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Artificial Perception Meets Psychophysics, Revealing a Fundamental Law of Illusory Motion

Rotating Snakes is a visual illusion in which a stationary design is perceived to move dramatically. In the current study, the mechanism that generates perception of motion was analyzed using a combination of psychophysics experiments and deep neural network models that mimic human vision. We prepared three- and four-color illusion-like designs with a wide range of luminance and measured their strength of induced rotational motion. As a result, we discovered the fundamental law that the effect of the four-color snake rotation illusion was successfully enhanced by the combination of two perceptual motion vectors produced by the two three-color designs. In years to come, deep neural network technology will be one of the most effective tools not only for engineering applications but also for human perception research.