ways it can differ from person to person. Some people, for instance, have aphantasia, which means they experience no mental imagery, while others have no inner monologue in their heads, just silence. Studying what scientists now call "perceptual diversity" is part of an increasingly mainstream effort to learn more about consciousness itself.

Among the new wave of researchers who are trying to unravel the mystery of consciousness in the lab is Anil Seth. Seth is the co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science and the author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. His viral TED talk in 2017 popularized the idea of consciousness as a "controlled hallucination," which suggests that our perceptions are less like looking through a transparent window on the outside world and more like watching an internally constructed movie. When sensory data from the outside world contradicts our brain's movie, it updates the film.

Now Seth is behind another project that aims to "paint a multidimensional portrait of this hidden terrain of inner diversity," he told me. By studying the subtle ways perception can vary, we can understand the many different ways our brains construct our realities. That's why in 2022, Seth and his colleagues in collaboration with the creative studio Collective Act launched the Perception Census, the largest psychological study of its kind. It aims to help bridge the divide between philosophy and science by providing experimental evidence for questions, such as how our individual minds differ, that have long been out of reach.

The online survey gives participants a series of tasks, brain teasers, and interactive illusions that each probe a different aspect of perception, such as vision, sound, rhythm, how you experience the passage of time, and even how your imagination works. It's already reached over 20,000 participants. "Just as biodiversity is important for the health of an ecosystem," Seth told me, perceptual diversity "is something that enriches society."

Tweet   @brothersjudd