Optical illusions puzzle. visual illusions

People have been familiar with optical illusions for thousands of years. The Romans made 3D mosaics to decorate their homes, the Greeks used perspective to build beautiful pantheons, and at least one Paleolithic stone figurine depicts two different animals that can be seen depending on the point of view.

mammoth and bison

Much can get lost along the way from your eyes to your brain. In most cases, this system works fine. Your eyes move rapidly and almost imperceptibly from side to side, delivering scattered pictures of what is happening to your brain. The brain, on the other hand, organizes them, determines the context, putting the pieces of the puzzle into what makes sense.

For example, you are standing on a street corner, cars are passing through a pedestrian crossing, and the traffic light is red. Pieces of information add up to the conclusion: now is not the best time to cross the street. Most of the time this works great, but sometimes, even though your eyes are sending out visual signals, your brain is doing it in an attempt to decipher them.

In particular, this often happens when templates are involved. They are necessary for our brain to process information faster, spending less energy. But these same patterns can mislead him.

As you can see in the checkerboard illusion, the brain doesn't like to change patterns. When small specks change the pattern of a single checkerboard, the brain begins to interpret them as a large bulge in the center of the board.

Chess board

Also, the brain is often wrong about color. The same color may look different on different backgrounds. In the image below, both of the girl's eyes are the same color, but due to the background change, one appears blue.

Illusion with color

The next optical illusion is the Cafe Wall Illusion.

cafe wall

Researchers at the University of Bristol discovered this illusion in 1970 thanks to a mosaic wall in a café, which is how it got its name.

The gray lines between the rows of black and white squares appear to be at an angle, but they are actually parallel to each other. Confused by the contrasting and closely spaced squares, your brain sees the gray lines as part of a mosaic, above or below the squares. As a result, the illusion of a trapezoid is created.

Scientists suggest that the illusion is created due to the joint action of neural mechanisms of different levels: retinal neurons and visual cortex neurons.

The arrow illusion works in a similar way: the white lines are actually parallel, although they don't appear to be. But here the brain is confused by the contrast of colors.

arrow illusion

An optical illusion can also be created using perspective, such as the checkerboard illusion.

perspective illusion

Due to the fact that the brain is familiar with the laws of perspective, it seems to you that the distant blue line is longer than the green one in the foreground. In fact, they are the same length.

The next type of optical illusions are pictures in which two images can be found.

Bouquet of violets and Napoleon's face

In this painting, the faces of Napoleon, his second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, and their son are hidden in the void between the flowers. Such images are used to develop attention. Did you find faces?

Here is another picture with a double image called "My wife and mother-in-law."

Wife and mother-in-law

It was coined by William Ely Hill in 1915 and published in the American satirical magazine Puck.

The brain can also complete pictures with color, as in the case of the fox illusion.

Fox illusion

If you look at the left side of the picture with the fox for a while, and then look at the right side, it will turn from white to reddish. Scientists still do not know what causes such illusions.

Here is another illusion with color. Look at the woman's face for 30 seconds and then look at the white wall.

Illusion with a woman's face

Unlike the fox illusion, in this case the brain inverts the colors - you see a projection of a face on a white background, which acts as a movie screen.

And here is a visual demonstration of how our brain processes visual information. In this incomprehensible mosaic of faces, you can easily recognize Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Bill and Hillary Clinton

The brain creates an image from the pieces of information received. Without this ability, we would not be able to drive a car or cross the road safely.

The last illusion is two colored cubes. Is the orange cube inside or outside?

cube illusion

Depending on your point of view, the orange cube can be inside the blue one or floating outside. This illusion operates at the expense of your depth perception, and the interpretation of the picture depends on what your brain considers correct.

As you can see, despite the fact that our brain does a great job with everyday tasks, to deceive it, it is enough to break the established pattern, use contrasting colors or the right perspective.

How often do you think this happens in real life?

We are used to taking the world around us for granted, so we do not notice how our brain deceives its own masters.

The imperfection of our binocular vision, unconscious false judgments, psychological stereotypes and other distortions of world perception serve as a pretext for the emergence of optical illusions. There are a lot of them, but we tried to collect for you the most interesting, crazy and incredible of them.

Impossible figures

At one time, this genre of graphics was so widespread that it even got its own name - impossibilism. Each of these figures seems quite real on paper, but simply cannot exist in the physical world.

Impossible Trident

The classic blevet is perhaps the brightest representative of optical drawings from the category of “impossible figures”. No matter how hard you try, you will not be able to determine where the middle prong originates.

