White's illusion is a brightness illusion where certain stripes of a black and white grating is partially replaced by a gray rectangle (Fig. 1). Both of the gray bars of A and B are the same color and opacity. The brightness of the gray pieces appear to shift toward the brightness of the top and bottom bordering stripes. This is interesting because lateral inhibition cannot explain this occurrence. This occurs even when the gray patches in the black stripes are bordered by more white than black (and conversely for the gray patches in the white stripes).
Read more about White's Illusion: Lateral Inhibition, Belongingness, Other Experiments/articles Involving White's Illusion
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