Thursday, May 24, 2012

This Will Probably Blow Your Mind

Stare the cross in the center of these two images, and see what happens to the otherwise pretty faces you know and love:


Researchers have dubbed it "Flashed Face Distortion Effect." The working theory is that by playing these images at the same size and orientation next to each other forces our brain to make multiple comparisons between the two, as our brains are wont to do in such a situation.

But apparently by making these comparisons, something in our brain starts to greatly distort the differences until the faces becomes incredibly distorted. To me, the trippiest thing about it is how instant the effect is; if you take your eyes off the middle and look at just one of the images, they instantly become normal again. But as soon as you look back at that center cross, they go right back to crazy as all get out.

Were I in a clever mood, or at least not fried from constant dissertation writing, I would say something about how this demonstrates we must always challenge our assumptions and perceptions of even the most simple things. Except I'd say it in some really profound way that connects this to major world issues. So...think about those kind of things for awhile and then pretend I wrote about them.

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