As humans we expect our minds to work for us, not against us. When we look at something we usually take it at face value. What we are looking at is what we are meant to see. Well what happens when our mind plays tricks on us? When we see something that our minds simply don’t have the capacity to comprehend? Well that is what these 20 mind-blowing optical illusions will do to your brain. They play tricks on our minds and make us see things that aren’t really there. See if you have the brain power to understand these optical illusions.
1. The blue and green spirals are actually the same color — green. There’s no blue color in this image. The reason we are perceiving one color as two different colors is because of the other colors surrounding the stripes. Each of your eyes has six to seven million cones, which are concentrated in a central yellow spot known as the macula. These cones measure color in different wavelengths, where some of which overlap. Our brain then compares by measuring the differences in wavelengths between the colors. When certain colors are combined, the brain can’t process the data from the cones correctly and we get confused.
2. Cross your eyes, and a figure you’ll most likely recognize will appear.
3. Do the shapes look like they are floating? They’re not. Try concentrating on a single one and you’ll see nothing is moving.
4. Do you see someone looking directly at you, or the side profile of someone?
5. Look at the left end of the picture, how many prongs do you see? Now look at the right.
6. Scan the picture from left to right. Anything happening with the dots? They appear to flash but they’re not. Stare at just one and you’ll see.
7. The lines in this picture are clearly curved right? Wrong. They are actually all straight lines.
8. The top yellow line is clearly bigger than the bottom one right? Wrong. They are both the same size.
9. Focus on one of the pillars. Now focus on the empty space. What do you see?
10. Rabbit or duck?
11. How many legs does this elephant have?
12. I don’t care what anyone says, those gears are definitely moving! But really, they’re not.
13. These two squares are the same color. Don’t believe me? Put your finger over the center line.
14. You should be seeing gray squares at the intersection of the white lines.
15. These may look like a whole bunch of lines going in different directions. It is actually nine parallel lines running diagonally through the pictures.
16. Both the inner circle are actually the same size.
17. Square A and square B are actually the same color.
18. Take away the arrows at the end of the lines, and the lines are actually the same length.
19. Do you see people running down a set of stairs, or parallel lines of arrows running up and down the stairs?
20. This one is really cool. You should see two old people looking at each other, but also three separate, smaller figures.
These definitely played tricks on my mind. Some of them I figured out right away, others were a little more difficult however. Our mind does some weird things when trying to make sense of something it doesn’t understand.