I was disturbed by the before faces too, so much so that I thought he was joking when he said "all agree they were perfectly normal faces". But then the after was way worse. On second time through, so long as I decided to look at the left or right face for short periods they looked normal. I suspect that some people are just more inclined to try and take in the whole scene, leading to the effect even without being told to look at the middle.
I believe that the face illusion happens because your brain is wired to make the center of vision the most important and uses the most bandwidth for that. The peripheral vision can't be focused and is used mainly for detection of movement, so our internal "video card" allocates fewer resources. In other words at a certain frame rate our vision is overloaded.
@@ianboyle1026 Okay, take frame rate out of my post and I still think I come pretty close to a simple explanation. Also are you talking about the video because I could not fine your extended comment.
@@charleshill506 My extended comment is immediately below this one on my feed. (Can't guarantee it'll stay there, I don't know what determines comments' placements.) It's under my name and begins: "OK (apologies and full credit..." so a word search might help you find it.
Whenever the next face is very different from the one before it (hairline, color, jaw shape, expression) I see a creepier face. It’s as if my brain is blending the faces. If they’re similar faces, it’s not as creepy. 🤷♀️✌️🍿
Sort of the same thing here, except the faces started blending into an average and started looking like those "gray aliens" that some think abduct people.
I too could not see the dancer spinning any way except clockwise with respect to the floor. The anatomy did not allow for it in my brain! i think maybe it was a 3D rendering with no shading and so the foreshortening is still happening and I am not able to see an arm twisted out of proportion? Anyway, it didn't work for me.
The spinning Dancer never changed direction for me at all...not even after many tries. Is there something wrong with me....hold on...no need to answer that..😅
The distortion seems to be caused by the brain interpreting the changes as motion, but overdoing that motion. Perhaps it troes to continue the motion throughout the frame even if the frame is static. Perhaps since the peripgeral vision is so low res, it can't see the difference? It is very attuned to motion, so that we can quickly look at something that catches our eye. It may also be attuned to faces to s high degree, making this illusion work particularly well with those.
OK (apologies and full credit to any other commenter who's already done this), I've just done three things: First, I covered one half of the screen to see if there was a "confusion" effect due to the two halves of the brain getting too much input. Nope. The effect was the same, as long as I focused on the cross. Then I froze the video on the first image pair and stared at the cross. No fast switching at all, just static faces. They immediately looked weird, and the weirdness seemed to be centred on the eyes, which looked bigger than natural. Then I played the video at .25 speed, to test if persistence of vision had something to do with it. It doesn't. The illusion was just as strong. But once again, I was able to see that the weirdness/grotesqueness seemed to be to do with with the eyes, which tend to look over-size. So for me at least, I think the illusion has something to do with the fixed-stare effect -- since the eyes are all in the same position throughout -- and the fact that I'm deliberately not looking at eyes that are staring at me. I'm tentatively thinking it might be a primarily psychological effect produced by the unnatural act of not reacting to someone who is looking straight at me. My brain starts to exaggerate the size/significance of the eyes in order to "persuade" me to pay attention to them. Then when I don't, the brain begins to resort to fear-producing images, which get worse the longer I ignore them.
It's because the outer part of the image doesn't stay the same so for instance the forehead changes height and width but the items that go a little wonky such as the eyes and nose and so on are pretty much dead on in the sand place every time. It's a bit like when you used to get burn in on a TV screen that because those items 'look’ like they don't change to our minds then our mind 'thinks' they haven't changed which then makes the following images appear odd. That's my theory anyway. Never seen your channel before but that was a great little video. Liked seeing the Crooked House in the background in one part of the video. Used to love going their with my parents many years ago. I'm hopeful they will somehow reinstate it one day.
I thoroughly believe it is due to persistence of vision and your brain's "effective frame rate". The reason the rate of picture switching plays such a role in the effect is that your visual cortex in your brain has a lag, or memory time frame, whichever you'd like to call it. You are still "seeing" what you WERE seeing while you are also actively seeing the new frame or image. It's the same type of sensitivity that makes a) low frame rate video and video games/animations appear obviously slow and twitchy, while at around 28 fps of stimulation (effective brain rendering rate) most people see it as fluid movement. And b) the higher frame rate displays of today, above the old standard 30fps, can cause a glitching, overly smooth or fuzzy appearance in many people because of the dissonance between the output frequency of the device and the brain's ability to process images. If your personal frame rate is let's say 10 for easy math, you may see any multiples of tens as relatively smooth and fluid, with some possible light, subtle flicker from the way the tens interact. 20 wil appear as ten to you, with the possibility of smoothing the averaging of moving images with that persistence of vision. If you have, say 20 base frame rate, then ten will look slow and choppy, and multiples of tens will have the same smoothing effect with some added because of more frames being averaged with that persistence. But now let's say you have 23 as a base rate. The display device is 30fps. Or 120. Or 240 or whatever it happens to be. The 23 into X , where X is the device's rate, isn't as smooth as any of the tens, and in fact has great depth of choppiness that can vary greatly. And how likely is it that any given person has a 30 or any multiple of ten (remember most people are around 28, and the variance isn't large, going to about 35), and when viewing devices that are typically standardized to tens, you can begin to see the idea. But then remembering also that refresh rate and fps are not always fixed in a device and can swing wildly themselves during rendering and processor use etc .. the possibility of dissonant frequency combinations between viewer and display is nearly guaranteed. And my long rant was mostly to just say that persistence of vision make some people feel dizzy or sick when viewing high end new fast displays. Just like it makes your brain see weird or grotesque mish mosh of details on that video test. 😁
If you pause the video the face will remain distorted indefinitely (until you look more directly at it). That seems to invalidate your theory. As the "new frames" pile up, the face should clarify, but it does not.
