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Optical Illusion: You Can See All the Dots in This Image, But Not All at Once

"Ninio's Extinction Illusion" reveals a weird quirk of human vision

By Rain Noe - June 17, 2020

in Visual Communication

How many dots can you find in the image below?

The correct answer is 12, but what's odd about Ninio's Extinction Illusion, named for French scientist Jacques Ninio, is that it is impossible to see all of the dots at once. I tried tilting my head 45 degrees and still could not perceive all of them in a single glance. I also tried backing up and looking at the monitor from across the room. No dice.

Why is this? According to Popular Science,

"Researchers' prevailing theory…is that we have more neurons clustered at the center of our vision than the outside. The lack of cells in our periphery renders us nearly blind to things far enough outside the center. To compensate, the brain takes its best guess at what's out there based on the more-visible gray areas. This makes a dot seem solid when we're looking right at it but invisible when viewed with a sideways glance."

That's a fascinating description--it means our brains are essentially rendering, incorrectly, areas outside of our direct area of focus.

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Alicia Herrera

5 years ago

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If you stare at the image and blink quickly many times...you can see all of them.

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Eric Bender

5 years ago

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Once i circled them on my screen with a sharpie they were pretty easy to spot.

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Patato Cangaroo

5 years ago

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I crossed my eyes to have 6 black dots focused per eye. Only way I know how to see them all

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