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Optical illusions show how we see | Beau Lotto

TED · 3.5M views · 2009-10-08 · 19:00

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Overview

Neuroscientist Beau Lotto runs the audience through color and pattern illusions to show that perception is shaped by context and evolutionary history rather than being a direct readout of the world. The talk is playful and hands-on, and it argues that the brain interprets ambiguous signals.

On Hacker News

HN commenters use it as a fun, accessible demonstration that color perception depends on surrounding patterns and that what we see differs from what the eyes register.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2017–2023

Topics

Neuroscience & the brainEveryday physics & science demosConsciousness & cognition
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optical illusionscolor perceptionneuroscienceevolutionted

What people said

robomartin · 2023-02 · Recommendation

Color, Color Science, color vision, reproduction, perception, etc. often surprises engineers when they realize how incredibly complex the subject can be. Many years ago I took a course on Color Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I was working in a domain where I realized I had to know more about this subject than I could learn on my own at the time. This has come up many time during my career (even today). I am so glad I took the time to learn more about this from the folks who, quite literally, wrote the books on the subject (Fairchild, etc.). Here's a fun video to watch: [VIDEO] Another interesting topic to understand: [LINK]

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d0mine · 2023-10 · Reference

The same can be said about our brains too. What we think we see is quite different from what our eyes register (e.g., blind spot, hollow-face, colors on contrast backgrounds, etcc [VIDEO]

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just2n · 2017-11 · Reference

I'm not sure I buy that it means there are more absolute viewable colors there, but rather there are merely different interpretations of the same colors. We do have fairly strong confirmation that our brain doesn't interpret color absolutely but can adjust based on luminescence (see: all examples of shadow illusions) and patterns (see: [VIDEO] ), perhaps that's what is meant by a "fourth channel"?

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Sources

Video by TED, played through YouTube.

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