Optical Illusion Turns Pretty Hollywood Actors Into Freaky Monsters

[pokerfan]

Freaky...

Not even Hollywood's most beautiful are inmune to our brain's faulty image processing. Liv Tyler, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., Keira Knightley, Christina Hendricks—all of them turn to creepy monsters when you get them through this freaky optical illusion.

http://gizmodo.com/5979656/optical-illusion-turns-pretty-hollywood-actors-into-freaky-monsters

[Auggie]

1. Wow! Who knew?

[tridim]

2. That is incredible!

[Mnemosyne]

3. Or maybe, the veil is dropping!

[pokerfan]

4. Exactly

Focusing on the cross breaks the charm spell of enchantment.

[Mnemosyne]

6. Thank goodness we see the truth.

Seriously though, what is truth? What is reality?

[pokerfan]

7. It works in real life, too

You would be surprised how grotesque people can be when you're not looking directly at them. Reality is pretty much a Twilight Zone...

[Mnemosyne]

8. Loved that episode! And agree, things aren't always quite what we think we 'see'. nt

[AnneD]

16. One of my favs...

Also How to serve Man. I loved the Twilight Zone.

[Mnemosyne]

17. "It's a cookbook!" Hehehe. Miss TZ and Tales From the Darkside.

They were such thought-provoking shows, unlike The Bachelor, et all.

[Isoldeblue]

18. It's all relative....... :) n/t

[Mnemosyne]

19. So, you've seen my relatives?!

Welcome to DU, enjoy the ride!

[Warpy]

5. Whoa! That's really freaky

The aliens have landed!

[Confusious]

9. Hah. Weird. The only one who doesn't turn is Patrick Stewart.

I have to much trust in captain picard.

[pokerfan]

10. The explanation...

since this is the science forum...

Like many interesting scientific discoveries, this one was an accident. Sean Murphy, an undergraduate student, was working alone in the lab on a set of faces for one of his experiments. He aligned a set of faces at the eyes and started to skim through them. After a few seconds, he noticed that some of the faces began to appear highly deformed and grotesque. He looked at the especially ugly faces individually, but each of them appeared normal or even attractive. We called it the “Flashed Face Distortion Effect” and wanted to share it with the world, so we put it on YouTube.

The effect seems to depend on processing each face in light of the others. By aligning the faces at the eyes and presenting them quickly, it becomes much easier to compare them, so the differences between the faces are more extreme. If someone has a large jaw, it looks almost ogre-like. If they have an especially large forehead, then it looks particularly bulbous. We’re conducting several experiments right now to figure out exactly what’s causing this effect, so watch this space!

http://mbthompson.com/research/

[Heather MC]

20. my unasked, uneducated, zero research opinion

I don't think the brain can process the image changes fast enough so it begins to merge some of the faces together.

[NRaleighLiberal]

11. that is just so cool!

[SeattleVet]

12. At the Gizdomo site there is a video using just series of single faces

and you get the same 'distortion' effect.

(To me it almost looked like they had slipped in extra photos of Christopher Walken.)

[littlemissmartypants]

13. Typical day at the market. n/t

[marble falls]

14. Creepy and disturbing.

[Iggo]

15. That is so cool!!!!