#16. Visual Perception Brain Teaser

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QUESTION: Is the inner shape a real circle?

visual circle brain teaser

Hint:
Some­times extra­ne­ous infor­ma­tion around your tar­get can dis­tort your view. Try cov­er­ing the lines with a piece of card to remove some of the inter­fer­ing information.

Brain func­tions involved:
Here you are exer­cis­ing your visu­al per­cep­tion and deci­sion-mak­ing skills. The visu­al cor­tex in your occip­i­tal lobes process­es visu­al input from your eyes. Not only is the occip­i­tal lobe main­ly respon­si­ble for visu­al recep­tion, it also con­tains asso­ci­a­tion areas that help in the visu­al recog­ni­tion of shapes and col­ors. The prob­lem solv­ing, selec­tive atten­tion, and exec­u­tive func­tions used in this exer­cise are han­dled by the ante­ri­or por­tion of the frontal lobes.

ANSWER:
Believe it or not, both shapes are per­fect circles.

Next brain teas­er in Sharp­Brains’ top 25 series:

  • #17. Less obvi­ous than it may appear

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Randy says

    Ok! I final­ly got one. I could see the cir­cle with­in the cir­cle. Then I tried to com­pli­cate it by look­ing for a math­mat­i­cal solution.

  3. Mitch says

    I could see past the lines and see the cir­cle as it would appear on its own — a per­fect circle.

  6. yahobahne says

    I see two cir­cles although por­tions of the round­ed lines are bro­ken. I don’t get it.

  7. Alvaro says

    That’s good: they are 2 full cir­cles. The inte­ri­or one may look like an oval giv­en its posi­tion­ing-this is a visu­al illusion.

  8. yahobahne says

    Well Alvaro, my visu­al illu­sion only allows me to see the cir­cles. I tried to look for the oval, but could­nt find it. Thxs

  10. Nevers says

    if you look at the cen­ter of the out­er cir­cle then you can see that the inner cir­cle is not per­fect. periph­er­als everybody.

  14. catiana271 says

    I thought it was a per­fect cir­cle. When I first looked at it, I thought it was­n’t. When they asked me to see if it was, I looked clos­er and saw that it was.