Another striking example is the impossible Penrose triangle.

It is in the form of the so-called "endless staircase".

And also Roger Shepard's "impossible elephant".

Ames room

Issues of optical illusions interested Adelbert Ames Jr. from early childhood. After becoming an ophthalmologist, he did not stop his research on depth perception, which resulted in the famous Ames Room.

How the Ames room works

In a nutshell, the effect of the Ames room can be conveyed as follows: it seems that two people are standing in the left and right corners of its back wall - a dwarf and a giant. Of course, this is an optical trick, and in fact these people are of quite ordinary height. In reality, the room has an elongated trapezoidal shape, but because of the false perspective, it seems to us rectangular. The left corner is farther away from the visitors' view than the right corner, and therefore the person standing there seems so small.

Illusions of movement

This category of optical tricks is of most interest to psychologists. Most of them are based on the subtleties of color combinations, the brightness of objects and their repetition. All these tricks mislead our peripheral vision, as a result of which the perception mechanism goes astray, the retina captures the image intermittently, spasmodically, and the brain activates the areas of the cortex responsible for detecting movement.

floating star

It's hard to believe that this picture is not an animated gif-format, but an ordinary optical illusion. The drawing was created by Japanese artist Kaya Nao in 2012. A pronounced illusion of movement is achieved due to the opposite direction of the patterns in the center and along the edges.

There are quite a few such illusions of motion, that is, static images that appear to be in motion. For example, the famous spinning circle.

Or yellow arrows on a pink background: when you look closely, it seems that they are swaying back and forth.

Beware, this image may cause eye pain or dizziness in people with weak vestibular apparatus.

Honestly, this is a regular picture, not a gif! Psychedelic spirals seem to drag somewhere into the universe full of oddities and wonders.

Illusions-shifters

The most numerous and fun genre of drawings-illusions is based on a change in the direction of looking at a graphic object. The simplest upside-down drawings just need to be rotated 180 or 90 degrees.

Two classic shifter illusions: nurse/old woman and beauty/ugly.

A more highly artistic picture with a catch - when rotated 90 degrees, the frog turns into a horse.

Other "double illusions" are more subtle.

Girl / old woman

One of the most popular dual images was published in 1915 in the cartoon magazine Puck. The caption to the drawing read: "My wife and mother-in-law."

old people / mexicans

An elderly couple or guitar-singing Mexicans? Most see old people first, and only then do their eyebrows turn into a sombrero, and their eyes into faces. The authorship belongs to the Mexican artist Octavio Ocampo, who created many pictures-illusions of a similar nature.

Lovers / Dolphins

Surprisingly, the interpretation of this psychological illusion depends on the age of the person. As a rule, children see dolphins frolicking in the water - their brain, not yet familiar with sexual relationships and their symbols, simply does not isolate two lovers in this composition. Older people, on the contrary, first see a couple, and only then dolphins.

The list of such dual pictures is endless:

In the picture above, most people first see the face of an Indian, and only then look to the left and distinguish a silhouette in a fur coat. The image below is usually interpreted by everyone as a black cat, and only then does a mouse appear in its contours.

A very simple upside-down picture - something like this can be easily done with your own hands.

Illusions of color and contrast

Alas, the human eye is imperfect, and in our assessments of what we see (without noticing it ourselves) we often rely on the color environment and the brightness of the background of the object. This leads to very interesting optical illusions.

gray squares

Optical illusions of colors are one of the most popular types of optical illusion. Yes, yes, squares A and B are painted in the same color.

Such a trick is possible due to the peculiarities of how our brain works. A shadow without sharp borders falls on square B. Thanks to the darker "environment" and smooth shadow gradient, it appears to be significantly lighter than square A.

green spiral

There are only three colors in this photo: pink, orange and green. Don't believe? Here's what happens when you replace pink and orange with black.

Is the dress white and gold or blue and black?

However, illusions based on the perception of color are not uncommon. Take, for example, the white and gold or black and blue dress that conquered the Internet in 2015. What color was this mysterious dress, and why did different people perceive it differently?

The explanation for the dress phenomenon is very simple: as in the case of gray squares, it all depends on the imperfect chromatic adaptation of our organs of vision. As you know, the human retina consists of two types of receptors: rods and cones. Rods capture light better, while cones capture color. Each person has a different ratio of cones and rods, so the definition of the color and shape of an object is slightly different depending on the dominance of one or another type of receptor.

