If you think you’re a genius, then spot hidden celeb in this optical illusion

Washington: The world has been amazed at the paintings since time immemorial. The Renaissance era produced mesmerizing painters like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, however, optical illusions are a class apart. It tests the inner corners of your brain. The swirls of dots represented here are compelling.

The question is how to decode the hidden celeb in the swirls of dots. It’s difficult to see, but a celeb’s portrait is hidden among the dots that make up the brain-frazzling optical illusion.

The easiest way to spot the celeb is to move away from your phone or PC. The further away you get, the clearer the famous face should become.

There are a few other tricks to help you see the obscured star – from shaking the device it’s displayed on to standing at an angle.

By following the above-mentioned process you can easily spot that the hidden celeb is none other than the greatest pop star of all time – Michael Jackson.

It’s a new take on the famous Magic Eye illusions, which used swirls of dots or lines to hide a 3D image, reported a UK-based media.

Speaking to the publication, Dr Gustav Kuhn, a psychologist and human perception expert at Goldsmiths University in London, said the visual puzzle is the result of how our brains process information.

He compared it to a similar monochrome-grid illusion that obscures an image of a panda.

“Our eyes encode vast amounts of messy sensory information, and our brain uses clever tricks to disambiguate this information to try and make sense of what it is we are looking at,” Dr Kuhn said.

“What you see is results of vast amounts of neural computation, mixed with a bit of guesswork. For example, when you stare at a bunch of trees, you can interpret this as a forest, or a tree. What you are seeing depends on which aspect of the scene you are focusing on. In the panda illusion, information is encoded at different scales, and depending on how which scale you focus on (i.e. the trees or the forest) you will either see a bunch of lines, or the bigger picture – the panda.”
Professor Fiona Macpherson, an expert at the University of Glasgow’s Illusion Index, explained why moving further from the image makes the hidden character clearer.

She told UK publication, “The panda image has a certain spatial frequency when it is a certain distance away from you. The closer the image is to you the lower the spatial frequency and the further away it is the higher the spatial frequency.”

“In short, there are more black and white lines that fall on the light-sensitive portion of the back of your eye the further the image is away from you,” added Macpherson.

Optical illusions are often just a bit of fun, but they also hold real value for scientists.

The brain puzzles help researchers shed light on the inner workings of the mind and how it reacts to its surroundings.
Dr Kuhn added that illusions are important to our understanding of the brain.

“We typically take perception for granted, and rarely think about the hard work that underpins everyday tasks, such as seeing a cup of coffee in front of you,” told Dr Kuhn.

“Visual illusions highlight errors in perception, and they provide important glimpses into the hidden neural processes that allow us to see the world around us.”

It follows the release of a spooky illusion earlier this month that makes the viewer feel as though they are tumbling into a black hole.