Optical illusions, which make us think that our brain is playing tricks on us, are among the methods used to understand the brain in the scientific world. How we perceive an optical illusion can shed light on our evolution.
One of the last studies in the world of science was published recently. This time, the illusion that was examined and evaluated for our reaction was the one you see below:
One side of the bar looks lighter and the other side looks darker, right?
Actually no. This rectangle has only one color. But because of the gradient in the back, our brain does not perceive a single color. So, why does our brain perceive it that way?
Here is the secret behind this illusion revealed in the latest research:
In new research published in PLOS Computational Biology, Dr. Jolyon Troscianko and his team examined why we see the gray bar as having different colors in the image above.
- Analysis of an illusion through the eyes of the model. As can be seen in the upper right, he himself is a victim of illusion, seeing tones differently.
Previous research suggested that this illusion was caused by the inadequacy of our brain’s processing power. But Troscianko reached different conclusions.
The team used a computer model that shows how we see optical illusions by mimicking our eyes. Simply put, the model trained with natural images was stunned to see the high contrasts after being exposed to several illusions. Later, he began to perceive illusions in the same way as humans.
So what does this tell us?
The model, which sees natural images like the human eye, suddenly encounters high contrasts and sheds light on human evolution. According to the scientists, the model reveals how neurons in our bodies evolved for functions such as seeing variations in different colors.
In other words, the reason why we fall into these illusions stems from the share of our eyes to distinguish colors from each other in the evolutionary process we have been in for hundreds of years.
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