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    Video optical illusion wins by a head

    You like your eyes, right?  We certainly like ours.  Most of the time they work awfully well -- despite a massive design flaw that any first-year engineering student would have caught.

    It's called the punctum caecum, an area at the back of the eye that the optic nerve passes through, obscuring the light-sensitive photoreceptor cells that make vision possible.

    That blind spot also makes an awesome optical illusion possible. Richard Wiseman, who runs the Quirkology video channel on Youtube, has concocted a particularly striking demonstration of the human blind spot -- by making his own head disappear! Weirder yet, he's able to pass a black bar up and down within the blindspot and it still seems visible, because the human brain is capable of reconstructing such simple objects and filling in the gaps.

    See -- or don't see -- for yourself:

    How does it work? Because our eye is wired 'backwards' -- the optic nerves resting on top of the photoreceptors -- there's no way for the blind spot to be populated with light-detecting cells.  It's pretty particular to mammals; in octopus eyeballs, for example, the photoreceptors sit on top of the optic nerve, negating the blind spot. We humans just have to make do the best we can with this gaping hole in our vision.

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    • I Forgot To Take My Meds  •  1 month 3 days ago
      I wonder how many people actually put their hand up to their right eye
      instead of just closing it.
    • LL  •  Las Vegas, Nevada  •  1 month 3 days ago
      I'm Blind :'(
    • Eric  •  23 days ago
      SORCERER!!!
    • Ty And Irah  •  Norfolk, Virginia  •  1 month 3 days ago
      don't discredit the video because you're doing it wrong.
    • JoshuaS  •  Minneapolis, Minnesota  •  1 month 2 days ago
      What you dont see at all is that the X is actually balanced on Snooki's head because she's even oranger than this guy.
    • Andrea  •  Los Angeles, California  •  1 month 2 days ago
      Are you a wizard?
    • Rob  •  Yreka, California  •  1 month 3 days ago
      All I saw was a crow sledding down a roof.
    • Maycee Kabanek  •  19 days ago
      AMAZING...... grace. nope didnt work.
    • Aleck  •  Manila, Philippines  •  1 month 2 days ago
      IT WORKED FOR ME TOO! HEHEHHEHE
    • Sandi  •  Orlando, Florida  •  1 month 3 days ago
      Ok, I'm freaked out! I did it exactly as instructed with full screen, leaning back against the chair, with my glasses on, left eye fixed on the X and moved slowly towards the screen. His head did not disappear. I did it again; I could still see his head. I took my glasses off and did it again. I COULD STILL SEE HIS HEAD AND MY NOSE WAS PRACTICALLY TOUCHING THE SCREEN! Am I some kind of mutant sea creature? Or what???
    • oaklandron  •  Santa Clara, California  •  1 month 2 days ago
      Wow, if I open both eyes and close the browser, I actually get some work done!
    • Thomas P  •  New Braunfels, Texas  •  1 month 2 days ago
      Anybody who didn't experience the illusion was too close to the monitor. In full screen mode I had to be just over 3 feet away.
    • Angie Barbee  •  Columbia, South Carolina  •  24 days ago
      Nothing disappeared!
    • TexasMa  •  1 month 2 days ago
      Very neat!
    • Joshua  •  Gainesville, Florida  •  1 month 2 days ago
      wanna know what's cool about it? learning how your body works, because when it comes down to it; call of duty just doesn't give you enough training, to be tactical.
      *burns more reefer*
    • Kangakeeper  •  Gainesville, Florida  •  1 month 6 days ago
      It works, you just have to use your peripheral vision. If you move your eye away from the "X" to focus on the missing head it instantly reappears. I have seen this done using a black dot on a piece of paper in an illusion magazine, which baffles me that the black bar stays intact. It's good to keep in mind that our brains can make up things, we may not always see what we think we see ;)
    • TheDeprogrammer  •  1 month 3 days ago
      TOO BAD THIS ANALYSIS IS MISSING A VERY IMPORTANT UNDERSTANDING.The fact is,we cannot rely on our SENSES ALONE! Our senses LIE to us,thus we must seek instrumentation whereby we further OUR knowledge in matters NOT seen with the simplistic tools loaded into the human at birth.Those simple instruments,ie..eyes,ears, require that we must therefore seek out and "grow" these basic senses to get to the root of the matters baffling our senses into believing the "lie" we're fooled into thinking is truth.This is similar to trying to figure out what's going on in Washington by relying on the news media and our lying politicians.There is a real video demonstration of these sense handicaps at larouchepac called "The Sense of Self - A Dialogue" that puts this in it's proper perspective. larouchepac
    • ChoiPinoi!  •  Stockton, California  •  1 month 6 days ago
      I saw him start to grow a full head of hair!
    • Sparky  •  1 month 3 days ago
      The people who say is does not work may just as well say "I don't follow instructions."
    • esty  •  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  •  28 days ago
      Cool!
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