If you see a traffic light while driving, it is very important to be sure what color it is showing.
But this optical illusion may make you doubt yourself, because at first glance the top light appears to be red.
However, when the cyan filter is removed, you can see that it is actually gray and that your brain has tricked you into thinking otherwise.
This trick was shared on TikTok by serial illusionist Dean Jackson or @beatonthebeeb, who explains how it works.
At first glance, the red light appears to be red. However, when the cyan filter is removed, you can see that it is actually gray and that your brain has tricked you into thinking otherwise
This trick was shared on TikTok by serial illusionist Dean Jackson or @beatonthebeeb, who explains how it works. When our brain recognizes the context of the image and believes it should appear red, it interprets the gray light as such
WHAT IS COLOR CONSTANCE?
Color constancy is the phenomenon that allows our eyes and brain to perceive something as the same color under different lighting conditions.
However, this ability can be tricked into making one color appear different than it really is when adjacent to another.
“It’s your brain working overtime trying to convince you of the red,” he said.
At the back of the human eye are photoreceptors – cells that respond to incoming light.
These come in two types, “rods” or “cones,” and while rods are sensitive to movement and night vision, cones can see color.
Humans have three types of cone cells, and each is most sensitive to a specific color, either red, green, or blue.
The color cyan is a combination of green and blue, which means that a cyan filter only lets through these two colors except red.
So if a cyan filter is placed over a red light, most of it will not be able to penetrate and the object should appear dark gray or black.
However, when our brain recognizes the context of the image and believes it should appear red, it interprets the gray light as such.
That is, when we zoom in and it no longer looks like a traffic light, the image appears as gray as it really is.
Mr. Jackson presents another example of this by showing an image of a gray Coke can covered with strips of cyan filter.
The stripes with the filter appear red for the same reason as above, but the gray stripes without the filter appear due to the “color constancy” principle.
This is the phenomenon that allows our eyes and brain to perceive something as the same color under different lighting conditions.
However, this ability can be tricked into making one color appear different than it really is when adjacent to another.
In this case, a cyan stripe next to a gray stripe can make the gray appear red.
The stripes with the filter appear red for the same reason as above, but the gray stripes without the filter appear due to the “color constancy” principle.
Scientists have also debunked another illusion that makes the series of squares below appear to be moving when in fact they are static.
You see them as shifting because your brain is being fooled by a phenomenon known as “illusory motion.”
Our brains recognize a change in light as movement, so adjacent light and dark edges, even if static, activate motion-sensing neurons in the visual pathways.
The illusion has been part of human history for 20,000 years, when prehistoric artists used natural outcrops of rock to add illusory volume and depth in cave drawings of horses and bison.
This optical illusion uses illusionary movement to trick your brain into believing the squares are moving. This happens because of the glowing edges that your eyes perceive as movement
Stunning optical illusion tricks your brain into believing a static black hole is expanding
A stunning optical illusion can trick the brain into believing a static black hole is expanding, researchers have shown.
This science-new illusion of an “expanding hole” was created by Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a psychologist at Ritsumeikan University in Kobe, Japan.
In tests, 86 percent of the volunteers perceived the central black hole expanding as if moving into a dark environment like a tunnel or falling into a hole.
The image is so good at fooling our brain that it causes our pupils to dilate, just like if we were really moving into a dark area.
Read more here
Look at this picture. Do you perceive the central black hole expanding as if you are moving into a dark environment or falling into a hole? The “expanding hole” is an illusion new to science, researchers say