EXPLANATION OF THE OPTICAL ILLUSIONS

Explanation of the optical illusion

Unfortunately, there is no precise explanation for optical illusions. In general, however, it can be said that they arise from the fact that our visual impression only arises from an interaction between the visual system and the brain.

Only a small part of the retina is responsible for clear vision. The eyes therefore involuntarily make a lot of rapid movements in order to bring objects into focus. The blurred images that arise in the meantime are involuntarily and unconsciously faded out by the brain.

There are also several feedback loops between the brain and the visual system. In the primary visual center, which is located in the back lobe of the brain, only about 10 percent of the nerve fibers that are “sent” from the eye arrive. There is a very strong concentration here. An essential preprocessing of visual impressions already takes place at this level without you even noticing it. The brain finds itself in the difficult position of having to create a visual representation of what it sees, whereby only relatively few or weak signals are available to it. Therefore, the entire process is quite a failure-prone mechanism.
The brain evaluates the information to the best of its knowledge and belief based on the experiences it has made so far. It tries to establish connections to the familiar and ultimately to construct a spatial image. Of course, mistakes are more common. Mark Changizi described this process as “looking into the future” because the brain practically evaluates information in order to then put together a picture as we would expect. This subjective image is then what we ultimately perceive.