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Is It Cake? How Our Brain Deciphers Materials

Neuroscientists are discovering how this basic ability, essential to our survival, works

Millions of viewers have watched rapt as TikTok bakers slice or bite into inedible-looking objects with fluffy, frosting-filled innards … or have tuned into Is It Cake?, the aptly named Netflix show. And brains that are optimally tuned to making these sorts of decisions efficiently and accurately are essential to survival and reproductive success, especially as our evolutionary predecessors navigated the travails of early human history. Rather than relying on a single, specialized “material recognizing” region, our brains draw on a network of systems that integrate low-level visual features with higher-order knowledge—such as context, memory, touch, and real-world experience—to determine what something is made of.

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