Optical Illusions

Optical Illusions

Optical illusions occur when your perception of a visual image presented to your brain differs from the object in reality. This occurs because your brain tries to guess based on your previous experience in order to process the information faster. It is a shortcut that allows your brain to process complex information at lightning fast speeds because it is filling in information as well as processing making it very efficient. This is why you see patterns in random dots or you see clouds form a certain shape. Unfortunately this technique isn’t fault free. Your brain often perceives something that isn’t actually there or you see it distorted because certain things have been wired into your brain. Things such as compensating for shadows or distance. Some very famous illusions are: the Ponzo illusion, the Kanisza square illusion, the gray square illusion, Ebbinghaus illusion, and the revolving circles illusion.

The Ponzo illusion shows 2 lines relative to a railway track. The two lines are actually the same length but your brain sees the image as three dimensional so the top one looks longer. This is caused by your brain trying to compensate for distance. This illusion was first demonstrated by an Italian psychologist named Mario Ponzo in 1913. Another illusion that is similar to this one is the Ebbinghaus illusion. It shows two circles exactly the same size but one is surrounded by small circles while the other is surrounded by large ones. The one surrounded by small blue circles looks bigger than the one surrounded by large blue circles because we see the size of each orange circle relative to the circles around it. Another possible reason is that the blue circles on the left