TOPICS
Search

Scintillating Grid Illusion


BlackDotIllusion

In the above illustration, black dots appear to form and vanish at the intersections of the gray horizontal and vertical lines. When focusing attention on a single white dot, some gray dots nearby and some black dots a little further away also seem to appear. More black dots seem to appear as the eye is scanned across the image (as opposed to focusing on a single point). Strangely, the effect seems to be reduced, but not eliminated, when the head is cocked at a 45 degrees angle. The effect seems to exist only at intermediate distances; if the eye is moved very close to or very far away from the figure, the phantom black dots do not appear.

The illusion is known as the scintillating grid, and was discovered by E. Lingelbach in 1994. It is a modification of the Hermann grid illusion.


See also

Hermann Grid Illusion, Hermann-Hering Illusion, Illusion

Explore with Wolfram|Alpha

References

Gephart, J. "Find the Black Dot." http://udel.edu/~jgephart/fun2.htm.Lingelbach, B. and Ehrenstein, W. H. Jr. "Das Hermann-Gitter und die Folgen." http://www.leinroden.de/304herfold.htm.Lloyd, S. J.-A. "How Has the Hermann Grid Been Useful in Exploring Human Vision?" http://web.mit.edu/sjlloyd/www/Perception/table.html.Schrauf, M.; Lingelbach, B.; Lingelbach, E.; and Wist, E. R. "The Hermann Grid and the Scintillation Effect." Perception 24, suppl. A, 88-89, 1995.Schrauf, M.; Lingelbach, B.; and Wist, E. R. "The Scintillating Grid Illusion." Vision Res. 37, 1033-1038, 1997.Seckel, A. The Art of Optical Illusions. Carlton Books, p. 12, 2002.

Referenced on Wolfram|Alpha

Scintillating Grid Illusion

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Scintillating Grid Illusion." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ScintillatingGridIllusion.html

Subject classifications