Those who saw the white-and-gold dress drew attention to the brightly lit background and decided that the dress was in the shade, which means that the white color should be darker than usual. If the dress seemed blue-black to you, then your eye first of all paid attention to the main color of the dress, which in this photo really has a blue tint. Then your brain judged that the golden hue was black, brightened due to the rays of the sun directed at the dress and the poor quality of the photo.

In fact, the dress was blue with black lace.

And here is another photo that baffled millions of users who could not decide if there was a wall in front of them or a lake.

Everything that we see in reality, we take for granted. Whether it's a rainbow after the rain, a child's smile, or a gradually blue sea in the distance. But as soon as we begin to observe clouds that change shape, familiar images and objects appear from them ... At the same time, we rarely think about how this happens and what operations take place in our brain. In science, such a phenomenon has received an appropriate definition - optical illusions of the eye. At such moments, we visually perceive one picture, and the brain protests and decodes it differently. Let's get acquainted with the most popular visual illusions and try to explain them.

general description

Illusions for the eyes have long been an object of curiosity for psychologists and artists. In the scientific definition, they are perceived as an inadequate, distorted perception of objects, a mistake, a delusion. In ancient times, the cause of the illusion was considered to be the malfunctioning of the human visual system. Today, optical illusion is a deeper concept, associated with brain processes that help us “decipher”, understand the surrounding reality. The principle of human vision is explained by the reconstruction of a three-dimensional image of visible objects on the retina of the eye. Thanks to this, it is possible to determine their size, depth and remoteness, the principle of perspective (parallelism and perpendicularity of lines). The eyes read information and the brain processes it.

The illusion of deceiving the eyes can vary in several ways (size, color, perspective). Let's try to explain them.

Depth and size

The simplest and most familiar to human vision is a geometric illusion - a distortion of the perception of the size, length or depth of an object of reality. In reality, this phenomenon can be observed by looking at the railway. Near the rails are parallel to each other, the sleepers are perpendicular to the rails. In perspective, the drawing changes: a slope or bend appears, the parallelism of the lines is lost. The farther the road goes, the more difficult it is to determine the distance of any of its sections.

This illusion for the eyes (with explanations, everything is as it should be) was first described by the Italian psychologist Mario Ponzo in 1913. The habitual decrease in the size of an object with its remoteness is a stereotype for human vision. But there are deliberate distortions of these perspectives that destroy the integral image of the subject. When a staircase keeps parallel lines throughout its entire length, it becomes unclear whether a person is descending or ascending. In fact, the building has a deliberate extension downward or upward.

With regard to depth, there is the concept of disparity - a different position of points on the retina of the left and right eyes. Due to this, the human eye perceives the object as concave or convex. The illusion of this phenomenon can be observed in 3D images, when three-dimensional images are created on flat objects (sheet of paper, asphalt, wall). Due to the correct arrangement of shapes, shadows and light, the picture is mistakenly perceived by the brain as real.

Color and contrast

One of the most important properties of the human eye is the ability to distinguish colors. Perception may vary depending on the illumination of objects. This is due to optical irradiation - the phenomenon of "flow" of light from brightly lit to dark areas of the image on the retina. This explains the loss of sensitivity to distinguish between red and orange colors and its increase in relation to blue and violet at dusk. As a result, optical illusions may occur.

Contrasts also play an important role. Sometimes a person mistakenly judges the color saturation of an object against a faded background. Conversely, bright contrast dims the colors of nearby objects.

The illusion of color can also be observed in the shadows, where brightness and saturation also do not appear. In there is the concept of "colored shadow". In nature, it can be observed when a fiery sunset paints red houses, the sea, which themselves have contrasting shades. This phenomenon can also be classified as an illusion for the eyes.

contours

The next category is the illusion of perception of the contours, the outlines of objects. In the scientific world, it has received the name of the phenomenon of perceptual readiness. Sometimes what we see is not what we see, or has a double interpretation. Currently, in the visual arts, there is a fashion for the creation of dual images. Different people look at the same “encrypted” picture and read different symbols, silhouettes, information in it. A prime example of this in psychology is the Rorschach spot test. According to experts, visual perception in this case is the same, but the answer in the form of interpretation depends on the characteristics of the person's personality. When evaluating qualities, it is necessary to take into account the localization, level of form, content and originality / popularity of reading such illusions.

Changelings

This kind of eye illusion is also popular in art. Its trick lies in the fact that in one position of the image the human brain reads one image, and in the opposite position - another. The most famous changelings are the old princess and the hare duck. In terms of perspective and color, there are no distortions here, but perceptual readiness is present. But for the difference, you need to flip the picture. A similar example in reality would be cloud observation. When the same form from different positions (vertically, horizontally) can be associated with different objects.