With the train tracks (I used to have that in a magic set on two pieces of card) it's very easy to know why that one works as they're just not lined up together correctly. If you draw a line straight down from one of the 'corners' of the top piece then it's not lined up with the bottom piece. This explanation was given in the Paul Daniels magic set that I had and it's absolutely correct.
In the first illusion, I wonder if our brains get confused by the fact that it’s getting two sets of images in the peripheral vision of each eye and cannot reconcile the two into a sensible image. Our brains are always trying to make sense of our perceptions, but in this case it just can’t. Maybe?
Nice collection of illusions,. That spinning dancer didn't work for me at all though. I looked away and back a bunch of times, and rewound it a couple of times, but could only ever see her going clockwise.
The mechanism underlying the Flashed Face illusion could be very similar to what happens in Charles Bonnet Syndrome. In the latter, the sufferer sees hideous faces that aren't there (among other hallucinations) because deterioration in the retina means the visual system isn't getting enough information to construct a proper image, and so starts making wild guesses. In the Flashed Face illusion, the visual system is similarly starved of information, because the images are falling on the part of the retina that has fewer receptors. That part of the retina is thus forced to try to do the job the macula would do, but just isn't up to it.
My brain hurts! Thanks for that Tez. I thoroughly enjoyed that. Especially the last one. I still don't get it so I'm just going to have to draw it out. See you next time mate! 👍👍👍👍👍
It's not an illusion. The human face actually is grotesque. However, the first thing in life that we learn to "read" is the body language of our mother's face. If we force our brain to process the data differently without any reference to the body language that we have learned we see reality for what it is.
Whats causing it is the same reason when you look at the second hand of a clock for the first time sometimes it seems to just pause,like its taking a long time to move,its called chronostasis,your brain takes i dont know a second or half a second to process a new image,so it stores a sudden change till it can compute or decide what it is,then its in flow,becaues your not looking directly at them and its going fast all your brain is doing is holding on to part of a face trying to compute it,then another comes,its still storing info,and due to the fact our brain is trained to see faces its call paredolia,delaying and just building a face,it probable wont work with anything that does not resemble a face.little experiment,try changing the video speed.
Very curious! I found it difficult to stay focused on the cross; when something flashes in the periphery your eyes naturally try to turn towards it. But I definitely saw glimpses of the illusion when you played it more slowly.
He forgot to mention the distance from the screen is quite important for the effect to work. The ideal position is about 8-10 inches away. The distortion is due to the brain automatically compensating for the “blind spot” in our vision by creating its own versions of the missing parts of the faces.
I suffer from prosopagnosia. The only thing I noticed is that, when the face is in my peripheral vision, they eyes seem much bigger. I believe it's just a trait that draws our attention to eyes in our periphery as, behind every set of eyes, there's a potential threat. You should try the same thing with images of other animals. I suspect the result would be similar. It's a natural defence mechanism.
try focusing on the standing feet only and "expect" it to point left, towards you, right, away from you (or the other way round to invert the rotation again)
I had to stop looking at the plus sign in the middle of the faces and look either right or left to verify what i was seeing. Of course the faces looked normal then.😮
Interesting. Perhaps the crossover delay in forwarding between the left and right visual fields is something close to the frame rate, so the brain receives inconsistent inputs.
I see no change or weirdness in the faces in the original submission, even really focusing on the cross and letting the edge vision "swim" a bit. I thought your version was the same, but when I focus on the cross until the faces fuzz out or blur a little, some of the smiles do look eerily large or something. Possibly the foreheads look larger or wider. It's hard to tell, since you're not really looking at them, you're looking at the cross. But I'm not seeing distortions of any disturbing degree. Especially nothing like the thumbnail. Do I need a large screen?
