Don't be afraid.
You can see a hole, but it's not moving or growing. You won't be swallowed by the darkness.
The image shows how our brains and eyes see the world. In a study published last week in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, psychologists tested this illusion on 50 men and women with normal vision, and found that the stronger the participant's response to the illusion, the stronger the pupils dilate response.
Some people can't see it
When it's dark, your eyes adjust to the light in your surroundings by dilating when it's bright to prevent overexposure. The hole is not getting dark. The perception that it was dark made your students respond.
Bruno Laeng, a psychology professor at the University of Oslo and an author of the study, said there was no reason for the student to change. There has been a change inside the mind.
The researchers theorize that the illusion works because the central hole has a gradient that makes it appear as if the viewer is entering a tunnel. When the black hole was atop a magenta background, the illusion was stronger.
Not everyone is taken in by the illusion, so if you don't know what's going on, you're not alone. Dr. Laeng thinks that a minority may be able to see the image in only two dimensions.
The 2012 study, conducted by Dr. Laeng and his colleagues, found that the Asahi illusion, which resembles the growing glare of sunlight partly obscured by trees or clouds, causes people's pupils to dilate.
Dr. Dale Purves, a professor of neuroscience at Duke University, said that the new study was clever for showing a response to the perceived expansion of the dark. There are more striking effects that could have been demonstrated.
The study deals with a fundamental problem all animals deal with. He said that while a camera can measure the amount of light it picks up, there isn't a way to measure the world.
We have an eye with a brain. Your brain is analyzing what it sees and building up a possible scenario when you see a scene.
In 2015, spirited debates took place as to whether an item of clothing was blue and black, white and gold or both. Dr. Laeng thinks it is the greatest experiment in human history to date.
Our brains make assumptions about what is seen based on past experience with the dress. Evolutionary history has a part to play.
The information we get from the world is not clear. The brain goes into a constant guessing mode, but there are several possibilities for the same type of input.
The debate over perception is fed by the expanding hole.
The reality of the world is not consistent with what we see. We see everything, whether it is line length, color, or brightness.
visual illusions help reveal what our mind's eye is up to by showing mismatches between what we see and what is actually out there
The brain is trying to predict the future according to Dr. Laeng.
It takes time for a light to reach our sensory organs, which need to send it to the brain, which in turn needs to process and do something with that information. By the time we catch up with the present, the world has changed.
The brain is trying to anticipate the future in order to see the present.
The expanding hole illusion is a feature of your brain's strategy to navigate an uncertain, ever-changing world. Predicting the future can be done by dilating your pupils in anticipation of a dark place.
Dr. Laeng said that it was a very philosophy question. Virtual reality is useful, but we do live in it.
The world you are seeing is not real.
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