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This distinction pervades human cognition, with an expansive literature reporting striking effects of animacy on vision, memory, social perception, and neural organization. But studies of perceived animacy face a persistent challenge: Objects that differ in animacy tend to differ in many lower-level visual features (e.g. shape, texture, spatial frequency). Thus, it remains controversial whether animacy per se \u2013 as opposed to its lower-level correlates \u2013 drives visual processing. Here, we achieve previously unattainable levels of experimental control to demonstrate that the visual system represents animacy itself, beyond its lower-level covariates. We vary animacy while holding nearly all lower-level features constant by exploiting \u2018visual anagrams\u2019 \u2013 a diffusion-based technique for generating static images whose interpretations change radically with orientation. Eight pre-registered experiments leverage this approach to demonstrate that representations of animacy structure visual working memory and guide visual attention. Thus, the visual system extracts animacy itself, beyond its lower-level correlates.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.7554\/elife.111179","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,12]],"date-time":"2026-06-12T14:30:24Z","timestamp":1781274624000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.7554\/elife.111179","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Perceiving animacy in \u2018identical\u2019 images"],"prefix":"10.7554","volume":"15","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5476-8416","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Tal","family":"Boger","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/00za53h95","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Johns Hopkins University","place":["Baltimore, United States"]}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"},{"role":"corresponding-author","vocabulary":"crossref"},{"role":"conceptualization","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"data-curation","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"formal-analysis","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"methodology","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"writing-original-draft","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"writing-review-editing","vocabulary":"credit"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1247-2422","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Chaz","family":"Firestone","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/00za53h95","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Johns Hopkins University","place":["Baltimore, United States"]}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"},{"role":"corresponding-author","vocabulary":"crossref"},{"role":"conceptualization","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"methodology","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"project-administration","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"supervision","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"writing-original-draft","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"writing-review-editing","vocabulary":"credit"}]}],"member":"4374","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,26]]},"reference":[{"key":"bib1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"303","DOI":"10.1016\/j.evolhumbehav.2016.01.006","type":"journal-article","article-title":"Adaptive attention: how preference for animacy impacts change detection","volume":"37","author":"Altman","year":"2016","journal-title":"Evolution and Human Behavior"},{"key":"bib2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/oso\/9780197622223.001.0001","type":"book","volume-title":"The Border between Seeing and Thinking","author":"Block","year":"2023"},{"key":"bib3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"R910","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cub.2025.08.036","type":"journal-article","article-title":"Visual anagrams reveal high-level effects with \u201cidentical\u201d stimuli","volume":"35","author":"Boger","year":"2025","journal-title":"Current Biology"},{"key":"bib4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"370","DOI":"10.3758\/s13421-013-0368-8","type":"journal-article","article-title":"Animates are better remembered than inanimates: further evidence from word and picture stimuli","volume":"42","author":"Bonin","year":"2014","journal-title":"Memory & Cognition"},{"key":"bib5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1195","DOI":"10.1038\/nn.2889","type":"journal-article","article-title":"Metamers of the ventral stream","volume":"14","author":"Freeman","year":"2011","journal-title":"Nature Neuroscience"},{"key":"bib6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"24154","DOI":"10.1109\/CVPR52733.2024.02280","type":"conference-paper","article-title":"Visual Anagrams: Generating Multi-View Optical Illusions with Diffusion Models","author":"Geng","year":"2024","unstructured":"Geng D, Park I, Owens A. 2024. 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