Vision and Illusion


(YouTube link)

The structure of your individual brain has a lot to do with how you perceive optical illusions. Researchers at University College London asked subjects how they perceived illusions of size such as the one used in this video, and then measured the size of each subject's visual cortex -the amount of brain matter devoted to processing vision.

The researchers then took MRIs of the subjects' brains. What they discovered astonished them - there was an almost perfect link between the size of somebody's visual cortex was and how much the optical illusion affected them. The smaller the visual cortex, the more a person was taken in by the optical illusion. Those with the largest visual cortices were also those most able to see the circles' true sizes.

Read more, and see the different illusions used, at io9. Link -Thanks, Greg Ross!


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As Jack said, the "rear" sphere (darker) is a bit larger than the lighter sphere, and when the lighter sphere is placed on top of the darker sphere, a significant portion of the bottom of the sphere is left uncovered.
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@Tom2394587: No what, they've discovered is a little bit about how our brains process the perspective, or the illusion (in the other example.
Also What I'd like to know is what this means for those people who still see the illusion but are not fooled by them, this is often the case with illusions with me
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