Optical illusions are older than you think. The first optical illusions date back to 20,000 BC and took the form of cave sculptings. Nowadays they are found all over the place – on screens, in books ...

Five years ago we published an optical illusion that millions of you were completely bamboozled by, and today I've found a brand-new version of that illusion. Of course, I'm referring to the rotating ...

Optical illusions are like little puzzles for our brains—they challenge us to see beyond the obvious. Today, we have an ...

Puzzle lovers are frazzling their noodles over this physics-defying optical illusion, in which stationery cubes appear to be spinning. The trick first went viral on Twitter in 2020 — whereupon it ...

The Best Illusion of the Year contest offers researchers, and participants, an opportunity to explore the gaps and limits of human perception. By Katrina Miller Take a look at this video of a waiting ...

We trust our brains to do a lot. From remembering birthdays to making sure you never forget an embarrassing moment that happened years ago, we can’t avoid what it chooses to focus on — and what it ...

How optical illusions work has been long-debated among scientists and philosophers, who wonder whether these illusions stem from neural processing in the eye or involve higher-level cognitive ...

You look at an image of a black circle on a grid of circular dots. It resembles a hole burned into a piece of white mesh material, although it’s actually a flat, stationary image on a screen or piece ...

Martin Doherty received funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust who partially supported this work. He continues to receive funding from the Leverhulme Trust. Radoslaw Wincza does not work ...

Optical illusions, like the figure-ground type, challenge our perception. A new illusion reveals hidden shapes: an elephant or trees. Spotting the elephant suggests a grounded, resilient personality, ...