“Because contrast suppression is orientation-specific and relies on cortical processing, our results suggest that people experiencing a major depressive episode have normal retinal processing but altered cortical contrast normalization,” write the researchers in their paper.

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We know that depression is linked to variations in the way our brains are wired, but new research suggests that people who are going through a depressive episode actually see the world around them differently.

And the team behind the study hopes that a better understanding of how visual information is processed in the brains of people with depression could help to inform our treatment approaches in the future.

The researchers wanted to analyze how the cerebral cortex – responsible for receiving messages from the five senses – handled an optical illusion, testing it out with 111 people who were experiencing major depressive episodes and 29 people who weren’t.