Are You Left-Brained or Right? | Hacker News Reader

Are You Left-Brained or Right?

zoliblog.com

According to this article: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=27

This news article, like many others, ignores the true source of this optical illusion and instead claims it is a quick test to see if you use more of your right brain or left brain. This is utter nonsense, but the “right-brain/left brain” thing is in the public consciousness and won’t be going away anytime soon. Sure, we have two hemispheres that operate fine independently and have different abilities, but they are massively interconnected and work together as a seamless whole (providing you have never had surgery to cut your corpus callosum).

...

Further, how your visual cortex constructs this optical illusion says nothing about your hemispheric dominance, and is absolutely not a quick personality profile.

It actually depends on where you initially look at the image. I first focused on the torso and saw clockwise, and then focused on the extended foot and saw counter-clockwise.

Edit: Hmm, I guess it's a test of if you're a breast man or a leg man.

Reminds me of a handset project I once worked on. We had two baseband chipsets (with associated cpu) in one mobile phone. The software that sent commands between the two was called BundleOfNerves. Fun times :)

Totally nothing to do with the hemispheres - nonetheless, really frustrating that I can't seem to control which way I see her 'spinning' - that all happens behind the scenes in my head. ah!

It's not hard to flip her spin direction, just focus on the point of her toes and tell yourself that her toes are going from (left->right) or (right->left) and that'll change the way you interpret her spin.

That was a good tip. I spent the last 5 minutes making her change direction all the time. In the end I could make her switch almost every time by focussing on her down-foot for a while, just as you said, and then slowly blinking (eyes mostly closed) until I hit an animation phase that triggered the switch.

Nonetheless still interesting how hard it is to make her switch. Right now, only 30 seconds after I lost interest, I don't think I could repeat the trick without re-focussing for a few minutes first.

From its Wikipedia article:

"The illusion has been incorrectly[3] identified as a scientific personality test that supposedly reveals which hemisphere of the brain is dominant in the observer. Under this unproven interpretation, it has been popularly called the Right Brain–Left Brain test,[4] and was widely circulated on the Internet during late 2007 to early 2008."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spinning_Dancer

That Wikipedia article makes it easier to change the direction. If you scroll the frame-by-frame stills at the bottom in either direction, and look at the animation again, you'll probably see it in that direction.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a259/Immortal_Daemon/Spinn... makes both rotations clear, if it's driving you nuts.

ok, now I see. if I close my right eye and turn my head, the animation appears to reverse itself.

i can choose the rotation direction. Its not that hard really, its not a real test, you are not physiologically bound to one perception or the other(at least im not, but since this was in wikipedia, then i guess others can change direction too).

as near as I can tell, there is little illusion here. The woman's right leg is on the floor and the point is rotation. This sets up the animation to be counter-clockwise.

Maybe if the body being turned was uniform, no clear front or back, there would be interesting merit. Maybe not.

Funny thing is that if you have the alternative (ie clock-wise rotation) then the left leg is on the floor.

Anyone know more about this interpretation flipping? It's kinda weird, and makes me wonder if people that have lost the use of one eye ever have this kind of thing happen in real life.

Left brain here baby. But then I already knew that. Maybe I can get somebody at MIT to extract my right hemisphere for me and then sell it on e-bay for a profit, since clearly, I have no use for it.

I'm lower-brained. I was checking out her arse.

Apparently I use my right brain. Couldn't make her change direction.

Then I looked over to the right hand side of the page and noticed out of corner of my eye she was now turning counter-clockwise, so now I was using my left brain.

Now I can't make her turn the other way.

I used both sides of my brain and used them together to decide that this test is bullshit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com