Black dot optical illusion baffles people online

A tiny black dot optical illusion has left people online scratching their heads.

Uploaded to Twitter by a person called Amanita, the image shows a blank beige colour canvas with swatches of pink, yellow, blue and green on it.

In the middle of the screen, a single black dot can be seen. According to Amanira, if you stare at the black dot for 10 seconds, the colours will disappear.

Proving the brain works in mysterious ways, some people couldn’t see the colours disappearing, others saw a completely nude coloured canvas and some couldn’t even see the black dot in the first place.

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”They disappear when I lean in a bit closer to my screen and focus on the dot. When I'm just at my regular distance (sitting comfortably at my desk) the colours in the bottom half of the image disappear, but not the ones in the top half,” one person said.

“Yeah they fade to grey as you stare. But I think it depends on each person’s prevalence to filter out unnecessary noise,” another person said.

“For me the colours faded almost to the point of disappearing but not quit,” a commenter wrote.

“My brain won't let it. Once part of my peripheral notices the colors disappear it reappears them,” another said.

One person said they are colourblind so the colours were never there for them in the first place.

According to the original poster, “the eye can only see properly in a small area of the retina”.

“So to see the whole image, we must move the eye and then the brain builds the image. When we force the eye to state at the dot, the brain builds the image with what it sees around it, which is just beige.”

A commenter also said that if you can’t see the colours disappear it could be related to your attention span

“Your mind is wandering, which makes your eyes perform very slight movements. You have to be 100% absorbed in the black dot,” they said.

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