The tilt illusion, population decoding, and natural scene statistics

Context exerts a dramatic influence on neural processing and sensory experience. Perceptually, the presence of contextual information at a given point can elicit striking misjudgements of local features, such as orientation and motion. This is manifest in illusions and aftereffects, which have been a topic of intensive study for decades. Perceptual illusions are most puzzling when contexts induce distortions that appear inconsistent with their statistically normative implications, as their functional role then is quite mysterious.