Increasing psychophysical evidence suggests that specific image features–or statistics–can
appear unpleasant or induce visual discomfort in humans. Such unpleasantness tends to be …

Images with excessive energy at medium spatial frequencies (Fernandez and Wilkins, 2008
Perception 37 1098–1113), or that have high color contrast and little or no luminance …

Uncomfortable images generally have a particular spatial structure, which deviates from a
reciprocal relationship between amplitude and spatial frequency (f) in the Fourier domain …

Images created from noise filtered to have an approximately 1/f amplitude spectrum were
altered by adding excess energy concentrated at various spatial frequencies. The effects of …

Quite independently of what they represent, some images provoke discomfort, and even
headaches and seizures in susceptible individuals. The visual system has adapted to …

Flickering lights can be uncomfortable to look at and can induce seizures in observers with
photosensitive epilepsy. However, the temporal characteristics contributing to these effects …

Symmetry generally makes stimuli less complex, and symmetric arrangements are also
generally preferred to asymmetric ones. Here, we investigated the roles of both local and …

Spatial images with unnatural amplitude spectra tend to appear uncomfortable. Analogous
effects are found in the temporal domain, yet discomfort in flickering patterns is also strongly …

Natural scenes provide important affective cues for observers to avoid danger. From an
adaptationist perspective, such cues affect the behavior of the observer and shape the …

For centuries, the essence of aesthetic experience has remained one of the most intriguing
mysteries for philosophers, artists, art historians and scientists alike. Recently, views …