The Mindful Migraine

Quick word of warning – today’s blog post is NOT very migraine friendly – which is so against everything I believe in… except that I do have a curious mind…

If you have a migraine – come back tomorrow… this blog post could make you feel unwell… OR if visual stimuli can trigger a migraine… maybe you should look away too…

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When I was at high school in the 1980s, ‘magic images’ were all the rage. They were a rectangular picture which looked like a blur of thousands of shapes piled on top of each other… they could be boxy presents or puppy dogs. The overall effect looked like gibberish. But if you looked “through” the image, rather than “at” the picture, a shape would “pop out” as if it were a 3D object hovering above the mess… it used to literally blow my mind… and make my eyes hurt like crazy.

I’m not going to include one of those images here – because it would be a definite migraine trigger for me, and possibly others.

Instead, I thought I’d show you a different type of optical-illusion which I came across the other day, and this too, blows my mind… in a good – but still risky – way.

The human brain can be so darn annoying (I’ve had migraine pain in my right eye 24/7 for 2+ years now (enough already))… BUT the human brain is ALSO so darn AMAZING!

I’m going to put some google images down below (not sourced sorry) – and remember – these are jpegs – images – static pictures – NOT moving pictures – not videos – I’m laboring the point because – well, you’ll see…

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UGH – or WOW – depending on your perspective.

So, what’s going on?

According to one website I read (How Optical Illusions Work | HowStuffWorks) there could be a few reasons that the pictures are so moving.

One possibility is that our brains “predict” what they expect to see next, and the time lag between looking and seeing creates a shuffle…

Another is that our eyes are making so many tiny-rapid-movements (“saccades”) over the image it creates the sense of “apparent motion” as so many high-contrast messages get sent to our brains…

Another is that there is simply SO much, very detailed, information being sent to the brain via the retina, the visual cortex gets confused…

[Only the last explanation makes sense to me – “brain overload understood”.]

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Me being me, I was curious to see whether I could “break” the optical illusion or not..

First, I placed my healing mandala in the middle of the “wheel” image – and the spinning continued (“you are getting sleepy… very sleepy… and oh so mindful…”).

Then I lost the bright colors with their high contrast, and the spinning seemed to slow… right… down… and almost come to a grinding stop.

Then I messed around with different colors, in concentric circles, and the spinning seemed to stop… or at best, only the purple wheel seemed to spin.

Have a look and see if you agree.

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So, what does all that prove?

That the brain is tricky and can be tricked… and that I have too much time on my hands while I wait for my PhD Supervisor to read my draft dissertation!

Take care taking care, Linda x

[PS – here’s hoping I didn’t cause your brain to explode…oops… sorry.]