As a kid, I was always terrible with the whole "Magic Eye" drawing thing. I used to sit at the little kiosk in the mall, guessing wrong answers until I drew a crowd. Once I couldn't hear my guesses over the laughter, I ran away to cry under the dress rack in Dillard's.
Maybe that's why I'm so pleased this Motion-Induced Blindness optical illusion works on me. While staring at the center dot, the three other points will simply disappear at different intervals before your eyes.
It happens because of an advanced version of what's known as the Troxler effect, wherein when one fixates on a single point, the other stimulus points in your peripheral vision disappear entirely. Adaptive neurons discard the outside visual stimuli as unimportant. It's exacerbated by continuous motion, like in the background of this puzzle.
At least, I hope it's Troxler effect. It could be moonshine blindness -- my doctor's been telling me to get off the stuff for years. I don't care about that "Johns Hopkins Medical School" piece of paper on the wall. What the hell does he know?
Motion Induced Blindness (Michael’s Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena)
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