Illusions: Colors Out of Space [Slide Show]
This is the 11th article in the Mind Matters series on the neuroscience behind visual illusions
![Illusions: Colors Out of Space [Slide Show]](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/E331E006-A1D0-4C2A-8FDDF154F887B707.jpg?w=590&h=393)
Illusions: Colors Out of Space [Slide Show]
- The McCollough effect Discovered by vision researcher Celeste McCollough, this illusion demonstrates that the interactions between color perception and form perception can be surprisingly long-lasting. The effect takes discipline, though, so suck it up before you try it, soldier!... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
- Discombobulating color Here is a great cognitive visual illusion that involves a conflict between the syntactic and symbolic processing systems in your brain. Look at the words one after the other without stopping or slowing, but instead of reading each word, just say its color out loud... Originally published in "Studies of Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions," by John Ridley Stroop, in Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 18; 1935
- Picasso's color spreading This painting by Picasso shows that coloring within the lines is unnecessary. Livingstone noted that our brain assigns the colors to the correct shapes even though the shapes are depicted minimally with sparsely drawn lines... copyright 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Ars, New York
- Escher's color tower Here Livingstone and her Harvard colleague David H. Hubel took an Escher woodblock, Tower of Babel ( left ), and colored the white spaces light blue ( center ). You still see the tower, because the luminance relations remain intact... M.C. Escher's Tower of Babel, copyright 2010 The M.C. Escher Company-Holland. All rights reserved. www.msescher.com
- Picasso's blue period During his blue period, Pablo Picasso painted everything—including shadows and gradations of sunlight—in shades of blue ( left ). How do we recognize the people, the sand and the gray sky if they are all the wrong color?... Scala/Art Resource, NY, copyright Estate of Pablo Picasso/Ars, New York
- Chinese rug The red color behind the blue lines appears to be magenta, whereas the same red color behind the yellow lines appears to be orange. This "color assimilation" illusion shows that colors can blend with each other in some situations, rather than contrasting with each other... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
- Wave-line Illusion The watercolor effect inspired the wave-line illusion by Japanese vision scientist Seiyu Sohmiya. In this version by Kitaoka, the white background behind the pattern is tinged by the color of the waves... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, From "A Wave-Line Colour Illusion," by S. Sohmiya in Perception, Vol. 36; 2007
- Neon color spreading The colors from the small crosses appear to spread onto the white expanse surrounding each intersection. The effect resembles the glare from a neon light. This illusion was reported in 1971 by Dario Varin of the University of Milan in Italy and a few years later by Harrie van Tuijl of the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
- Sparkling color In Light of Sapphires, by Kitaoka, the blue dots appear to scintillate as you move your eyes around the image. But when you focus on one dot, the scintillation stops. The blue color appears more saturated for the dot in focus than for dots in the visual periphery... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
- Four wrong colors We see four differently colored squares on a gray background, right? Wrong. The gray is actually a mixture of little blue and yellow pixels. Because the pixels are so small, they blend together and do not activate the opponent processes that would create contrast... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
- Fickle hearts All the hearts in this checkerboard are made out of the same cyan-colored dots, but they look green against the green background and blue against the blue background. The image, by Kitaoka, is based on the dungeon illusion discovered by vision scientist Paola Bressan of the University of Padua in Italy... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
- Multicolored rings Here is another example of how the brain determines color depending on the context. In the bull's-eye structures in the left checkerboard, the center rings look either green or blue, but they are all the same color (turquoise)... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
- Red rings This image by Kitaoka contains a number of blue-green circular structures. The red rings are purely a creation of your brain.
A process called color constancy makes an object look the same under different lighting conditions, even though the color of the light reflecting from the object is physically different... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University - Eye shadow This Japanese manga girl by Kitaoka looks like she has one blue eye and one gray eye. In fact, both eyes are exactly the same shade of gray. The girl's right eye only looks the same as the turquoise hair clip because of the reddish context... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
- Rex and fido Legend has it that Rome was founded by warring twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, born to a vestal virgin named Rhea Silvia and fathered by Mars, the god of war. Vestal virgins, as it turns out, are not supposed to conceive children, even if the father is a god... Adapted from www.moillusions.com
- Yellow moon and blue moon Here we have two moons out of space. One yellow and one blue. Or are they? Actually both moons are exactly the same color in this illusion by psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka of Ritsumeikan University in Japan; only the surrounding colors are different... Courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University
