Brain teaser: What do you see?

by

Young-old What do you see?
  • If you see an old lady, can you also see a young lady?
  • If you see a young lady, can you also see an old lady?

Both are there!

Les­son: there are fre­quent­ly dif­fer­ent, and equal­ly valid, ways to read a sit­u­a­tion. We bet­ter lis­ten to com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives and ensure con­struc­tive teamwork.

Enjoy the day.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Melissa says

    This is a fan­tas­tic eye-brain trick and no mat­ter how many times i try it, it always remains enjoy­able! What a sober­ing reminder it is, also, that our brain will deter­mine what we “see”. We must always retain an under­stand­ing that what we know is sim­ply the amal­ga­ma­tion of what our sens­es have per­ceived and the way in which our brain has orga­nized it all! Two fun things that this brings to mind…
    1) Those posters that we all used to do, where you have to stare at the poster long and hard enough until shapes emerge from the con­fus­ing back­ground. Per­haps this is more relat­ed to eye­sight and visu­al pro­cess­ing, but that’s part of the brain too!
    and
    2) A FANTASTIC book, on the pow­ers of the brain: Phan­toms in the Brain, by V.S. Ramachan­dran, M.D. Ph.D. and San­dra Blak­e­nee. A FANTASTIC read!

  2. Alvaro says

    Melis­sa, thanks for the thoughts. Yes, it is sobering.

    I read that book, and real­ly enjoyed it. Would you recommed anoth­er one by V.S. Ramachandran?

  3. freaky brown eyes says

    Try cir­cling your foot in a clock­wise motion and draw­ing a six in the air with your fin­ger. its impossible!

  4. JANICE says

    hi. i real­ly enjoy being here… learn a lot and am gonna share this to my friends!

  7. yahobahne says

    the sec­ond pic­ture inside the box is a young lady with her head turned to the left

  8. tracylynn says

    I can only see the younger lady & not the old. I have tried to see the old­er & can not. Does this mean my brain is respond­ing to the image dif­fer­ent­ly than most.? I assumed from the mes­sage with the pho­to I should see the old­er lady & the younger would be more dif­fi­cult. These are awe­some! Thankyou.

  9. coly says

    Tra­cy:
    The mandible of the young lady becomes the big nose of the old woman look­ing down, the neck­lace of the young is the mouth of the old and the hair of the young is the bushy bangs of the old. See it now?

  11. Mike Logan says

    I use a neck­er cube in my Anger Man­age­ment work­shops for court ordered folks, and I ask if you see box a (the old­er lady, for exam­ple) and I see box b (the younger lady) who is right? Sur­pris­ing­ly enough, a large num­ber of my clients get it that both per­cep­tions are accu­rate. Gen­tly bor­rowed From the book Visu­al Intelligence.

  12. Theofanis says

    I can see one young woman look­ing the screen and i can see one old lady look­ing on the left side of he screen. It’s very good

  13. Erika says

    It’s real­ly hard for me to focus on the old woman. I keep switch­ing back to the young woman. Every time I get the old woman back in focus, my mind just switch­es back to the young one.

  15. Susie says

    I tried the foot trick list­ed above. When mov­ing my RIGHT foot clock­wise I COULD NOT draw a 6 in the air with my RIGHT fin­ger, but I COULD draw a 6 with my left fin­ger. I tried the same thing with my LEFT foot with sim­i­lar results–I COULD NOT draw a 6 with my left fin­ger, but COULD with my right fin­ger. Can’t wait to try this one on my ele­men­tary stu­dents next week. I was intrigued by their dis­cus­sion about the “Which way is the bus going?” teas­er last week. They are 10–12 years old and after about 5 min­utes one child fig­ured it out.