Gallery: These Optical Illusions Trick Your Brain With Science
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The combination of patterns and colors trick your brain into thinking this still psychedelic swirl is actually moving.
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Your eyes are constantly scanning an image, "like a twitchy digital camera continually autofocusing and adjusting the eye’s lens," Gifford [writes in the Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2014/nov/17/best-optical-illusions-ever-clive-gifford-eye-benders). This is at least partly responsible for illusions that appear to move, like these wheels.
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Images like this elephant, cheekily titled "L'egs-istential Quandary," mess with the brain's skill at detecting patterns and filling visual gaps.
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In order to explain how illusions work, Gifford provides a primer on the brain's regions.
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Each orange circle is the same size, but the blue circles trick the part of your brain that measures perspective and scale.
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The pink and red squares are actually the exact same color. The colored squares surrounding the "pink" and "red" squares your brain into seeing them as different.
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Count the number of colors on this cube. See seven? Wrong. The central orange square on the front, and the central brown square on the top are actually the same color.
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This zen image tricks your brain's pattern-seeking bias to evoke leaves blowing in a breeze.
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The offset blue boxes trick your brain into seeing convergent red lines. In fact, all the lines are parallel.
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The Herman Grid is one of the most famous optical illusions. In theory, it works because it tricks the neural process that helps us tell different colors apart.
