Optical illusions and how the brain tricks us

The first thing we teach in our superlearning classes is brain trickery. We trust our brains without questions and do not suspect them to lie. However, when trying to recreate a whole article from memory we typically start from ~20% retention! In fact we loose much more than we get, unless we train our observation skills. By looking into optical illusions we learn many of the brain’s trickeries:

1. The brain is extremely good at finding patterns. If fact the brain creates patterns where there are none. So we can use it: create patterns and templates whenever we want and the brain will handle them.

2. The brain is innovation-focused. It focuses on the new information and tries to disregard the old information. So when we read we try to give more emphasis on new data, yet we try to check that we are not making up the “old” data where there is none… In fact this is such a strong brain quality, that after years of training I still cannot fully escape it…

3. Adaptation. The brain interprets details based on the context. By changing the context the details will be interpreted differently! This is very important when trying to remember imaginary landscapes or cartoons. The “mood” of the scenery allows to distinguish otherwise very similar markers.

4. Perspective. The brain places the objects one with respect to another. By setting an object into background, the brain can be forced to follow proper size ratios. This is important when trying to remember numbers.

There are many more brain tricks encoded in optical illusions. Moreover the optical illusions develop the visualization skills: by trying to decode the illusion we learn to activate objects in our imagination, enabling complex 3D manipulations of markers (middle level visualization).

We will try to provide several optical illusions in our resources. In the meanwhile try to find illusions of your own and send the best finds to [email protected].