Friday Illusion: Control this animation with your mind

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV

It's the closest any of us are likely to get to telekinesis. New animations created by Stuart Anstis from the University of California, San Diego, are showing how changing your gaze can alter the direction in which objects are moving.

If you watch this video normally, the moving circles in the first animation rotate while the shifting dots in the second clip follow a horizontal path. But if you look away and watch the movie out of the corner of your eye, the direction of motion will appear to change. In both cases, the moving objects seem to follow the direction of the background stripes.

The illusion proves that we perceive motion very differently when it's in the periphery compared with when it's picked up by the fovea, a tiny area at the back of the eye responsible for central vision. Looking at a scene directly results in the sharpest vision, whereas our peripheral vision is good at picking up motion but poor at making out the details of shapes. "That's why when you wave at someone in a crowded airport, your peripheral motion detectors pick up the motion and an eye movement steers the target onto the fovea for more detailed analysis," says Anstis.

The animation was a finalist in the 2012 Best Illusion of the Year Contest and was presented earlier this month at the event gala in Naples, Florida.

If you enjoyed this post, see how you can bend a shape with your mind?or check out our previous Friday Illusion videos.

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