Professors from the Institute of Psychology at USP (IP-USP) described how the optical illusion works in a playful area of the brain and can be done by simple practices, using a limitation in the central system to cause these ‘deceptive’ effects.
These actions that usually arouse curiosity and are often presented as magical.
Illusions happen with variations and nuances that include the composition of shapes, the use of colors, and combine physical and cultural factors that “manage to deceive the human visual system”.
From the point of view of the human body, according to Marcelo Fernandes Costa, a professor at IP-USP, the illusion occurs due to the interaction of the eye with the environment.
“We have all five senses, and the eye is one of the most important in terms of picking up information from the outside world,” he said.
In the brain, information arrives as “raw data”. To facilitate perception, the organ uses memory to make sense of what it sees.
Our eyes are responsible for transmitting information to the brain, and this process has some limitations. In this sense, illusions can occur at different levels due to the sensory process and perception processing.
They happen from the same way as the visual and sense organization occurs, but they run into a functional limit of the brain’s sensory system – which distorts information in order to compensate for these limitations.
“Illusions are a result of these distortions of our brain, this from the study of colors or from the construction of a more complex figure” explained Costa.
On the other hand, there is also the contribution of physics, made from the “eye – environment” interaction that professor Mikiya Muramatsu, from IP-USP, describes as the functioning of mirages – as in the desert where an oasis is seen.
In this situation, the sensation of a mirage is constructed from variations in heat in a uniform medium and the interaction with the eye.
Applications in everyday life
Other factors such as cultural issues, experience and elements of the external environment, contribute to environments that have optical illusions go unnoticed in our daily lives.
In some of these situations, elements that make up architecture — which give the feeling of a wider environment or greater depth. Or some specific colors combined on the screens of cinemas.
Some artists use the technique as a way to challenge viewers’ perception or get them to interact with the work.
*With information from the USP Journal
Source: CNN Brasil
