
At first glance the spinning girl’s silhouette above appears to be rotating clockwise, but if you check the shadow below her you can see the direction reverse. Once the spinning direction changes in your mind, she will be spinning counter-clockwise. Initially it seems hard, but stare long enough and it can be done.
Spinning Sihouette Optical Illusion — Mighty Optical Illusions
Update: According to the Herald Sun, if you see the woman spinning clockwise, then you are right-brained. If she appears to be spinning left, then you are left brained.
This is MY theory:
It’s just a shadow. You can’t really tell if the image is facing forward or backward, but since we are used to people looking at us, our first impression is that the dancer is looking at us. The dancer’s leg is moving left, stops, right, stops etc. If on the split-second your eyes saw the image, the dancer’s leg was moving left — you would think that she was spinning clockwise. If it was moving right — you would think that she was spinning counter-clockwise. From that point, your brain had already decided which direction the dancer was spinning and it would be very difficult to change your mind without looking away. It is about the exact split-second your eyes first saw the image.
How’s my theory?
When you first see the woman spinning clockwise this should work for you like it works for me. If you look at the shadow of the woman’s foot when it is at the left and blink your eyes she will change from spinning clockwise to counter-clockwise. Once she begins to spin counter-clockwise look at her foot and blink again and it should change direction back to clockwise. I have characteristics of both right and left brained so I am not quite sure which one I am.
This is a more startling illusion than the
hybrid image example at MIT at least the Einstein-Monroe one is explained by the superimposed image but this is a much more vivid one because of the AHA moment when the spin changes and then changes again as you look up from the foot area.
It is not as important for me to know why the human brain does this, as it is to understand that we have this gray matter wobbling inside our heads that we don’t really understand (and neuroscientists are at the frontiers of discovery about this as well) and so being more thoughtful about what lights up neural pathways, what activities help us to improve our intelligence and this awareness that there is some many layers to things and how we as human beings exist in this tiny visible spectrum, this blip of time and how that understanding help us to uplift our thinking to transformational wisdom rather than submerge in the inputs to our mind in a chaotic manner.
So my takeaway here is that just when you think you know what the IS is, sometimes the IS isn’t — and I recognize the difference here between how I perceive “What Is” and e.g. how Bill Clinton once questioned what “is” is.
M.
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The questoin isent what way do you see it spinning?…its what way is it really spinning?
Wow It’s intresting , I can see both clockwise and counter-clockwise without winking or looking at the shadow , you just have to concentrate a little bit. Am I center brained !!!!?
Yea…I never saw her spinning clockwise. At all. I’ve seen this about 5 times in total, and she’s still spinning counter-clockwise. I look at the shadow, blink, and still nothing. =[ Bah. Oh well.
if you put your finger on her toe and you go right and left then with me i can just make her go right left right left by putting my finger on her toeand going right left right left.
The form does twirling .…left , right, shifting… I’ll stop before she colors.…..;)
gracious…i reckon
Why does she spin faster when you just look at her head!!! If you scroll so just her head is visable she spins super fast!!!