Ames room

An example of a 3D eye illusion is the Ames room, invented in 1946. It is designed in such a way that, when viewed from the front, it appears to be an ordinary room with parallel walls perpendicular to the ceiling and floor. In fact, this room is trapezoidal. The far wall in it is located so that the right corner is obtuse (closer), and the left corner is sharp (further). The illusion is enhanced by chess squares on the floor. The person in the right corner is visually perceived as a giant, and in the left corner - as a dwarf. Of interest is the movement of a person around the room - a person who is rapidly growing or, conversely, decreasing.

Experts say that for such an illusion, the presence of walls and a ceiling is not necessary. A visible horizon is sufficient, which only appears so in relation to the corresponding background. The Ames room illusion is often used in movies to create the special effect of a giant dwarf.

moving illusions

Another type of illusion for the eyes is a dynamic picture, or autokinetic movement. This phenomenon occurs when, when considering a flat image, the figures on it begin to literally come to life. The effect is enhanced if a person alternately approaches / moves away from the picture, looks from right to left and vice versa. In this case, the distortion occurs due to a certain selection of colors, circular arrangement, irregularity or "vector" of the forms.

"Tracking" paintings

Probably, every person at least once had to deal with the visual effect when a portrait or an image on a poster literally watches him move around the room. The legendary "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci, "Dionysus" by Caravaggio, "Portrait of an Unknown Woman" by Kramskoy or ordinary portrait photographs are vivid examples of this phenomenon.

Despite the mass of mystical stories that this effect is shrouded in, there is nothing unusual in it. Scientists and psychologists, thinking about how to make the “following eyes” illusion, came up with a simple formula.

The model's face should look directly at the artist.
The larger the canvas, the stronger the impression.
The emotions of the model's face matter. An indifferent expression will not arouse curiosity and fear of persecution in the observer.

With the correct arrangement of light and shadow, the portrait will acquire a three-dimensional projection, volume, and when moving, it will seem that the eyes are following the person from the picture.

11/15/2016 11/16/2016 by Vlad

An optical illusion is an impression of a visible object or phenomenon that does not correspond to reality, i.e. optical illusion. Translated from Latin, the word "illusion" means "mistake, delusion." This suggests that illusions have long been interpreted as some kind of malfunction in the visual system. Many researchers have studied the causes of their occurrence. Some visual deceptions have long been scientifically explained, while others have not yet found an explanation.

Do not take optical illusions seriously, trying to understand and solve them, it's just how our vision works. This is how the human brain processes visible light reflected from images.
Unusual shapes and combinations of these pictures make it possible to achieve a deceptive perception, as a result of which it seems that the object is moving, changing color, or an additional picture appears.

There are a lot of optical illusions, but we tried to collect the most interesting, crazy and incredible ones for you. Be careful: some of them can cause tearing, nausea and disorientation in space.

12 black dots

For starters, one of the most talked about illusions on the web is the 12 black dots. The trick is that you can't see them at the same time. The scientific explanation for this phenomenon was discovered by the German physiologist Ludimar Herman in 1870. The human eye stops seeing the whole picture due to lateral inhibition in the retina.

Impossible figures

At one time, this genre of graphics was so widespread that it even got its own name - impossibilism. Each of these figures seems quite real on paper, but simply cannot exist in the physical world.

Impossible Trident

Classic blevet- perhaps the brightest representative of optical drawings from the category of "impossible figures". No matter how hard you try, you will not be able to determine where the middle prong originates.

Another striking example is the impossible Penrose triangle.

He is in the form of the so-called "endless staircase".

And "impossible elephant" Roger Shepard.

Ames room

How the Ames room works

Illusions of movement

floating star

There are quite a few such illusions of motion, that is, static images that appear to be in motion. For example, the famous spinning circle.

Moving arrows

rays from the center

striped spirals

moving figures

These figures are moving at the same speed, but our vision tells us otherwise. In the first gif, four figures move at the same time until they are adjacent to each other. After separation, the illusion arises that they move along black and white stripes independently of each other.

After the disappearance of the zebra in the second picture, you can make sure that the movement of the yellow and blue rectangles is synchronized.

Illusions-shifters

Horse or frog

Nurse or old woman

Beauty or ugly

Pretty girls?

Flip the image

Girl/old woman

One of the most popular dual images was published in 1915 in the cartoon magazine Puck. The caption to the drawing read: "My wife and mother-in-law."

The most famous optical illusions: the old woman and vase profiles

Old people/Mexicans

Lovers/dolphins

The list of such dual pictures is endless:

Is this cat going down or going up the stairs?

