Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV
It seems like it would be hard to miss the face of an actress morphing into another. But a new animation by psychologist Sebastiaan Math?t from VU University in Amsterdam shows that Natalie Portman can turn into Leighton Meester right before your eyes and you won't notice when there's motion in the scene.
In the first clip, fix your eyes on the cross in the centre of the video. As the changing faces rotate, you probably won't notice that they're morphing. But when they stop turning, the transformation becomes apparent. A second example shows that the faces themselves don't need to move to trick your brain. As you stare at a green dot in the centre, a rapidly-changing background makes you blind to the shifting face. When the motion stops, the creepy metamorphosis is obvious once again.
The illusion is a version of a novel brain trick, devised last year by Jordan Suchow and George Alvarez from Harvard University, which won first place at the Best Illusion of the Year contest. It occurs due to a phenomenon called change blindness, where you can completely miss an obvious change when looking at a busy scene. When nothing much is happening, your visual system is more sensitive to change, but as the action increases, a transformation needs to be more dramatic to be detected. "In a sense, we protect ourselves from being overwhelmed by too much change," says Math?t.
If you enjoyed this post, check out our previous Friday Illusions, including another morphing face effect and tricky stripes that create a stepping motion.
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