Optical Brain Tease

Really short item . . .

There are a lot of these optical illusion illustrations spread around the Web. Every now and then they become 'popular' and there are e-mails going around basically spamming people with e-mail (and clogging up the Internet) about a new Web site that someone has found with some new ones on.

With this illusion, if you look at the sides of the inner cicle then you should get the impression that the outer circle is rotating counter-clockwise around the inner circle. And if you focus on the outer circle then the inner circly will appear to rotate clockwise.

These optical illusions simply show that a lot of what we see is made up by the brain. And in the case of these 'tricky' visualisations—which have been purposely drawn to confuse the brain—the poor old brain is not quite too sure what it should be doing with what it is seeing; so it makes up stuff about what it is seeing that is not right.

If you are into these brain confusing illustrations then there are some more at this site [use Ctrl+Click to open in a new Tab].