[No, not THAT Blindspot. Though friend of the blog David Kwong works on that show…]

Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today I’d like to return to the subject of optical illusions.

[Image courtesy of Geekologie.]

We’ve discussed optical illusions many times in the past, covering everything from the Necker Cube to the Dress, but today’s illusion is a little bit different.

The 12-dot optical illusion pictured above, also known as a Hermann grid, has been making the rounds lately, and although many puzzlers have accused people of using a video or an animated gif instead of a simple picture, that’s simply not true.

This is a static picture, but our eyes are not designed to capture 12 dots in view at once, so the others vanish when you focus on one dot in particular.

And the folks at ASAP Science have an explanation for this phenomenon! As it turns out, this illusion and others involve both how your brain processes visual information and how the natural structure of your eye creates a blind spot that some optical illusions exploit.

Check out the full explanation here:

So next time someone shares one of these optical illusions, you’ll be ready to explain how they work and show off your puzzly knowledge.

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