Tease your mind with visual illusions

This is one of the Win­ners of the 2014 Best Illu­sion of The Year Con­test. Enjoy!

Expla­na­tion: When we look at two pic­tures that are phys­i­cal­ly the same, they usu­al­ly look the same. When they are dif­fer­ent, they look dif­fer­ent. Our illu­sions show the oppo­site: two images that are dif­fer­ent but look the same – those are called “metamers”; – and two images that are iden­ti­cal but look dif­fer­ent – we call those “anti-metamers.” Our main illu­sion mix­es the two: it shows three images, two of which match with a third one mis­match­ing. View­ers see one image as odd, but it’s one of the two iden­ti­cal images they see as dif­fer­ent, an illu­sion we call “false pop out.”

(© 2014 Kim­ber­ley D. Orsten and James R. Pomerantz)

More visu­al illu­sions and brain teasers here:

• Test your Brain with these 10 Visu­al Illusions
• Top 10 final­ists in the 2014 contest