You can make the train change direction with the power of your Jedi mind … and as Yoda teaches us, you can get better at it with practice. Perception always involves going beyond the evidence of the senses. In this case, the evidence is relatively sparse, such that...
This one freaks a lot of people out. Every time you switch from looking at the red dot to the yellow, or vice versa, both wheels start spinning in the opposite direction. The illusion exploits differences in the way we interpret motion in the center of the visual...
This looks like two photos of the same road, taken from different angles. But it’s actually just the same photo twice. Apparently, the visual system treats the image as if it were a single photo of two separate roads. The outlines of the two roads are parallel to one...
Believe it or not, the horizontal lines are all perfectly parallel. To prove this to yourself, just squint at the image or look at it from the side. Notice that, even after you’re completely convinced that the lines are parallel, the illusion continues to work....
This one’s a variation on the Munker Illusion, created by David Novick. The circles in the image are all the same color. The only thing that differs is the color of the lines around them. The illusion is a vivid demonstration of the fact that we don’t directly...