Cool Waste Of Time - Brain Toys To Warp Your Mind!

by , 12:00 PM EDT, July 29th, 2003

Stare deeply into the image, ...deeply, ... deeply. You are feeling sleepy, ...sleepy. Your eyes are getting heavy. You are now hypnotized.

Even if you're not sleepy, we found an image that is enough to at least get you dizzy. We are talking about a series of still images that your brain will insist are moving. If you are unsure, pull up some of the images individually, and you'll see that most of them are JPEG images, which can not have animation. The site hosting the images is in Japanese, but you don't need words to appreciate the weird and funky images there. Accordingly, the site definitely qualifies for this installment of A Cool Waste of Time.

Digging around, we found the home page for that image, which should twist your brain even more. Cool, huh?

How does it work? For that we go to the print world and Discover Magazine, volume 24 (the May issue), and look up that month's NeuroQuest titled 'Round and round', by Eric Haseltine. There we learn that the weirdness is called the Pinna-Brelstaff Illusion, and is caused by your brain over-booking neurons to perform certain tasks.

For most of the images, we found that when looking at specific sections of that image, the rest of the image would appear to move. For others, the entire image appears to be moving no matter where you look. Check out the top image on the second link (dated 2003/7/3) at the top of the main page for such an example. Again, though the entire image appears to twist and move, if you concentrate on one of the sections, you will see that it is, in fact, still.

Whatever the cause or the reason these images are funky.

Check out the site to find the images, and make sure you check out all the links at the top of that page (the ones with the dates on them), as they also contain many more Pinna-Brelstaff Illusions. Again, all the information and links are in Japanese, so anyone wanting to offer some translation services is encouraged to do so.

We will count to 3 and upon the count of 3 you will awaken refreshed, but you will have an urge to quack and proclaim in a loud voice, "I am a duck!"

1,...2,...3!

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Do you have a Cool Waste of Time you found on the Internet? Tell Vern Seward all about it, and he's pass it around...

Brain Toys