• RSS   • Print  Contrast Changes Trick Your Brain  Art Shapiro
illusion  Gestalt psychology contends that the human brain
organizes what the eyes see based on traits such as similarity,
common background, and proximity.  But a new illusion that took
second place in the 2011 Best Illusion of the Year Contest—a
competition held annually by the Neural Correlate
Society—illustrates that our brains can also organize what we
see based on changes in contrast.  Arthur Shapiro, professor of
psychology at American University, Erica Dixon, a first-year PhD
student at AU, and Kai Hamburger, a researcher at Universität
Giessen (Germany), created the illusion called “Grouping by
Contrast.”  The illusion brings a new dimension to understanding
how our brains organize what we see.  “We perceive a world that
can be divided into objects with boundaries,” said Shapiro.
“According to Gestalt psychology, the objects constitute the
foreground, while the rest of the world acts likes the
background for these objects. Our illusion i