Optical illusions, in short, are direct confirmation that our brains are damn lazy. He does not carefully analyze each trick picture, but interprets it on the basis of previous experience, thereby misleading us. People created optical illusions long before they deciphered the mechanism of their work. We have selected the most popular and interesting ones and explained how they work.
On a checkerboard, section A looks much darker than section B. It is noteworthy that both sections are actually exactly the same color. In RGB space, it has its own code 120-120-120, and in human language the color is called platinum-gray. Edward Adelson, professor of vision science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, created this so-called "shadow test illusion" in 1995 to demonstrate how the human visual system copes with different lighting conditions. Our brain knows that shadow surfaces are darker than usual, so without thinking about the catch, it interprets shadow surfaces as lighter than they physically appear to the eye. Thus, for us, section B is much lighter than section A.
In this geometric illusion, discovered by the German physiologist Ewald Goering in 1861, two straight and parallel lines look like they are curving. Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York believes that this is due to the human tendency to visually predict the near future. Since there is a time interval between the moment the light hits the retina and the time the brain processes the light, the human visual system compensates for the delay in the nervous system by generating an image of what will happen one tenth of a second in the future. The lines converging to a point in this case are signals that make us think that we are moving forward, as if we are passing through a doorway, which is a pair of vertical lines. Therefore, it seems to us that the lines are bent,as our brain rushes things a little.
One end of the horizontal stripe in the image appears darker than the other, going from light gray to dark gray in the opposite direction to the background. Yes, you guessed it, the brain is fooling us. It is worth placing that same gray stripe on a solid background, and you will see that it is actually a solid color.
The so-called "simultaneous contrast illusion" is similar to the illusion of a shadow on a chessboard. The brain interprets the two ends of the strip as being under different lighting, and concludes that the left end of the strip is a light gray object in low light, and the right end looks like a darker object because it is well lit.
Promotional video:
Trust me, nothing is moving in this image. There is still no scientific explanation for the phenomenon of a moving illusion. Some scientists believe that this is due to continuous "shake" of the eyes: involuntary eye movements create the illusion of movement of objects on which you are focused. Others are convinced that when you look around an image, the motion detectors in your brain get confused due to dynamic changes in neurons and think that you are actually seeing movement.
In the Ponzo illusion, two horizontal lines of the same size appear to be different. The top horizontal line looks longer because we interpret the converging "rails" in linear perspective as parallel lines going into the distance. Our brain is used to thinking that the further an object is from us, the smaller it should become. As a result - another mistake in perception, because the horizontal lines are exactly the same.
Sasha Epstein