You got to be kidding. When looking at the cross the faces look like Chunk from The Goonies movie - non-symmetrical, distorted, and monstrous. TBF some of the faces are very peculiar anyway. The effect would be more striking if they used gorgeous male and female faces only. Then when you see monsters you know it's an illusion.
@@A-Milkdromeda-Laniakea-Hominid It doesn’t work that way for me LOL. One face has large eyes but it doesn’t look deformed, just someone w large eyes. Makes me want to know what % doesn’t see the misshapen monster stuff and why??? My eyes don’t work “normally?” My brain doesn’t work “normally?” Another rabbit hole I am now compelled to follow! I kinda wish I could see what everyone is talking about.
@@4potslite169 That is odd. Maybe it's cos they're such poorly cropped faces already? But still there's definitely a difference when you don't look directly at them. If you're curious try a different screen: if on a phone use a real monitor and vice versa.
It also works with one face and you keep your eyes focused just to the side of the face at eye level. How far from center of face can you focus to see the illusion?
If the faces illusion doesn’t work for me, what does that mean? “Magic Eye” illusions never work at all, either. One of my eyes is near sighted while the other eye is farsighted… could that be a contributing factor? I know it’s rare for eyes to be this way. I feel like I’m missing out on the fun!
Many of these illusions don’t work for me. For example, the straight lines that are supposed to look curvy, and the dancer who only ever turns clockwise for me. Also, it was immediately obvious to me that the last image included a dissected equilateral triangle. I didn’t even know what the illusion was supposed to be until you explained it. What might be making me miss out on these phenomena?
I found 8:01 compelling but not 8:24 --- perhaps because the "concave" side of 8:01 was coloured just like the convex side, thus making it indistinguishable from the convex side, but not so with 8:24. Or perhaps it was because 8:24 was viewed slightly from above rather than on the level?
What great content been made. But I wonder.......... Why is the biggest biggest biggest illusion been held outside of this great "party"??? ( just asking for a friend) hehehe
When you buy a "4k remastered edition" dvd and find out they didn't actually do higher quality scans of the film, they just shoved it through a shitty AI upscaler, this is what the faces in the background look like.
I think because you’re not focussed on one face changing to another your brain is trying to fill in the blanks. Or it could be your brain or at least, your retina, still has retained the image of the previous face and morphs it to the next. Your brain tries to make an amalgamation of broth of these blended image transitions at the same time and fails to produce it correctly.
That last one is odd. If the diagonals are equal, and they run from the corners of each parallelogram, then you should be able to rotate one into the other. But they are clearly 2x different in size. What is going on!
It seems to me like my brain is taking, for example, the eyes from the person on the left and overlaying them on the person on the right. It seems to do it randomly with either the mouth, eyes, or nose. Maybe because the peripheral vision is not as sharp the brain is filling in from left hand person what it can’t make out on the right hand person.
Perhaps people with a certain eye condition dont experience this effect. I saw no difference except the faces were out of focus when looking at the cross. I tried it with and without my glasses and saw nothing strange. I did see the green dot and the stairs. But the parallel lines made me see the opening sequence of Doctor Who 😂
I think it has a lot to do with the fact that all the eyes are lined up in each shot.. plus everyone is looking forward, no turned to one side or the other, no hats, glasses or other accessories... and while staring at the cross, your vision gets a blurred vision of everything other than the eyes... Mind you when you played the original images first time round, without the cross, I will admit a lot of them.looked pretty hideous and the cross made little difference 😂
Well even the first time, i seen some that were a bit not perfect. That means running by them without looking at them directly the ones that were off stood out still. To me, my theory. Okay you go threw that a bit.
Nah, not doing it for me. By focusing on the cross, the faces were so much in my peripheral vision that they were all just a mess, nothing really discernable at all. Even when I moved well back from my monitor, still the same.
Jesus that is horrific > I laughed hard, the brain seems to over exaggerate the eyes and mouth/teeth, but seems to ignore the nose and skin on forehead and cheeks etc, they all remind me of Republican politicians
Is his face a bit pink in colour or is the grass rather green in the same frame? I'll give you seven seconds to figure it out. The answer is YES!!! THEY ARE!!!
@@verynearlyinterestingThank you, my good man! Glad you didn't take offense, 'cause it is meant to be all in good fun! I was a bit worried that I'd gone to far, or that it was too personal. So I am relieved and very glad that you see the little bit of humour it has. I find your channel (?) more than very nearly interesting, btw, and I love the humour you add to your videos which are really rather fascinating. There you go- if you ever want to re-name your "show" (?), you've got the new name right there now. What do you say... Really Rather Fascinating, has a nice ring to it, I think. When you're ready for a little upgrading!! Haha haha Well, whatever you do, please keep the videos coming!!! I love them and I've subscribed!!!
