According to studies, just 1% of people are able to identify the animal in this image. Is That Possible?
Well, we may have to revisit that one later as our heads are really suffering right now.
Are You Prepared for Round Two?
Do you know what the McCollough effect is? There’s this strange mental trick where your brain perceives a pinkish tinge or other hues when you look at black-and-white lines after staring at a colored grating (alternating lines).
It is claimed that all you have to do to start the effect is to alternate between staring at the center of two colored “induction images” for a few minutes or more. Red or green lines are ideal for it. Then, vertical black-and-white lines will seem pinkish, green, or red in certain areas.
It could be lessened or enhanced by tilting your head 90 degrees. It’s possible that the effect will be reversed if you rotate the induction images and look at them once again. It will endure for hours, days, or even several months in certain situations depending on how long you stare at the initial induction images.
However, is it genuinely the case, and if so, what’s causing it?
The effect bears Celeste McCollough Howard, a US psychologist, in honor of her discovery. She was the first to discover an illusion known as a “contingent aftereffect,” which leaves your brain altered for a long time.
Numerous studies on the effect have been conducted over the years. Remarkably, one of the five groups of sixteen subjects that the two researchers evaluated back in 1975 did not exhibit any diminishing of the impact after five days. In fact, up to 2,040 hours later, or over three months, the effect persisted in four groups at better than half strength.
The pictures below allow you to experiment with the effect. It is possible that it will impair your eyesight temporarily, although it is primarily activated when you see lines, either vertical or horizontal. It seems to be innocuous for the most part. It’s your call.
So what’s the root cause? Indeed, there has been discussion around that. One of the three primary schools of thinking is that it has to do with the neurons in your visual brain. Another theory is that it’s a kind of withdrawal symptom—in this case, a lack of color—where your brain becomes somewhat stuck trying to color-correct the world.
In 1995, a very fascinating study was conducted on the subject. After that, a single patient who had suffered severe brain damage was investigated by the researchers. He was “able to see color but little else,” the researchers said.
The patient indicated that even after being shown red-and-green gratings, which he could not truly see, utilizing a black-and-white grating thereafter produced the desired effect. The effect was most likely happening somewhere between the eye and the brain, or within the visual cortex, the researchers found.
This was confirmed in a thesis that Julien Ciroux sent in to Edinburgh University. “Even though the alteration in this early area of the visual system drives subsequent modification in the activity pattern of higher cortical areas,” the author stated, “the processing mechanisms involved in the ME [McCollough effect] are mostly located in the primary visual cortex.”
The extent to which the effect is common has been examined in some studies. It was discovered back in 1969 that different red and green stripes caused the side effects. Strangely, it discovered that you would see red colors on vertical grates and green colors on horizontal grates if your induction image was green. The colors changed if a red induction image was utilized.
Even stranger, only red and green were functional. The study found that colors that were close to pure blue and pure yellow, which had little red or green content, had weak aftereffects. To the best of our knowledge, no plausible explanation explains why red and green produce the effect as well as they do in comparison to other colors.
What about the annoying thing? According to a another study, this could be because neurons in your visual cortex are more sensitive to their “preferred orientation and spatial frequency.” It went so far as to propose an intriguing theory: the JPEG image format included “plaid-like” or “chequered” patterns, which are essentially two gratings superimposed on top of one another.
This was confirmed in a thesis that Julien Ciroux sent in to Edinburgh University. “Even though the alteration in this early area of the visual system drives subsequent modification in the activity pattern of higher cortical areas,” the author stated, “the processing mechanisms involved in the ME [McCollough effect] are mostly located in the primary visual cortex.”
The extent to which the effect is common has been examined in some studies. It was discovered back in 1969 that different red and green stripes caused the side effects. Strangely, it discovered that you would see red colors on vertical grates and green colors on horizontal grates if your induction image was green. The colors changed if a red induction image was utilized.
Even stranger, only red and green were functional. The study found that colors that were close to pure blue and pure yellow, which had little red or green content, had weak aftereffects. To the best of our knowledge, no plausible explanation explains why red and green produce the effect as well as they do in comparison to other colors.
What about the annoying thing? According to a another study, this could be because neurons in your visual cortex are more sensitive to their “preferred orientation and spatial frequency.” It went so far as to propose an intriguing theory: the JPEG image format included “plaid-like” or “chequered” patterns, which are essentially two gratings superimposed on top of one another.
