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Fig. 5.23 Simulation of the illusions of Canis (a, b) and phantom points (c) by the Belousov-
Zhabotinsky medium
functional properties are in many respects equivalent to specific chemical reaction-
diffusion media, in particular the Belousov-Zhabotinsky media. For this reason the
quest to understand whether it is possible to simulate certain features of human
vision, using a chemical reaction-diffusion media, emerges.
One of the features of human interaction with the outside world is the false
perception of its individual phenomena—illusions. A large variety of illusions
associated with vision and tactile perception are known, but the most interesting
among them are optical illusions.
One of the most frequently mentioned ones is the illusion of Canis. On the image
depicted in Fig.
5.23
, one clearly sees a triangle, which in fact is not present in the
picture. In the case of a system of black squares, dark blurry formations—an
illusion of phantom points—appear in the spaces between their corners. If these
images are entered into a Belousov-Zhabotinsky medium that is functioning in the
excitable regime, it turns out that as a result of the evolution of the enhanced image
contours either a triangle (Canis illusion) or a system of points in the intervals
between the corners of squares (the illusion of phantom points) appears. It therefore
appears that the information capabilities of the visual cortex modeled by the
Grossberg neural networks, and as a consequence, by the dynamics of reaction-
diffusion media, include not only the basic operations of image processing.
The vibrational mode of Belousov-Zhabotinsky chemical environments appar-
ently allows for making assumptions about the mechanisms of other optical
illusions. The illusion called the “vase of Rubin” involves the human eye seeing
either a vase or two human profiles (Fig.
5.24a
). In this case perception is often
