Pretty Celebrities Turn Ugly in This Shocking Illusion

Their faces get all distorted – but only in your brain.

The flashed face distortion effect is an optical illusion where eye-aligned faces are rapidly presented after each other, resulting in a disturbing transformation of the faces while the viewer focuses on the central cross.

As with many scientific discoveries, the phenomenon was discovered by chance. The above video, in which the illusion has been applied to Hollywood celebrities, won 2nd Place in the 8th Annual Best Illusion of the Year Contest held in 2012 under the aegis of the Vision Sciences Society.

The effect has gained significant popularity on YouTube, showcasing a scientific phenomenon that surpasses current neurological explanations.

According to Susanna Martinez-Conde, the president of the Neural Correlate Society responsible for organizing the competition:

“These are the best illusions of the year, so they’re very new by definition. You’re going to know the phenomenology first, and the neural underpinnings second. Typically, we don’t know why these illusions work in the brain. We may have theories, but the experiments have not been done, because it’s too early.”

Here’s another version of the illusion with pretty girls:

According to a study published in Scientific Reports in 2019, the strength of the effect remains consistent even when the faces are inverted.

This indicates that the impact is not influenced by the face perception capabilities of the human brain, which typically respond more strongly to upright faces compared to inverted ones.