A MADDENING optical illusion has helped provide key insight into how our brains process reality.
There is a misstep somewhere between when the light reaches our eyes and when our brain computes what we see.
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Concentrate on the black dot on the left of the screen.
Though our attention is directed at the black dot, it’s impossible not to notice the spinning, multi-colored blip moving on a diagonal line.
But if you trace the spinning blip, you’ll see it’s moving in a vertical, straight line.
“It’s really important to understand we’re not seeing reality,” Dartmouth College research professor Patrick Cavanagh told Vox.
“We’re seeing a story that’s being created for us.”
Advanced neuroscience technology and controlled experiments led Cavanagh and his team in search of finding out where our understanding of reality diverges from its true appearance.
Cavanagh’s experiment used the optical illusion above and a duplicate, except for in the second illusion, the spinning dot actually did move diagonally.
They confirmed that your visual system can tell the difference between the two – it’s not that your eyeballs get tricked, your brain does.
“There’s a whole world of visual analysis and computation and prediction that is happening outside of the visual system, happening in the frontal lobes,” Cavanagh told Vox.
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The frontal lobes decode the impulses sent by the eyes and attempt to make sense of it – in doing so, accuracy is sacrificed for speed when it comes to small details or distortions.
The brain will count on past experiences to create an understanding that’s based on what something should look like.
Sometimes, we’re left with a wrongful interpretation of the physical world which creates an optical illusion.
Fortunately, optical illusions are mostly examples of fun art rather than a challenge in basic survival because the brain is normally quite accurate in computing visuals.
If it weren’t, many of our interactions with the physical world could be based on wrongful interpretations of what is actually there.
