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Now You See it, Now You Don’t: Interacting with Invisible Objects

- Apoorva Rajiv Madipakkam, Karin Ludwig, Marcus Rothkirch, & Guido Hesselmann

Using a method called continuous flash suppression (CFS), which is based on the same principle as binocular rivalry, we can make objects invisible to people who have normal vision. In the CFS method, one eye is presented with the image of interest, also called the target, while at the same time the other eye is made to see colorful, flickering patterns. So, using the same example as above, one eye is shown the image of an ice cream and the other eye is now shown colorful, flickering patterns instead of the dog. In such a situation, because the colorful patterns are flickering compared to the static ice cream, what we finally see (most of the time) are the colorful, changing patterns (i.e., the dominant image).
Which image is dominant (the flickering masks or the ice cream) also depends on our eye dominance. But remember; the target image (the ice cream in our example) is actually shown to one eye and this eye and also parts of the brain are still receiving the information of the ice cream.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: G
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2015.00004

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