A group of Spanish scientists has come to the conclusion that the secret ofMona Lisa portrait mood change, which can be shown smiling or serious depending on how we look at it, resides in thehuman eye function.
According to Luís Martínez Otero, a researcher at the Alicante Institute of Neurosciences, the human eye sends mixed signals to the brain. The smile of the portraitMona Lisa, Painted byLeonardo da Vinci,is shown in one way or another depending on how the cells located in the retina capture the image and thehuman brain canalby which they are transmitted. These channels encode information about thesizeof the object, itsbrightness, brightnessYlocationin the field of view. “Sometimes one channel is imposed on the others and we see the smile, sometimes others win and we don’t see it,” explains Martínez Otero, who presented his work at the annual meeting of the American Neuroscience Society held in Chicago.
Among his multi-parameter experiments, the Spanish researcher showed various subjects a white or black screen for thirty seconds before projecting the Mona Lisa onto it. And found thatit was more frequent to perceive his smiling face after the dark screen.
The question that arises is: did Leonardo da Vinci want to confuse our brain in this way? Is it an intended effect? Martínez Otero suspects that it is. “Leonardo wrote in one of his notebooks that he was tryingpaint dynamic expressionsBecause that’s what I saw on the street, “he says in New Scientist magazine.
