Optical illusion - images

[classicman]

Explanation from the Doctor ...

Perception is not reality - it is perception. Reality remains reality and our perception simply attempts to represent it, but fails to do so accurately. In this case our eyes (ie retina) receive the actual image perfectly. Photoreceptors have overlapping fields of vision and these overlapping fields of raw data (i see light) travel through several levels of "processing" (ie perception). This starts in the ganglia within the retina and continues and is completed in the visual cortex and occipital lobes. For a variety of reasons this processing may actually distort the reality as is seen here. Sometimes it is merely a physiologic limitation, sometimes our brain is attempting to accomplish another goal other than the pure representation of reality and we get the situation we see here. I believe the presence of perfect squares arranged into perfect circles is the problem - our brain "wants" those squares to travel in a linear fashion, but they don't, and it creates a perceptual tension. It would be interesting to see if the phenomenon is eliminated by using small circles rather than squares