The scintillating grid illusion is enhanced by binocular viewing

The scintillating grid illusion is an intriguing stimulus consisting of a grey grid on a black background, with white discs at the grid intersections. Most viewers perceive illusory “scintillating” black discs within the physical white discs, especially at non-fixated locations. Here, we report for the first time that this scintillation percept is stronger when the stimulus is viewed binocularly than when it is presented to only one eye. Further experiments indicate that this is not simply because two monocular percepts combine linearly, but involves a specifically cyclopean contribution (Schrauf & Spillmann, 2000). However, the scintillation percept does not depend on the absolute disparity of the stimulus relative to the screen. In an intriguing twist, although the basic illusion shows more scintillation when viewed binocularly, when the illusion is weakened by shifting the discs away from the grid intersections, scintillation becomes stronger with monocular viewing.