Bizarre optical illusion tricks you into seeing brunette woman on the wall using genius ‘brain hack’
AN OPTICAL illusion that tricks you into seeing a brunette woman when you look away is circulating online.
The female headshot image has been overlaid with a negative filter and tricks cells in your eye to see colours that aren't there if you look at it for too long.
After staring at the red dot on the woman's nose for 15 seconds and then looking at a blank background and blinking, you should be able to see the woman in colour with brunette hair.
The illusion plays on the fact that eye cone cells responsible for how we see colour can be fatigued.
Staring at one colour for a while can make the cells weaker so that when you look away you see what is known as a 'negative after image' and colours that are on the opposite end of the spectrum to the original.
This doesn't usually happen to cone cells in everyday life because little movements of the eye stops them from getting overstimulated.
The science behind optical illusions
This brief explanation may help to unscramble your brain...
- Optical illusions make a little bit more sense when you learn that our eyes have very little to do with what we see and it is our brains that play the key role in creating images and trying to protect us from the potential threats around us
- Our brain is constantly trying to make sense of the world at the quickest pace it can despite the world being in 3D and the images on our retinas being in 2D
- It can be really difficult for your brain to interpret everything at once so it will often take shortcuts and give you a simplified version of what you see so you can have quicker reaction times if the object you're looking at looks dangerous
- When you look at an object what you're really seeing is the light that bounced off of it and entered your eye, which is converted into electrical impulses that your brain then turns into an image
- Our brains can warp straight lines if an object in the middle of them looks like it's drawing closer as it wants to emphasize the potential threat
- Different colours and light and dark can make the same sized objects look different or make patterned images look like they're spinning
Facebook user Jackie Erow Stewart wrote: "This is absolutely amazing!!
"Look at the red dot on the nose for 30 seconds. Then look at a simple wall and blink very fast!"
If you're struggling to see it make sure you're looking away to a blank space and blinking lots.
The picture has been circulating on Facebook and has 132,000 shares so far.
It also has an impressive 15,000 likes and 15,000 comments.
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What do you think of this optical illusion? Let us know in the comments...
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