In which direction is the window open?

You can change direction just by thinking about it.

Illusions of color and contrast

Unfortunately, the human eye is imperfect, and in our assessments of what we see (without noticing it ourselves) we often rely on the color environment and the brightness of the background of the object. This leads to very interesting optical illusions.

gray squares

Optical illusions of colors are one of the most popular types of optical illusion. Yes, yes, squares A and B are painted in the same color.

green spiral

There are only three colors in this photo: pink, orange and green.

Blue is just an optical illusion

Don't believe? Here's what happens when you replace pink and orange with black.

Without a distracting background, you can see that the spiral is completely green.

Is the dress white and gold or blue and black?

In fact, the dress was blue with black lace.

And here is another photo that baffled millions of users who could not decide if there was a wall in front of them or a lake.

Wall or lake? (correct answer is wall)

Optical illusions on video

Ballerina

This insane optical illusion is misleading: it is difficult to determine which leg of the figure is the supporting one and, as a result, to understand in which direction the ballerina is spinning. Even if you succeeded, while watching the video, the supporting leg can “change” and the girl seems to start to rotate in the other direction.

If you could easily fix the direction of the ballerina's movement, this indicates a rational, practical mindset. If the ballerina rotates in different directions, this means that you have a stormy, not always consistent imagination. Contrary to popular belief, this does not affect the dominance of the right or left hemisphere.

monster faces

If you look at the cross in the center for a long time, then peripheral vision will frighteningly distort the faces of celebrities.

Optical illusions in design

An optical illusion can be a spectacular tool for those who want to add zest to their home. Very often, “impossible figures” are used in design.

It seemed that the impossible triangle was doomed to remain only an illusion on paper. But no, the design studio from Valencia has immortalized it in the form of a spectacular minimalist vase.

Bookshelf inspired by the impossible trident. Designed by Norwegian designer Bjorn Blikstad.

And here is a rack inspired by one of the most famous optical illusions - parallel lines by Johann Zellner. All shelves are parallel to each other - otherwise what would be the use of such a cabinet - but even for those who have long acquired such a rack, it is difficult to get rid of the impression of slanted lines.

The same example inspired the creators of " Zellner rug».

Of interest to fans of unusual things is the chair designed by Chris Duffy. It seems that it relies solely on the front legs. But if you dare to sit on it, you will realize that the shadow cast by the chair is its main support.

mammoth and bison

In particular, this often happens when templates are involved. They are necessary for our brain to process information faster, spending less energy. But these same patterns can mislead him.

Chess board

Illusion with color

The next optical illusion is the Cafe Wall Illusion.

cafe wall

Researchers at the University of Bristol discovered this illusion in 1970 thanks to a mosaic wall in a café, which is how it got its name.

Scientists suggest that the illusion is created due to the joint action of neural mechanisms of different levels: retinal neurons and visual cortex neurons.

The arrow illusion works in a similar way: the white lines are actually parallel, although they don't appear to be. But here the brain is confused by the contrast of colors.

arrow illusion

An optical illusion can also be created using perspective, such as the checkerboard illusion.

perspective illusion

Due to the fact that the brain is familiar with the laws of perspective, it seems to you that the distant blue line is longer than the green one in the foreground. In fact, they are the same length.

The next type of optical illusions are pictures in which two images can be found.

Bouquet of violets and Napoleon's face

Here is another picture with a double image called "My wife and mother-in-law."

Wife and mother-in-law

It was coined by William Ely Hill in 1915 and published in the American satirical magazine Puck.

The brain can also complete pictures with color, as in the case of the fox illusion.

Fox illusion

If you look at the left side of the picture with the fox for a while, and then look at the right side, it will turn from white to reddish. Scientists still do not know what causes such illusions.

Here is another illusion with color. Look at the woman's face for 30 seconds and then look at the white wall.

Illusion with a woman's face

Unlike the fox illusion, in this case the brain inverts the colors - you see a projection of a face on a white background, which acts as a movie screen.

And here is a visual demonstration of how our brain processes visual information. In this incomprehensible mosaic of faces, you can easily recognize Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Bill and Hillary Clinton

The brain creates an image from the pieces of information received. Without this ability, we would not be able to drive a car or cross the road safely.

The last illusion is two colored cubes. Is the orange cube inside or outside?

cube illusion

As you can see, despite the fact that our brain does a great job with everyday tasks, to deceive it, it is enough to break the established pattern, use contrasting colors or the right perspective.

How often do you think this happens in real life?