The Mystery of the Third Phoneme 
The psychologist explained the existence of the third sound by demonstrating the relationship between the visual component and the sound when paired with each other. In order to gain a better understanding, let’s break down to you the three sounds watching the video produced:

1. Watching the video with sound and eyes open will produce a “da da da” sound.
   
2. Watching the video with sound and your eyes closed will produce a “ba ba ba” sound.
   
3. Watching the video without sound and your eyes open will produce a “ga ga ga” sound.
   

In short, the McGurk Effect proved that your senses didn’t evolve in isolation from one and other, but they actually work in union with each other to assist people perceive the world around them. When more than one sense is stimulated at the same time with each other, it enables the brain to learn and remember the information better. However, not everyone is susceptible to the McGurk effect, as different factors such as brain damage and certain disorders can influence a person’s perception. 

List of Disorders 
People with the following disorders have shown little to zero impact when exposed to the McGurk effect:

• Dyslexia-  Cannot perceive and produce consonant clusters
  
• Language Impairment- Children utilize less visual information in speech perception, but can perceive auditory cues only
  
• Autism Spectrum Disorder- Cannot identify visual and auditory aspects of speech
  
• Language Learning Disabilities- People with underdeveloped language skills
  
• Alzheimer’s Disease- Loss of memory leads to decreased influence on the visual stimulus
  
• Schizophrenia- Decreases the development of audiovisual integration
  
• Aphasia- Impaired  visual, auditory, and audio with visual condition
  

Apart from these disorders, other factors that hinder the effect of the McGurk effect include cross-dubbing, mouth visibility, and syllable structure, amongst others. The McGurk effect isn’t magic, but its unearthing led people to discover how people’s senses depend on one another, thus heightening the importance of sight and hearing. 

Oleg Shuplyak:  The Master of Faces 
Oleg Shuplyak, a student of architecture, was born in the Ukraine on September 23, 1967. He enrolled at the Lviv Polytechnic Institute to study architecture, which was secondary to his first love—painting. It was at the institute where he learned to compose pictures and articulately position images inside it. 

In his free time, he began to create oil paintings, drawing famous faces inside it. His unique approach branded him as one of the most accomplished and famous illusionists of our time. 

The Hidden Secrets of Shuplyak’s Oil Paintings 
Do you wonder what went through Shuplyak’s mind when he first sat down to create his very first oil painting? Did the idea of creating a second layer on top of the first just come to him one day? Who knows! All we know is that he gave us mesmerizing optical illusions that play with our minds. 

His brilliance in creating not one, but two pictures is astounding. It is as if he has created a two in one oil painting. The artist is well known for placing a second image behind the characters, objects, coloring, and objects of the first image. From the first image, protrudes a second image of famous people such as Zeus, Uncle Sam, Charles Darwin, John Lennon, and more. The conniving artist loves to play with the viewer’s mind, confusing them further.

All paintings are shown with the kind permission of the artist.

Shuplyak’s Mind Tricks 
In some of his oil paintings, the second image is clearly visible. It is so visible that the first image gets lost, which results in the viewers trying to place the first image in their mind. The artist really befuddles with our minds with his unique conception of images. In the instance the second image is not visible, squint your eyes and move back until you can see it. Shuplyak’s oil paintings truly trick the mind, if you would like to a lot more of Oleg's work click through to our Oleg Shuplyak Gallery.

© opticalspy 2015

You must have come across different kinds of visual effects over the internet. Ever seen one where you are required to stare at some moving optical illusion for a while and then stare at a blank wall and you notice that something is moving on the wall too? This is known as the motion aftereffects. It’s an illusion that your mind creates where you are able to see movement when in reality there is none. Still don’t understand how this happens? Let’s start from the very beginning.

