Visual deception .. The eye sees only what the mind sees

About a week ago, Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Keitaoka posted a picture on his Facebook page. The picture contains gray lines intersecting, forming an geometrical grid called the square of varying colors. Twelve black dots shine inside the box. The publication got a lot of posts and comments. Followers could not keep track of all the points at once, making that picture a stark example of visual deception. The question remains: What is the scientific reason for this phenomenon?

The art of visual deception first appeared in the mid-1920s when a group of architects from the German Bauhaus school, which sought to create harmony between shape and nature, designed a range of shapes that could easily deceive the beholder, depending on optical laws and light falling angles.

In the mid-thirties, Victor Vazerli, the graphic artist, created the first work that was classified as a color of visual deception. He designed a painting of black and white lines, and placed in it a wild donkey that was difficult to observe without scrutiny.

Visual deception is defined as a deceptive or deceptive vision that visualizes the viewer as unreal. The eye perceives the image or object as opposed to the truth, as a result of a wrong treatment of the brain. The art of visual deception is often based on a set of mathematical and physical laws to form plates that deceive the human brain and give the viewer a host of different impressions.

Mission Impossible

The different color box published by Keituka on his personal Facebook page is one example of visual tricks. The viewer can not count the number of black dots in that box; the dots become white as soon as we move our gaze to another point in the square, It is impossible to enumerate them at the same time.

According to a study published by Esra Hamid, researcher at the Faculty of Art Education at the Egyptian University of Assiut, the scientific explanation is that these black dots do not exist mainly inside the box, pointing out that the validation of this hypothesis is through covering one of the black tapes by hand. This can be explained by the fact that the human eye is unable to move between two opposite colors because of the extreme contrast between them. "Our eyes were deceived by this very different color chromatography," according to the study published about a year ago.

Dr. Ahmed Said Ibrahim, an Ophthalmologist at the National Center for Research, believes that the deceptive view of the black dots in the different color box is due to the inability of the mind to recognize all that the eye is at once. At the same time, the cortex in the brain Is responsible for the interpretation of images transmitted by the center of vision in the retina, pointing out that cross-slanting lines attract more focus than vertical or horizontal lines, saying in a statement «for science»: «The mind can not absorb all of this, and therefore pay attention to the point directed to the center First sight, ignoring the other points, On the contrary with every movement of the center of vision towards these points. »

More than a year ago, one of the girls published a picture of a dress on the Tumblr website, which sparked controversy around the world. Some confirmed that it was blue, while some insisted that it was golden, How did the views differ on the color of a dress that everyone sees clearly on the screen of computers and tablets?

The reflection of the industrial light on the dress caused a confusion of the brain, which emerged clearly when the image swept the means of social communication, as the difference was clear and clear among the viewers with the large numbers of them; the nerve areas located in the back of the eye - known as cones - which capture the main colors and integrate to be A clear picture, slightly different between people, but that slight difference inflated and increased because of the confusion caused by industrial light, according to Ibrahim.

Integrated sensory perception

The eye is able to see the objects around us with a mechanism known to scientists for centuries. Light enters through the lens, hitting the retina in the back of the eye, which in turn carries it through the optic nerve to the visual cortex, the part responsible for interpreting the visuals in the brain. Visual perception begins to absorb light - or, more precisely, by absorbing small separate groups of energy called photons or photovoltaic units - by means of cones and nebulae located in the retina. The cones are used for day vision, and the nababit is responsible for the night vision. The optical receiver cone responds to the number of photovoltaic units it captures, and its response to two different types of neurons is responsible for starting and stopping nerve excitation. In turn, these neurons provide another type of cell with a receiving field, giving varying responses when an object is seen, depending on the amount of relative light in the center of the field and in the area surrounding the body.

A previous study of deceptive colors suggests that color therapy in the brain occurs alongside the treatment of other objects, such as shapes and borders. It is believed that about 40% of the human brain - or more - is used in the visual process. Neurons are organized in areas that are alerted early during visual processing in maps that provide a representation of the point-to-point visual field. From there, optical signals are spread to more than 30 different regions, connected together by more than 300 circuits. Each of these regions has specialized functions, such as color, motion, depth and shape. In the end, all this information is gathered by all these different areas of the brain in some way in an integrated sensory perception of something of a special shape and color, that is, the meaning of the thing within the brain is complete.