The Best Optical Illusions

Neural Correlate has chosen this year's top optical illusions. My favorite of the top three was the second place finalist, "Color Dove Illusion" by Yuval Barkan & Hedva Spitzer of the Tel-Aviv University, Israel. Click the picture to go to the animated page.


If you stare at a small black dot as the color flashes the bird (and only the bird) turns a color that is not there. I love how our eyes are useful and entertaining all at once. They love to play tricks on our brains! These illusions were selected as the best of the entries, with the top prize going to a visual presentation of why the curve ball is so confusing visually.

About the contest: "The contest is a celebration of the ingenuity and creativity of the world’s premier visual illusion research community. Visual illusions are those perceptual experiences that do not match the physical reality. Our perception of the outside world is generated indirectly by brain mechanisms, and so all visual perception is illusory to some extent."
via Mighty Optical Illusions