Gallery: Why Optical Illusions Like These Make Your Brain Go Haywire
Peter Delius Verlag01Chessboard
__Chessboard__ A few white spots create spatial depth in this illusion of a bulging chessboard. Though scientists haven't figured out an exact explanation, the effect could be based on interrupting patterns. Your brain assumes the chessboard has a uniform pattern so it sees the white spots as a distorted bulge, bending outwards.
Peter Delius Verlag02Mangagirl
__Mangagirl__ Are this manga girl’s eyes two different colors? No, not at all. The red filter makes the left eye appear blue though both eyes are the same shade of gray. This is similar to the blue-gold dress controversy. Your brain can perceive the same color differently, according to its surrounding visual context.
Thomas Hunt03Cofeehouse
__Coffeehouse__University of Bristol researchers discovered this illusion in the early 1970s while looking at the tiled wall of a café. Hence the name, Café Wall Illusion. The gray lines in between the rows of white and black squares seem to converge, but they are actually parallel. Your brain, overwhelmed by the intense and closely-spaced black-and-white contrasts, sees the gray lines as part of the tile either above or below it. The lines end up appearing higher on alternating sides, creating the trapezoidal illusion.
Monash04Arrows
__Arrows__ Similar to the Café Wall Illusion, these arrows seem to converge but are, in fact, parallel. Science has yet to explain the illusion, but the alternating directions of the arrows and the strong color contrasts contribute to the effect.
Peter Delius Verlag05Checkerboard
__Checkerboard__ This illusion is all about foreshortening—the strict law of perspective tells your brain that the blue line at the far back stretches longer than the green line at the front. But if you remove the checkerboard, the two lines are the same length.
Peter Delius Verlag06Corporal Violet
__Corporal Violet__The side profiles of Napoleon Bonaparte, his second wife Marie Louise of Austria and their son hide in this color etching from the 19th century. Ambiguous figures like this one force you to choose what you see—the faces or the flowers—making it difficult to see both at the same time. (Hint: Look for Napoleon's hat.) Even today, these types of images are used to study mental abilities like attention.
W.E.Hill07My Wife and My Mother-in-Law
__*My Wife and My Mother-in-Law*__The American satirical magazine *Puck* published this classic ambiguous figure by William Ely Hill in 1915. Can you see both women?
Peter Delius Verlag08Fox
__Fox__The brain can also create ghostly afterimages, like in this fox illusion. Focus on the left fox for about 30 seconds; then focus on the right fox. The fox on the right should now have a reddish shimmer. This afterimage effect only works if you focus on both points with precision. Scientists don’t know how your brain produces these afterimages.
OPLOJA09Woman
__Woman__Focus on the tip of the woman’s nose for 30 seconds; then shift your focus to a white wall further away. Unlike the fox illusion, this one behaves like most afterimages, turning bright colors to dark and vice versa. The white wall acts as a projection screen where you see an enlarged face of the woman.
Peter Delius Verlag10Billary
__Billary__ You can probably see both Bill and Hillary Clinton in the above picture puzzle. Your brain has the power to extract a whole image from bits and pieces of visual information. Without this ability, you wouldn’t be able to safely cross a road or drive a car.
Georg Rusche11Text
__Text__When you first learn to read, you need to decipher each letter before putting them together to form a word. But with experience, your brain learns to process at least short, common words as a whole. For longer words, however, you need more than just the first and last letters in the right position to decipher them.
Peter Delius Verlag12Cube
__Cube__Depending on your perspective, the orange cube can appear to be inside the blue cube or floating in front of it. As seen in the other illusions, visual context transforms the way you see images. This illusion plays with your depth perception, and your interpretation of the image is constantly shifting as your brain tries to figure out what is correct.
