Spinning which way

But your left brain plays a crucial role in creativity as well. Seeing logical associations between seemingly unrelated things is a hallmark of creativity. And the critical-thinking skills necessary to tell a good idea from a bad one are pretty important too. So… tell us which way your dancer spins for you in the comments. Want to know how this optical illusion works?

The initial article also misses on its other prediction — namely, that the dancer will spin counter-clockwise for most people. In fact, in our data only 30 percent of the people saw her spinning counter-clockwise when they first looked. Again, this is consistent with the original author mixing up clockwise and counter-clockwise. As it turns out, I should have asked our commenters to list their genders as well. In most cases, we could make an informed guess of gender based on names.

From a cursory search of the Internet, it seems like this result also contradicts what we would expect. I often joke about how the information provided by someone who is incredibly terrible at predicting the future i. I think my brain perceived the light source to be behind the dancer, producing the dark silhouette. This combined with the shadow of the dancer on degrees of rotation gives me a clockwise spin.

I can't get her to go the other direction with all the tricks people have posted. And I am in finance, so I agree with Steven's suggestion that the author got the column descriptions mixed up. One problem I didn't see in a quick scan of the comments: Clockwise is arbitrary. It depends on whether you look at the dancer from above or below.

It's true. I copied the dancer to me cellphone and went to the bar the next days. I looked at her spin before a beer, and after every beer. Here are the findings same after 3 trials :. Before beer: Spinning clockwise, mainly. After 1 beer: not spinning but just going on a degrees turn left and right After 2 beers: same as after 1 beer After 3 beers: same as after 2 beers After 4 beers: same as after 3 beers After 5 beers: assumed its the same as after 4 beers.

I tried to see her spinning covering her bottom half and covering the top half. It did make a little difference. I'd agree with Surenda, the image isn't actually spinning. It is a 2D silhouette animation, which can be viewed as coming at you or away from you. For those of you still insisting it's actually spinning, get a few others to watch with you at the same time and see if everyone is in consensus about the direction and switching.

My experience? I've had a lot of exposure to these optical illusions because my daughter was fascinated with them since an early age i. It's not entirely scientific One can make the dancer switch by focusing on the bottom stabilizing foot.

And apparently, people with high IQs can see the girl spinning in both directions. Does that mean I'm a genius because I see her spin both ways, or an idiot because I can't control it? I want to know what's going on in my brain, so I call up Arthur Shapiro and Niko Troje, a pair of scientists who dissect Kayahara's spinning girl in the forthcoming Oxford Compendium of Visual Illusions.

I run the Youtube theory by them. The reason we see her spinning in different directions is actually much more complex than which side of our brain dominates. I'm feeling good now, because I'm realizing that you don't have to be freaking Neil deGrasse Tyson to enjoy this thing. I tell Shapiro and Troje how frustrating it is to feel powerless over my brain, and I ask if they can help me spin the spinning lady in both directions.

They're game. But before they do, they say that it's important to understand that the spinning girl falls under a class of optical illusions called reversible images. Even though she spins, she bears similarities to other static illusions, like Necker cubes.

The Necker cube can be seen in two ways: either the lower right panel is in the front, or it's in the back. Reversible images like this flip on us because they're ambiguous, says Troje, director for BioMotion Lab at Queens University.

They don't provide enough depth clues to make definitive sense. Your brain doesn't like when images don't make sense, so it imposes meaning where there isn't any. It's guessing. We do this all the time, says Shapiro.

You brain projects pavement into the darkness, because if it didn't, you'd be too terrified to drive. With the spinning girl, there's a lot of darkness, especially around the clues that help shape perspective. Indeed, by simply adding contour lines like in the below two videos, spinning girl ceases to mystify. She appears to spin in one direction only. But that feels like cheating, and Shapiro assures me that I can solve the illusion with my own brain.

Watch the foot.