Optical Illusions

I recently thought I’d post some things that can keep a brain occupied for quite a bit. At a point in time, I was lead to believe that such illusions actually test to see if you’re “left brained or right brained.” All that is just nonsense talk. Both sides of your brain are very much interconnected. So how we decide to interpret what we see if strictly based on how well we’ve trained our sense of sight. But don’t just take my word for it, see for yourself.

The picture above shows a dancer turning. Which way though? I see it mainly as clockwise, however I can easily get her to switch direction by blinking relatively quickly. And, I also noticed that if I look at this image without focusing (using my peripheral vision), that the turn isn’t much of a full circle, its actually half a turn and then the direction changes. But then again, no one can really say what is really going on.

The reason is that when we look at this image, our brain tries to extrapolate the next move and instead of seeing a 2D image which flips back and forth between clockwise and counter-clockwise direction, it continues to extrapolate a single direction. The brain recognizes 3D more than 2D motion.

I just thought this was pretty interesting. Sure some portion of your right/left brain may be stronger, and it helps us determine things such as whether you’re left handed or right handed. But this picture will tell you nothing about whether you’re left of right brained. Sorry for the disappointment. Sigh.