Luminance levels of four disks modulate in time. The top two disks become white when the bottom two disks become black, and viceversa. When placed against a split background, the disks group together along the diagonals. This grouping pattern follows the contrasts of the disks relative to their backgrounds.
Take a cardboard tube, such as from a kitchen paper role, and hold it close to your eye, while keeping the other eye open. Look at a bright wall. The disk-shaped area seen through the tube will appear strikingly brighter than the same surface area viewed by the other eye. The effect is reminiscent of a flashlight illuminating the area under consideration. The effect takes a few seconds to fully develop. It also works with a textured surface where it enhances not only the brightness and color, but also the detail.
Circumfluous contours can elicit a length-contrast illusion. Mirror-imaged faces are arranged with the four irises absolutely equidistant. The distance between the middle two irises is perceived as shorter than the distances between the left two or right two irises in an Asian face, whereas it is perceived as longer in a Caucasian face. This illusion remains when the irises are presented together with line drawings of the eye shape, but it disappears when only the isolated irises are presented. The illusion is independent of orientation (no inversion effect) and viewer”s race (no race effect).
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Please relax and look at the colorful brains: aren’t they rotating and bouncing?! They are, but only in your head.
What’s going on? Some regions in the brains are darker, some lighter than the background. The perceived location of the separation between light and dark regions changes as the background is modulated, causing each brain to jiggle and bounce. In some regions these illusory motions of neighboring brains are coherent and are grouped together to give rise to an even stronger illusion.
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Read more about the illusion and possible explanations
When one approaches the stimulus pattern, the radial lines appear to rotate in a counterclockwise direction, whereas when one recedes from it, they appear to rotate clockwise. In the complex version of the pattern, the illusory rotation is stronger and there may be some residual counter rotation in the surround.
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