What is Motion Aftereffect? 
Also known as the waterfall illusion, the motion aftereffect or MAE occurs because of motion adaptation. This means that your brain basically captures the effect of the moving body and then projects that image on a blank, unmoving object. Your brain is made up of many neurons. What happens is that they adopt the activity of an object in order for you to understand what is happening. When you continue to focus on the same activity for some time, say 60 second, the neurons adopt this activity. So when you suddenly move your gaze from the moving effect to a still effect, the neurons in action are the ones which were in motion. Hence, the object you are focusing on now also seems to be in motion. This effect lasts for a few seconds before the neurons for stationary object come alive.

In very simple words, when you look at a waterfall for some time and then switch your gaze to the rocks right next to it, it will feel like the rocks are moving too. But the most interesting thing about the whole scenario is that, unlike the waterfall which was moving in a downward direction, the rocks will seem to be moving upwards. This is what happens in the motion aftereffect, where you see motion in a stationary object, but it is reversed.   

A Brief History    
Research suggests that the motion aftereffect has been known since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Aristotle in 350 B.C. explained the effect once he continued to look at a moving object. But he did not distinguish the direction of the motion. But it was in 1820 that the first clear basis of motion aftereffect was laid by Jan Evangelista Purkyne, a physiologist and anatomist from Czech Republic. He gave the theory after checking out the movement of the cavalry parade. In 1834, Robert Adams came up with the term ‘waterfall illusion’ when he went to visit the Fall of Foyers in Scotland that is located near the Loch Ness. He was the one who explained how after looking at the moving water of the waterfall, it felt like the stones next to it were also moving.

Other scientitsts who tried to explain and understand the concept of motion aftereffect include Thompson (1880), and Gustav Adolf Wohlgemuth (1911).

Now the next time you look at such an illusion, you will be able to understand the science behind it too!   

Camera obscura is a Latin word for “dark chamber.” Without camera obscura, photography and the invention of the camera would not have been possible. Imagine a world without selfies or photos of landscape, animals, and people. The thought only sends shivers down our spines! Fortunately, the invention of the optical device known as camera obscura was made possible in ancient times. The concept of optical projections was very much a reality in Aristotle’s era. However, the first mention of the camera obscura was in the 5th century BC.

The History of the Camera Obscura 
Mo-Ti, a Chinese philosopher, living in the 5th century BC mentioned a device that could invert images created by rays of light travelling through a pinhole into a dark room. He referred the dark room as the “locked treasure room” or a “collecting phase.” The next mention of the optical device happened in 384 to 322 BC by the one and only Aristotle, an acclaimed Greek philosopher.

Aristotle perceived the optical device as a technique for partially exposing the sun onto the ground through the holes created in the sieve. During the time, no one had thought to perform experiments using the optical device, or made remarks on it by the given information on hand. Alhazen saw an opportunity here. Alhazen was an Islamic scholar and scientists in 965 to 1039 AD. He performed experiments that included the positioning of five lanterns outside of an area with a hole. In 1490, 


it was Leonardo Da Vinci’s turn to make his own clarification of what the camera obscura is. In his notebooks, he began to describe the characteristics of the camera obscura. By now, people knew the function of the camera obscura and on how it allowed people to capture images. The next step was to improve the quality of the pictures taken.

The Improvements made to the Camera Obscura 
Light goes through a straight line, reflecting the rays from a bright object, which passes through a hole. In doing so, it reforms the object into an upside down picture on a flat surface, which is held parallel to the hole. The process was improved in the 16th century by adding a convex lens inside the aperture and later a mirror to reproduce the image down or up onto a surface. 

Due to improvements made to the device, it gained notoriety amongst artists in 1558, especially from Magia Naturalis, which recommended artists to use the optical device to assist them to draw images. Nowadays, camera obscura is extinct and referred to as a pricy antique if obtained. 

One thing for sure, this ancient optical device left behind a legacy for future innovators to refer to, which they did, when cameras were introduced. Since then, the world has seen other magnificent inventions that assist people capture the beauty of life through a lens in day light, without the help of a dark room to do it. 

It has been proposed by some that a number of famous artists from the past used camera obscuras or other optical techniques to produce their photo realistic masterpieces. This theory is discussed and duplicated in the excellent documentary Tim's Vermeer, it really is worth a look.