This is next-level science trickery. -
The human brain is perhaps the most complex biological structure in evolutionary history. Yet, it’s surprisingly easy to trick our brain into perceiving something one way, when in reality it’s another. And scientists are only just now figuring out how some of these tricks work.
They’re called optical illusions, and they can teach us a great deal about how our brain and eyes work together to understand the world around us.
Here are 10 of the craziest optical illusions and how they work:
1. Peripheral drift illusion
Despite the swirling and twirling you think you see, this is a completely still image. It’s an example of peripheral drift illusion, which refers to any optical illusion that our brains perceive as moving but, in reality, is still.
The human brain, although highly sophisticated, processes information in a very basic way: As we move our eyes from left to right, we pick up visual cues both directly and in our peripheral vision that our brain then processes piece-by-piece - not continuously.
And because our brains process high-contrast elements, like black on white, faster than low-contrast ones, like black on grey, that lapse in mental read time is ultimately what causes the apparent motion.
In a 2012 study, researchers at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, reported that subjects looking at the picture above only saw apparent movement if their eyes were actually moving. When the subjects maintained a steady stare at a single point, the apparent motion ceased.
2. Ames room -
Almost any room we enter is either square or rectangular-shaped, meaning opposite walls are parallel to each other and meet at 90 degree angles. However, an Ames room is shaped like a trapezoid.
The far-left corner is farther from the camera than the far-right corner. So, as the man walks across the room he appears to grow in size when in reality he’s just moving closer to the camera.
3. Hybrid image
The longer you see this image the more it looks like Albert Einstein instead of Marilyn Monroe, so you might think it’s just a skewed photo of the famous physicist. But that’s the illusion!
This is an example of what is called a hybrid image that imposes one image on top of another. So, in fact, you are seeing both Monroe and Einstein. The trick is that the image of Einstein shows more detail than the image of Monroe.
The farther an object is from us, the blurrier it appears. Therefore, our brains instantaneously process the blurry image of Monroe when the object is small and apparently far away, but as it comes closer, our eyes and brain recognise the more detailed image of Einstein.
4. Geometrical optical illusion
In case you’re wondering, the only thing changing in this picture is the addition of the diagonal lines. The plank is not actually tilting to the right, despite what your brain is telling you.
There’s no single explanation for why we perceive an imaginary tilt here. One possible reason could be related to a theory that researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York first proposed in 2008.
Rensselaer suggests that in the 0.1 seconds it takes our brains to process the light that hits our retinas, humans actually predict what we think we should see. Although, this does not clearly tell us why we only perceive the tilt once the diagonal lines are introduced, Rensselaer’s “foresight theory” can explain another type of geometrical optical illusion called Hering illusion.
5. Dragon illusion
Originally designed by the late American magician and writer Jerry Andrus, this optical illusion is a true work of genius. It does not use any holographic trick or clever camera work.
This type of optical illusion, similar to the Ames room, plays with our brain’s sense of perspective: the dragon’s face looks like it’s sticking out toward us because, after all, we know from a life time of experience that faces stick out instead of cave in.
But the exact opposite is actually the case here, as Slate science writer Phil Plait explains on Bad Astronomy. Regardless of what you perceive, the entire face of this dragon is inverted making everything backwards: For example, the right eye is actually farther away from us than the left eye, and it’s this inversion that confuses our brains and makes us think the dragon is constantly, hungrily staring us down.
You can make this illusion yourself very easily. There are numerous templates online where you simply print and cut out the shape and then fold it according to the directions.
Source :sciencealert .
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