Are the dots moving straight or wriggling? Click on this to see: Scientists are left baffled by mind-bending animated optical illusion
- When dots move straight across the screen without colliding, the mind sees them as if they are wriggling around randomly
- But they appear steady if the dots are allowed to cross with one another
- Illusion is more obvious when there is a large number of dots
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Focus on the red cross while the dots are moving around.
You're probably seeing the dots wriggling around in different directions.
But in reality they’re moving in straight trajectories without ever colliding.
The dots in this animation are moving in random directions in straight trajectories without colliding. By focusing on the red cross the dots seem to be wriggling around
Source: Gizmodo
To convince your brain, focus on one dot without looking at the red cross and you will see it moving in a straight line.
Scientists at Keio University in Japan found that if white circles on a black field are moved in straight lines and allowed to cross, they appear to move in straight lines.
But if those lines avoided intersections, the dots appear to wriggle around instead.
In this animation dots are moving in random directions in straight trajectories, and the dots are allowed to collide with each other. When they collide, the wriggling illusion disappears
The researchers dicovered that the illusion was more obvious when there were a large number of dots on the screen.
‘The illusion was independent of the distance covered and the observer's eye movements as well as the dot types,’ they wrote in the Journal of Vision.
There is currently no explanation about why the mind sees the illusion in this way.
Another unexplained illusion is the 'grid' first first reported by German physiologist Ludimar Hermann in 1870, and simply involves a white grid on a black background.
As you move your eyes around the image, dark dots quickly appear and disappear at the intersections. However, whenever you look directly on any intersection, the dark dots vanish
As you move your eyes around the image, dark dots quickly appear and disappear at the intersections.
However, whenever you look directly on any intersection, the dark dots vanish.
For years it was widely believed that the illusion worked because of 'lateral inhibition' - the term used to describe the complex way in which the cells on the back of the retina respond to areas of black and white.
A few years ago this explanation was shown to be completely untrue, and so the explanation for the illusion remains a mystery.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2507097/Are-dots-moving-straight-wriggling-Click-Scientists-left-baffled-mind-bending-animated-optical-illusion.html#ixzz2kfADB1Nl
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