Abstract
THE production of illusions of colour by intermittent visual stimulation has been familiar since the description of the ‘artificial spectrum top’ by Benham1 in 1895 ; but with the traditional arrangement of rotating black-and-white chequered disks the subjective sensations are not particularly vivid. Since the introduction of the electronic stroboscope to psychophysiological experiment by Walter, Dovey and Shipton2 in 1946, thousands of normal and clinical subjects have been subjected to intensive visual stimulation by flickering white light, and all report sensations of pattern, movement and colour. The descriptions vary greatly from subject to subject ; in some, the impressions are particularly intense only at certain frequencies. Most subjects have no difficulty in recognizing the illusory character of the colours : Margiad Evans3 describes them as “… pure ultra unearthly colours, mental colours, not deep visual ones. There was no glow in them but only activity and revolution”. None the less, the colours are ‘real’ enough to act as conditioned stimuli, for Brady4 has shown that subjects who have been conditioned to give a psycho-galvanic skin response to red light will give the ‘red’ response when stimulated with white light flickering at a particular frequency and at multiples of the critical rate.
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References
Benham, C. E., Nature, 51, 200 (1895).
Walter, W. Grey, Dovey, V. J., and Shipton, H. W., Nature, 158, 540 (1946).
Evans, M., “A Ray of Darkness” (Morrison and Gibb, London, 1952).
Brady, J. S., EEG Clin. Neurophysiol., 6, 473 (1954).
Ishihara, S., “Tests for Colour Blindness” (H. K. Lewis, London).
Walter, V. J., and Walter, W. Grey, EEG Clin. Neurophysiol., 1, 57 (1949).
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WALTER, W. Colour Illusions and Aberrations during Stimulation by Flickering Light. Nature 177, 710 (1956). https://doi.org/10.1038/177710a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/177710a0
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