Leon Festinger (Festinger, Allyn and White) did  research on Benham's top.
The article (I can't find the exact reference) was in Vision Research and it
was, I think, in 1971.  Essentially, they imagined that the visual system
was coding the transitions from black to white as the disk rotated.  Half
the disk is all black and half is white but with sectors composed of black
arcs.  They thought the visual system treated these arcs as gray.  So the
sector that looked red  be off (black) then on at half maximum brightness
for 1/8 of a cycle (an arc), then fully on (the white).  Then they coded
white lights (with square wave onsets and offsets) to go on and off  in the
appropriate codes.  This set-up generated the appropriate, though weak,
color sensations.  Sorry I can't find the reference.
Paul Schulman


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