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"The camera does not lie," the saying goes. And we tend to think of our eyes and our other sensory organs as video equipment, faithfully recording all the details of our busy lives. As you will learn from the articles on illusions collected in this special issue, however, we see with our brains, not with our eyes. And our brains make instant value judgments about the jumble of incoming sensory information, depending on what is important at that moment to us, to create a sensible narrative of the world around us.

Of course, the brain cannot actually tell us about what it is thinking as it processes sensory inputs, focusing on certain items and ignoring others. But our responses to illusions can be just as revealing. Scientists have long used these disarmingly simple—and fun—sensory tricks to probe the mind's inner workings. This special edition offers an amazing collection of such illusions and the lessons that they teach us about the brain. We can promise you one thing: you won't believe your eyes.

Some of the features in this edition:

How Blind Are We?
We have eyes, yet we do not see

Hidden in Plain Sight
Camouflage in fish and other animals provides insights into visual perception

Seeing Is Believing
2-D or not 2-D, that is the question: test yourself to learn what shapes formed by shading reveal about the brain

A Moving Experience
How the eyes can see movement where it does not exist

The Phantom Hand
The feeling of being touched on a fake hand illuminates how the brain makes assumptions about the world

Paradoxical Perceptions
How does the brain sort out contradictory images?

Cracking the da Vinci Code
What do the Mona Lisa and Abraham Lincoln have in common?

And much more...