April 7, 2009 | 9 comments

The Neuroscience of Yoricks's Ghost and Other Afterimages

This is the eighth article in the Mind Matters series on the neuroscience behind visual illusions.

By Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde

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CLICK TO ENLARGE + IMAGE COURTESY OF YUVAL BARKAN AND HEDVA SPITZER

Robin's Illusory Red Breast

Click here to view this illusion

Afterimages can be captured from the complementary surround color, as in this demonstration of an uncolored bird that captures the reddish color of its background, before taking flight. In this illusion, created by vision scientists Yuval Barkan and Hedva Spitzer of Tel-Aviv University, Israel, the red background causes the bird to fill-in with a greenish complementary color, which gives rise to a surprisingly strong and long-lasting red afterimage once the red background, is extinguished (creating a green background afterimage).

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