Commemorating the 450th anniversary of the birth of astronomer Galileo Galilei , a team from the State University of New York has managed to unravel a mystery that puzzled this genius: why do some planets when seen with the naked eye appear to be larger than they are? ?
Galileo was clear that it was an optical illusion, not produced by the object itself but by our eyes, but he did not know why or how.
The answer is that this effect is produced thanks to a different neural response to light and dark colors , which are processed by different channels and therefore do not act in the same way, just as we read better on a white background with black letters than on reverse.
Thus, “ON cells respond to ON light –light objects– and OFF cells respond to OFF light –dark objects–“, according to the director of the study, José Manuel Alonso.
The study, published in the journal PNAS , shows that dark stimuli produce a faithful neural response, favoring an exact representation of the object. In contrast, light stimuli offer an exaggerated response, making objects appear larger than they are .
