Scintillating Grid

If you look around in the above figure you will notice the appearence and disappearance of black dots at the crossings.

Even though this figure looks similar to the Hermann Grid, it is markedly more vivid; the effect is probably caused by different mechanisms than those causing the Hermann Grid effect.

1993: First demonstrated by JR Bergen at the ARVO, in a weaker variant

1994: Re-discovered by Bernd Lingelbach’s wife Elke

1995: Demonstrated at the Tübingen ECVP meeting (Schrauf M, Lingelbach B, Lingelbach E & Wist ER. The Hermann grid and the scintillation effect. Perception 24: suppl, 88–89)

1997: Schrauf M, Lingelbach B & Wist E. The scintillating grid illusion. Vision Res 37:1033–1038

The inverse:

Question: Do the lines or the squares influence the colour of the apparent disks?

As you notice in the above figure, red streets leave the disks black. But if the squares are red, , the disks acquire a reddish tint (below).

Sources

Schrauf M, Lingelbach B, Lingelbach E & Wist ER (1995) The Hermann grid and the scintillation effect. Perception 24: suppl, 88–89

Schrauf M, Lingelbach B & Wist (1997) The scintillating grid illusion. Vision Res 37:1033–1038

VanRullen R, Dong T (2003) Attention and scintillation. Vision Res 43:2191–2196