Optical illusions.Black magic or a way to expand your brain?

Who knows, but what we do know is that if you want to see people frustrated and then exhilarated, it's the best way to go about. We've pulled together nine optical illusions that will either fry your brain or give you a headache.

Don't come back to us if your retinas detach.

 

9. "The Rotating Face Mask"

Apparently, people with schizophrenia are able to see this illusion straight away and aren't fooled by it. According to a study done by neurology students in Germany and the UK, people with schizophrenia are more capable of disconnecting "what their eyes and what their brain thinks it's seeing."

 

8. There are 16 circles in this image. Can you see them?

 

7. This picture isn't moving - your mind thinks it is

 

The process is called static motion, and yes, it's really confusing.

 

6. The Ebbinghaus Illusion

Do the two orange dots look like they're different sizes? Wrong. They're exactly the same size. There's an entire Wikipedia article on the whole thing, but apparently children can see the sizes as similar more easily than adults.

 

5. Checker Shadow Illusion

The A tile and the B tile are the same colour. If you don't believe us, go ahead and open this in Photoshop or any image editing program and use the colour-checker tool to see. In fact, if you draw a line between the two squares, it becomes even clearer.

 

4. The Impossible Trident

Also known as the Devil's Tuning Fork, or the less-threatening Blivet, this optical illusion is what known's as an impossible object. Although MC Escher didn't create the design, he used them quite regularly in his work.

 

3. The Orbison Illusion

The red square you see in the middle of this image is a perfect square. However, when the shape is placed over radial lines, it looks warped and misshapen. 

 

2. My Wife And Mother-In-Law

One of the first popular optical illusions, you can see two distinct images in this one image. One is an old lady looking down, and the other is a young woman looking away. If you focus on the ears of the young woman, you can start to make out the shape of the old lady.

 

1. The Lilac Chaser

You've almost certainly seen this one before. You'll either see some kind of green dot circling the pink ones, or if you focus in on the square, all the other dots fade. That particular process is called Troxler's fading, and it's to do with visual perception and peripheral vision.