Illusion news 12 
Illusion news 12
since March 9, 2009
For psychologists or vision scientists who do not attend ECVP2009, why not come and join us in Kyoto? <July 26, 2009>
The 73rd Annual Convention of the Japanese Psychological Association @
the Ritsumeikan University is coming in a month!
How about join
our symposium "Geometrical illusions and its perspective perspective"?
Web registration is available until the end of today! Click here.
Akiyoshi has started a new project "Frontier of applied illusionology" in the Ritsumeikan University since July 1, 2009. <July 7, 2009>
"Brain washing"
Coasters appear to rotate.
Copyright Akiyoshi Kitaoka 2009 (July 7)
The first Illusion Contest in Japan will be held in Tokyo in December. The top 10 works will be helped to be uploaded on
the Visiome Platform supported by the RIKEN institute. <June 6, 2009>
can be downloaded from Visiome. <June 23, 2009>
The relationship between the "Rotating snakes" illusion and age has been examined several times. Here are additional data. For details, see the Japanese webpage. The items for answer were "Rotating snakes appear to move well" (score 3), "Rotating snakes appear to move" (score 2), "Rotating snakes appear to move slightly" (score 1), and "Rotating snakes do not appear to move at all" (score 0). <May 23, 2008>
Joshibi University of Art and Design (May 18, 2009)
The graph shown below displays the combined data that have been collected
so far. A significant negative correlation (r = -.36) was found between
the Rotating Snakes illusion and age! This does not necessarily mean that
the older the observer is, the less visible the illusion. This indicates
that some unknown characteristics of this illusion are related to age while
this illusion is not related to aging.
For those who do not see the "Rotating snakes" illusion, please do not worry because "no illusion" does not mean anything. It is only one of the individual differences. Please enjoy other illusions!
I will write a paper and submit it to some journal after getting data from more than 1,000 observers!
The Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest is happy to announce that the TOP TEN illusions have been chosen!!
The Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest has recently become an Official Satellite of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) conference. The Contest Gala will be on Sunday, May 10th, 7pm, in the Philharmonic Center of Arts (Naples Fl). The 2009 Contest Gala will be hosted by Peter Thompson! Everybody is invited!!!
Who will the TOP THREE winners be??? That’s up to YOU! The audience will choose them from the current TOP TEN list.
For more details, please visit our webpage: http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com
2009 TOP TEN ILLUSION CONTESTANTS (alphabetical order): To see the illusions themselves… you must come to the CONTEST!!!
“Color dove illusion”, Yuval Barkan and Hedva Spitzer (Tel-Aviv University, Israel)
“Cubistic lands’’, by Sandro Bettella, Gianluca Campana, Clara Casco, and Sergio Roncato (Università di Padova, Italy)
“Contrast color induced by unconscious surround”, by Haruaki Fukuda and Kazuhiro Ueda (University of Tokyo, Japan)
“Stereo vision produces new illusory contours!”, by Davi Geiger and Hiroshi Ishikawa (New York University, USA and Nagoya City University, Japan)
“Tilt illusion” by Siddharth Jain (USA)
“Another turn: a variant on the Shepard tabletop illusion”, by Lydia Maniatis (USA)
“The illusion of sex”, by Richard Russell (Harvard University, USA)
“The break of the curveball”, by Arthur Shapiro, Zhong-Lin Lu, Emily Knight, and Robert Ennis (Bucknell University, University of Southern California, Dartmouth College, and SUNY College of Optometry, USA)
“Tube illusion”, by Lothar Spillmann (Universitätsklinikum Freiburg, Germany)
“Smooth pursuit motion suppression”, by Peter Tse (Dartmouth University, USA)
On behalf of the Neural Correlate Society,
Susana Martinez-Conde (Illusion Contest Coordinator)
Neural Correlate Society Executive Committee: Jose-Manuel Alonso, Stephen Macknik, Luis Martinez, Xoana Troncoso, Peter Tse
The Neural Correlate Society is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 non-profit organization, whose mission is to promote the public awareness of vision research.
<April 15, 2009>
Professor Stuart Anstis visited my laboratory on March 31, 2009 and had discussion about a lot of illusions. <April 3, 2009>
Professor Shigemasa Sumi received the fourth Imai Award (Illusion House Award) in the 42nd Chikaku Colloquium (Perception Colloquium) held in Shikanoshima, Fukuoka, Japan. <March 22, 2009>
"Impossible Kin-in"
Copyright Akiyoshi Kitaoka
2009 (March 17)
Kin-in =
the gold seal discovered in Shikanoshima, Fukuoka, the Kyushu island
Fukuoka City
Museum
Drs. Alan Stubbs and Simone Gori won the call for graphics contest organized by the VSS for the VSS logo that will be this year (2009) on the bags and on the T-shirts during the conference. Congratulations! <March 11, 2009>
Copyright Alan Stubbs and Simone Gori 2009
It was reported that the visibility of a CT image is enhanced by a white surround (Henmi, 2008).
"Henmi effect"
The left Chinese character (meaning 'brain') appears to be clearer than
the right one, though they are the same.
Copyright Akiyoshi Kitaoka 2009 (March 11)
The relationship between the "Rotating snakes" illusion and age has been examined several times. Here are additional data from two sources. For details, see the Japanese webpage. The items for answer were "Rotating snakes appear to move well" (score 3), "Rotating snakes appear to move" (score 2), "Rotating snakes appear to move slightly" (score 1), and "Rotating snakes do not appear to move at all" (score 0). <March 9, 2008>
VSAT Tokyo (March 6, 2009)
Asahi Culture School Nagoya (March 8, 2009)
The graph shown below displays the combined data that have been collected
so far. A significant negative correlation (r = -.37) was found between
the Rotating Snakes illusion and age! This does not necessarily mean that
the older the observer is, the less visible the illusion. This indicates
that some unknown characteristics of this illusion are related to age while
this illusion is not related to aging.
I will write a paper and submit it to some journal after getting data from more than 1,000 observers! 
Illusion news 11 (September 2008 - January 2009)
Illusion news 10 (May 2008 - September 2008)
Illusion news 9 (February 2008 - April 2008)
Illusion news 8 (November 2007 - February 2008)
Illusion news 7 (September 2007 - October 2007)
Illusion news 6 (June 2007 - September 2007)
Illusion news 5 (January 2007 - May 2007)
Illusion news 4 (January 2006 - December 2006)
Illusion news 3 (January 2006 - May 2006)
Illusion news 2 (April 2005 - December 2005)
Illusion news 1 (2002 - March 2005)
Explanations of the designs
