March 31, 2019 will mark the 20th anniversary of the premiere of one of the films that came to mark a before and after in the history of cinema, The Matrix. With revolutionary special effects, the Wachowski sisters posed a world in which reality, perhaps, is not what we believe, but rather an invention, computer software. And, for example, the events that we think we are recalling for the second time are, in reality, failures of that computer program, that software that displays the reality we know before us.
Now you see it, now you don't see it
Optical illusions work like little 'Matrix'. Images that question the reality in which we live, what is illusion, what is 'tangible' and what part of what we see is nothing but a deception of our perception. The latest to shake the Internet has surfaced, how could it be otherwise, in the Reddit forum, specifically in the thread r / woahdude. It is a blurred image, made up of various colors, with no distinguishable shape or pattern . Is the next:
To take effect, do the following: stare at the image without blinking. It may take up to a minute for you to notice something. As you can see, suddenly, the colors will disappear, little by little, from the image . As soon as you change the view direction, they will reappear. What is the explanation for this optical illusion?
Derek Arnold, a professor of psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia, assures that any fixed image will fade if we look at it for a certain time . In the environment, this does not usually happen because reality is often variable, and the blurry image facilitates fading. Thus, the brain stops paying attention to visual scenes that do not change, causing the disappearance of the image previously shown.
'Neural adaptation' or failure in the Matrix?
Susana Martínez-Conde, author of the book Champions of Illusion and professor at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, tells The Verge that the process by which our senses get used to a perception of constant reality is called 'neural adaptation'. And she gives a similar example, although with the sense of touch instead of sight. The moment we put on our socks, we felt them on our feet. In a few moments, we will have forgotten about them and we will feel like they were a second skin. Exactly the same as in the case of the blurred image of colors.
The teacher, in an interview with The Verge, says that although we think that our eyes are completely immobile, barely perceptible movements continue to occur inside them . That is why we do not usually 'see' how the images that remain static around us disappear. If you have noticed that it is difficult for you to make the image disappear it is because with the minimum movement of the eyes they will become sharp again. Try closing one eye or marking a point on the image if you have trouble making it disappear.
That the image is blurred makes it very easy to disappear. For example, if we stare at the frame of a window and pay attention to what the teacher explained, to that 'neural adaptation', in the end it would end up disappearing, but it is almost impossible: it is a perfectly sharp image and we would have to close our eyes due to the stinging produced by dryness .
If you have not yet been able to make the colors in the image disappear, try changing the contrast of the monitor and wait at least 45 seconds. If you can feel the optical effect, your reality will no longer be the same and perhaps, 20 years later , Matrix will once again be the revolutionary film that it was on the day of its premiere .