Look at the rotating afterimage and see how the coloured spots disappear. Concentrate on the centre of the picture, look through the picture without moving your eyes or head and see how the rotating afterimage slowly develops while the motionless coloured spots fade.
This animation consists of a sequence of 12 stationary images in each of which one of the coloured spots that form the colour wheel moves in turn towards the centre of the circle.
Various perceptual effects are created which provide information on how our visual system functions:
Take your time and observe in the second animation how the missing spots in the slowly rotating coloured gaps light up in their complementary colours. Compare these with the original colours of the displaced real spots as they rotate together.
The occurrence of the negative afterimage is a retinal effect. This simple optical experiment allows us to draw two conclusions:
The photopigments of the retina are bleached by bright light. This light excites the receptors. Because their photo-chemical substances have to be regenerated after extended exposure, the retina is temporarily less sensitive to the mix of wavelengths that reach the eyes. When we see grey, the wavelengths of the complementary colour have a stronger effect and create a negative afterimage on the retina at that location. Normally, no afterimages occur in our visual perception, because we unconsciously move our eyes three times a second (saccades). The bleaching of the photopigments or - in other words - the adaptation of the rods and cones has no effect because the retina has to deal with constantly changing stimulus patterns at this location.
Fortunately, our cerebral cortex creates a continuous film from the discrete stationary images. This imaginary movement is known as the phi phenomenon and is discussed in greater detail in connection with Spot 26. The rapid film of afterimages that we see proves that our perception of movement in area V5 does not distinguish between real objects (the coloured spots that are moved in towards the centre of the circle) and virtual objects (the afterimages in the gaps in the colour wheel). Both are processed as if they were identical.
The brain also accepts the change in colour of both the “actors” in this film. In Nature, objects can also change colour when lighting conditions change, but this should not cause them to lose their identity. This so-called constancy of an object requires on-going correction for changes in lighting conditions. (Modern video cameras do the same thing by periodically performing a white balance). In addition, area V5, which is responsible for our perception of movement, is practically colour-blind and only processes the brightness values of the individual snapshots. How this discrete visual data is processed to create a continuous effect of motion is to a very large extent unclear and is therefore the subject of current research.
We have inherited our visual system from the animals from which we are descended. It is primarily intended for decoding the movements of objects rather than for looking at pretty pictures and stationary situations. As a rule, objects have clear contours, which are registered by the motion-sensitive neurons in V1 and tracked through time and space. The fovea (the tiny area of the retina centred around the optic axis) enables us not only to see sharply, but also to distinguish changes in colour more accurately and even to register stationary objects that are blurred and unsharp.
If we concentrate on the small grey circle at the centre of the image when we look at the animation, it is only this that is imprinted on the fovea As this keeps the fovea occupied, the unsharp spots of colour therefore have to be analysed in the peripheral area of the retina, which is less well equipped with colour receptors and has very poor acuity. In addition, we are only able to register objects with our animal eyes when they move in relation to our retina. If movement of both eyes and head is deliberately suppressed, our decoding of objects with the peripheral retina breaks down. The negative images that are superimposed neutralise the stationary images and the coloured spots fade as if they were not there (Troxler effect). Our brain then interpolates the gaps in the image that thus occur in the background colour and simulates an imaginary harmless situation without any coloured spots. The exception to this are the two rotating objects described in the previous section (one real and one virtual) because their stimulus patterns move relative to the retina and trigger neural activity in the motion sensors of the cerebral cortex.
The “rotating pink dot“ animation with 12 magenta spots forming a wheel together with a rotating gap spread on the Internet during the course of 2005. The fascinating green afterimage that occurs in the gaps and the fading stationary ring sparked off a snowball reaction. In 2005 Google returns some 135,000 hits for the search term “rotating pink dot“.
The creator of this illusion was Jeremy Hinton, who discovered this dynamic afterimage effect quite by chance when he mistakenly omitted to erase a number of positions in a previous animation using a rotating disc.
Michael Bach parameterised the original version and made it possible to vary the speed and adjust the saturation and colour of the twelve spots.
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/col_lilacChaser/index.html
In this present version by blelb, the colours in the wheel vary. In addition, a spot rotating at the same time enables a precise comparison to be made between the 12 basic colours of the colour wheel and their afterimages.