Marilyn Monroe Visual Illusion : Omni Brain

The Homunculus

The Omnibrain is a psychology graduate student at an online university. He hopes that the three weeks and $29.95 that he is spending on his Ph.D. will get him a job at a Tier 1 research university. Do online universities have postdocs? Ok...just kidding, The Omnibrain is a real graduate student at a real school somewhere in the continental United States - or maybe Europe.

Search

Glial Cells

Access Omni Brain mobile here.

Access Omni Brain email here.

Axons

View blog authority

« What do Senators, Cell Phones and Passengers all have in common? | Main | Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation At Home. »

Marilyn Monroe Visual Illusion

Category: Art • Psychology
Posted on: May 22, 2007 11:43 AM, by The Omnibrain

Since the whole internet seems to be especially preoccupied with visual illusions in the last couple days, here's another one:

If you don't see it ... start moving back from your monitor.

Share this: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/41147

Comments

Or, if you're as myopic as I, just take off your glasses.

Posted by: Scott Simmons | May 22, 2007 1:16 PM

It looks like a zombie Marilyn Monroe, with the weird eyes.

Posted by: Chris | May 22, 2007 1:57 PM

I don't see how this is an illusion. The average pixel intensities form the picture, so of course you can see it from a distance, when your eyes blur the image. This is easy to verify by blurring the image with an image processor. Ten pixel wide Gaussian blur in Gimp produces a faint gray image of Marilyn, with no trace of the pattern.

Posted by: Flaky | May 22, 2007 4:10 PM

"An optical illusion is always characterized by visually perceived images that, at least in common sense terms, are deceptive or misleading. Therefore, the information gathered by the eye is processed by the brain to give, on the face of it, a percept that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source. A conventional assumption is that there are physiological illusions that occur naturally and cognitive illusions that can be demonstrated by specific visual tricks that say something more basic about how human perceptual systems work."
This is an illusion...

Posted by: Yourmom | May 22, 2007 4:40 PM

What is really cool is that for us, glass wearers, you can see Marilyn with your glasses off, and the image remains for a second after wearing the glasses again, slowly fading away; as if the brain retained the information momentarily, and then reset to the actual information sent by the eyes.

Posted by: Sal | May 22, 2007 8:52 PM

Yourmom - in that case, isn't everything on your computer monitor (or T.V. or in newspapers etc.) an illusion, since it's all composed of tiny pixels? Actually, I suppose that technically they are illusions - but low res images aren't what I think of when I hear "optical illusion."

Posted by: Fatboy | May 25, 2007 6:01 PM

TERRIBLE !!

Regardez moi ca!
Ils mettent aux encheres les medicaments de Marilyn !
Les Fioles de Marilyn

Honteux !

Posted by: Carl | August 2, 2007 3:02 PM