Light, shadows, depth, (in) action: from the shadow of the ladies and the coffee wall to the duck/rabbit and the controversial blue and black dress of 2015. Here are 10 of the most crazy illusions of optics.
It has long fascinated us to all and especially to scientists, artists and curious by nature. To the Optical Illusions They captivate us with contrast, movement, geometry or color, and above all, remind us: Not everything that seems is. What we see is our reality, and not necessarily a reality.
This is, without further delay, the selection of the 10 of the most hallucinating illusions that continue to make us perplexed.
1. The illusion of the shadow of the ladies
Edward H. Adelson/Wikimedia Commons
One of the most impressive illusions ever created, the illusion of the shadow of the ladies was conceived by the vision scientist Edward Adelson in 1995.
In it, two squares designated by A and B seem to have different shades – one seems to be in the shadow and the other in the light – but They are… exactly the same color.
This is an excellent example of a contrastwhich leads our brain to incorrectly interpret identical colors due to surrounding context and lighting.
2. The illusion of the coffee wall
This geometric illusion It causes the straight horizontal lines between rows of dark and clear tiles to look lean or curved.
First described by scientist Richard Gregory, who saw the pattern in a coffee in Bristol, UK, it is believed that the effect results from the way our brain processes contrast between adjacent areas-specifically a phenomenon known as Irradiation illusionwhich makes white spaces look bigger than they really are.
3. The triangle of penrosis
Known as a “Impossible object”The penrose triangle is a classic example of a geometric paradox. Although it looks like a coherent 3D object, this triangle cannot physically exist.
Popularized in the 1950s by Lionel Penrose, it became a basic element in the world of visual paradoxes and was famously explored in the works of art of MC Escher.
4. Blindness induced by the movement
In this phenomenon, fixed objects in a moving visual field may seem to disappear and reappear at random.
Known as the Bonneh’s illusionthe effect occurs when observers look to a moving central point while peripheral objects, namely the yellow points, disappear.
This illusion is a great example of how our attention and concentration can make visual information disappear momentarily from perception, probably due to the way the brain filters movement and background activity.
5th or necker cube
A simple cube can suddenly reverse your orientation in the observer’s mind. This image has no clear signs of depth, allowing the brain to alternate among various interpretations.
Necker’s cube is not exactly an illusion, but a demonstration of permanent ambiguity.
6. The illusion of the sparkling grid
This illusion has white circles in the intersections of a grill. But when we stop looking straight at them, they become black, and seem to sparkle and disappear as the look moves.
This illusion is a modern improvement of the illusion of Hermann’s grid, discovered in 1870. Its mysterious visual effects continue to intrigue psychologists who study visual processing and contrast sensitivity.
7. The illusion of peripheral deviation
No, these images are not gifs or videos: they are completely immovable, although it does not seem.
Described in 1999 by Jocelyn Faubert and Andrew Herbert, illusion seems to be the result of small eye movements, contrast differences and the way our brain deals with space and temporal clues.
8. Is it a duck or a rabbit?
Who saw the sitcom How I Met Your Mother (That’s how it happened) already knows this illusion well.
In the 15th episode of Season 5, Ted brings a book with him to the bar with the image and opens a long discussion about which of the two animals is good and which one is bad.
The famous figure of a nineteenth -century German magazine asks, “What animals are more similar? The rabbit and the duck.” It all depends on the observer’s focus: Drawing can alternate between one animal, clearly.
This type of illusion, called Figure Figure, reveals the influence of context, attention and even creativity in perception.
9. The controversial blue and black (or white and gold?) Dressed dress?
“The Dress”
In 2015, the photograph of a dress caused lit debates on social networks around the world because some people swear their feet together, to this day, see a white and gold dress in the picture above, not black and blue – as proven to be.
The phenomenon has become a public example of CONSTANCE OF COLORS – The brain’s ability to perceive the colors consistently under different types of lighting.
Neuroscientists theorized that differences in perception were due to the fact that people believe that the image was illuminated by natural or artificial light.
10. Ponzo’s illusion
This classic visual trick uses converging lines like train lines to create a false feeling of depth.
The lines we see above are exactly the same length, but when placed between converging lines, we get the idea that the top is longer.
This is because our brain interprets the scene using the linear perspectiveautomatically adjusting the perceived distance and assuming that the highest line must be higher to appear the same size at this distance.
