The beauty of the human mind

Optical illusions in everyday life!

I have certain things I love doing, one of them is fooling my own brain. Weird huh? I love looking at optical illusions, trying to figure out why my brain processes things the way it does. Last year when I moved to a new room I shared with other students, I had the choice of either taking a bus that was less frequent and not walk at all or take a bus that is more frequent and walk for 10min. And since I wasn't used to my new place yet, I needed referral points like I knew which stop to get off at because I'd count the number of stops from the main intersection, and I'd also look for the supermarket that was beside my house in order to make sure I was going in the right direction. One time I got off the bus and it was kind of blurry, I think it was snowing heavily and I panicked for a moment because I didn't recognize the supermarket sign. I really thought I didn't know where I was for a fraction of a second ! Its amazing how the brain works, when the brain relies solely on its perception without putting any active thoughts we get fooled! Some of my favorite optical illusions are Ames room (you've probably seen that one, its two girls in a weirdly shaped room and one girl looks like a giant and yet they are the same size), the moon illusion (I still haven't found the answer to that one yet, apparently the moon looks bigger when its lower in the horizon and smaller when its higher up! Yet its the exact same size if you take a picture of it!) and the figures of the women (where you have to determine how old the woman you see is).... I find it so fascinating ! And even after the explanations, the brain still refuses to see the logic of the illusion! In order to check out more illusions check out this illusion gallery from the university of Massachusetts: http://dragon.uml.edu/psych/index.html

posted by Suzy @ 9:15 AM