In normal observers gazing at one's own face in the mirror for few minutes, at a low illumination level, produces the perception of strange faces. Observers see distortions of their own faces, but often all see skulls, archetypical faces, faces of relatives and deceased, and animals. In a laboratory set-up under controlled laboratory conditions in 50 healthy young volunteers (mean age 23 years) after about one minute all observers began to perceive apparitions. When a 10 minute session of mirror gazing ended participants reported experiencing striking effects including huge deformations of one's own face (reported by 66% of individuals); a relative's face with the features changed (18%), of whom 8% were still alive and 10% were deceased; an unknown person (28%); an archetypal face, such as that of an old woman, a child, or an image of an ancestor (28%); an animal face such as that of a cat or a pig (18%); and monstrous beings (48%). The illusion is relevant in the fields of face-perception, self-consciousness, embodied-cognition, mirror subject-other intersubjectivity

The impression of self-luminosity in the glare effect was studied in two experiments. In experiment 1 the target (CS) was set to the highest luminance of the field and subjects were asked to adjust the luminance ramp of the inducers (R) against five backgrounds (B) to the point where they began to see CS as self-luminous. It was found that there is a linear relationship between background and luminance ramp. Another group of subjects carried out the same task in experiment 2, but this time CS and R were linked together so that CS would always have the same luminance as the highest luminance level of R, as adjustments were performed. It was found that: (i) adjustments were always lower than the highest luminance available; (ii) the linear relationship between background and luminance ramp was confirmed; (iii) observers reported a compelling impression of self-luminous grays. Data are discussed in relation to Bonato and Gilchrist's model for the perception of luminosity. The authors advance the hypothesis that luminance ramps are used at an early stage of encoding for the perception of luminosity.