  Rotating Snakes is a visual illusion in which a stationary design is
perceived to move dramatically. In the current study, the mechanism that
generates perception of motion was analyzed using a combination of
psychophysics experiments and deep neural network models that mimic human
vision. We prepared three- and four-color illusion-like designs with a wide
range of luminance and measured their strength of induced rotational motion. As
a result, we discovered the fundamental law that the effect of the four-color
snake rotation illusion was successfully enhanced by the combination of two
perceptual motion vectors produced by the two three-color designs. In years to
come, deep neural network technology will be one of the most effective tools
not only for engineering applications but also for human perception research.
