Congratulations to the 2013 Best Illusion of the Year contest winners, who were announced at the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples, Florida last week!
The contest started in 2005 as a way to encourage and showcase some of the world's most ingenious and innovative optical illusions. The judging panel is made up of university professors from across the US, the UK and Australia. The contest accepts donations in support of vision science and research discoveries. You can donate by clicking here.
The concept of optical illusions first appeared in Greek architecture. The roofs on their temples were built slanted to give the illusion of upright, straight temples.
But since human beings are so clever, new illusions are developed all the time. One example is the rotating snakes illusion, which was invented by Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka in 2003. He took the peripheral drift illusion concept, which was first formally acknowledged in a scholarly journal in 1999, and threw his own spin on it for a more visually exciting experience.
Check out this quirky kitten trying to figure it out!
Optical illusions are tricky because they aren't actually related to your eye's optical performance. They affect how your brain perceives things your eyes see. The size of your brain's visual cortex determines how you perceive optical illusions, which means the effects could vary slightly from person to person, or person to cat.
This one gives you a natural hallucinogenic experience that lingers. Try it out.
