Ambiguous Visual Illusion

by

What do you see?

Do you see a series of black shapes on a white back­ground, or do you see a white word on black back­ground? Try to see both, one at a time 🙂

This image is an exam­ple of an ambigu­ous illu­sion — a pic­ture or object that requires per­cep­tu­al switch­ing between the alter­na­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of fig­ure and ground. Our visu­al sys­tem sim­pli­fies visu­al scenes into a fore­ground fig­ure that we focus on and a ground which is every­thing else and forms the back­ground. And although you may be able to switch the fig­ure and ground back and forth to see one image or the oth­er, your eyes will not let you see both images at the same time. Our visu­al per­cep­tion is cre­at­ed by our brain’s inter­pre­ta­tion in the cere­bral cor­tex of visu­al infor­ma­tion enter­ing through the visu­al path­way.

The word in white let­ters is LIFT.

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Comments

  4. Halidom says

    I can see both but it seems to switch back and forth as I move my eyes across the picture.

  16. deedee says

    i see both but it’s a lot hard­er to just see the shapes rather than the word lift

  21. hides says

    the first few sec­onds i only saw the shapes, but after that i saw the word lift. now i can see both…switch back and forth