The rotating snakes illusion is a static, brightly colored image, created by Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka in 2003, that appears to rotate or drift even though nothing in the picture is actually moving. It belongs to a broader class of peripheral drift illusions, in which repeating asymmetric patterns of light and dark produce an impression of motion that is strongest in peripheral vision and fades when a single part of the image is stared at directly. The apparent motion is thought to arise from small involuntary eye movements, including microsaccades, combined with slight timing differences in how the visual system processes light and dark edges.
Facts
First Described YearThis illusion was first described by Faubert and Herbert (1999). (w-bbfill-psychology6-0926) Classification
Type of Phenomenon Sources
1. Wikipedia: Peripheral drift illusion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_drift_illusionQuote, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_drift_illusion
a motion illusion generated by the presentation of a sawtooth luminance grating in the visual periphery
2. Wikipedia: Peripheral drift illusion
Wikipedia article textQuote, Wikipedia article text
This illusion was first described by Faubert and Herbert (1999).
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