Visual Mind Games
- Posted 10.23.01
- NOVA
Like a tiny, ever-alert judge seated inside your head, your brain is constantly making decisions about evidence brought to it by way of your senses, to give you as clear an understanding as possible of what you're seeing, feeling, tasting, etc. Sometimes you can catch your brain trying to, well, make up its mind about how to present such information. Here we offer a series of optical brainteasers culled from Phantoms in the Brain, by Dr. V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee.
Launch Interactive
Challenge your brain with the well-known Necker cube and other optical brainteasers.
This feature originally appeared on the site for the NOVA program Secrets of the Mind.
Sources
Images
- (all)
- With slight modifications, the graphics and captions above were excerpted with permission from Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, by Dr. V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee (Quill/William Morrow, 1998).
Related Links
-
How Does the Brain Work?
Investigate the psychology of magic tricks, magnetic wands that treat depression, artificial intelligence, and more.
-
Magic and Autism
A magician's sleight of hand may not fool people with autism, who may benefit from learning social cues found in magic.
-
Test Your Memory
Try your hand at a simple typing exercise to see how sleep affects your memory.
You need the Flash Player plug-in to view this content.
