Optical illusions are something that many people enjoy looking at and trying to solve because it's a quest to get your brain to figure something out. After all, everyone loves a good challenge, especially when it works the muscles in your brain.
Sometimes, it takes a lot out of us to work through and solve things. These kinds of games and illusions can test people's intellect and puzzle-solving skills.
Optical illusions are images that test what we believe to be true by trying to trick our brains. The shapes, pictures, or images try to show us something that doesn't necessarily match what is in reality.
Some of them are psychological, which are caused by physical things in the eyes or the brain. Then there are cognitive illusions, which are when the brain makes assumptions based on things we are seeing with our eyes.
These illusions are when things we are seeing cannot truly exist and our brain cannot totally understand or comprehend them. Other things can distort images and reality completely—confusing our minds entirely.
"The human brain is really tuned to learning new things. Anything that is new and surprising is something we naturally like because it means that we may learn something from it," says Aude Oliva, a cognitive scientist from MIT.
Movies and TV shows tend to use optical illusions as a way to trick our brains and it works, because we cannot always make sense of things that are moving in motion so quickly.
TikTok user Carolyn Hess posted a clip of a collage at the Museum of Illusions and decided to see if anyone on TikTok would be able to solve what the illusion is.
There are different numbers in different styles and shapes, sizes, and colors. It looks like a pretty confusing math challenge. But, it's an illusion, obviously, if it's in the museum.
As the TikTok user backs away further, one can see that the numbers, shapes, and colors are there for a specific reason. The numbers and images all make up one big image.
The image is of a person, a rather famous person actually. As the TikTok user backs up, eventually seeing the full image is easier to figure out who the person is—someone who worked with numbers and math.
Gianni Sarcone, the artist, says that the man who is in the illusion is a genius. And, it's only right to carve his face out with numbers and math, seeing as he was the original mathematician.
"It is currently exhibited in many Museum of Illusions all around the world," Sarcone writes. If you happen to pop by a museum, see if you can figure it out up close and let us know who you think is in the image!
