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Latest Viral Optical Illusion Has You Shaking Your Head To See Hidden Image

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Stop looking, there's nothing hidden in this image. It's just high-contrast vertical bars. Social Media Hub/Shutterstock

The latest optical illusion to have people shaking their heads requires, well, a literal shake of the head to see. 

The optical illusion made Internet rounds after a post on Twitter by nanotech engineer Dr Michelle Dickinson on January 9, 2019. 

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“You can only see this optical illusion if you shake your head (I’m serious),” Dickinson wrote on Twitter.  

Really, try it!

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Spoiler alert: Lurking within the drab box of vertical stripes is another Internet favorite – a cat.

After some searching, IFLScience found another example, albeit slightly less obvious as to who exactly it is.

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“Someone is hidden,” wrote Akiyoshi Kitaoka, an experimental psychologist who both studies and makes visual illusions.

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Here is another one.

Why does this happen? Well, it’s possible that the high contrast between the black and white lines is causing our perception to overlook the mild mid-tones in the white spaces. Our visual system often responds much stronger to sharp contrasts than to gradual changes. 

Optical illusions are a beautiful example of how our visual system is fallible. Although we like to think that what we see with our two eyes is reality, it is, in fact, a construct of incoming messages from our environment, sorted by our visual system for our brain to interpret. It is not a flawless, biological system. 

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For further clarification on the illusion, IFLScience has reached out to neuroscientists for comment. Watch this space!

If you don’t feel like vigorously shaking your head in front of a co-worker, moving your eyes from side to side works too, as does going a tad cross-eyed. 

But really, it’s 2019 – shake away!

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