Studies show that what is happening in our brain can affect our vision. For example, psychologists have found that poor people generally perceive coins as larger in dimension than they actually are.

And a new study, published in Psychological Science, has just revealed that hungry people see food-related words more clearly than people who have just had a meal. Based on the results of the study, researchers found that this phenomenon occurs in the early, perceptual stages before higher parts of the brain can change the messages coming from the eyes.

“This is something great to me…that humans can really perceive what they need or what they strive for…” says researcher Remi Radel of University of Nice Sophia-Antopolis, France. “There is something inside us that selects information in the world to make life easier.”