IN the latest mind-bending optical illusion, a video of a black and white horse on a black background shows the animal marching to upbeat music.
But which way is the horse walking – backwards or forwards?
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According to TV celeb Julia Bradbury, whether you see the horse walking forward or backwards shows if you are left or right brained.
Posting the puzzling clip on Twitter, Julia simply wrote: “Left brain or right brain?”
But what does it mean to be left or right brained?
Left Brain or Right Brain?
Left and right brain are terms that have often been used to explain people’s personality and the way they think.
The theory, which first emerged in the 1960s, suggests that the brain’s left and right hemispheres function in different ways.
Developed by Nobel Prize winner Roger W. Sperry, the psychobiologist, believed one side of the brain was likely to be more dominant than the other.
Conventional wisdom suggests that people who are right-brained are more creative and intuitive thinkers.
Right-brained thinkers are often described as people who look at the “big picture” and experience the world through their intuition or emotions.
They are thought to be more imaginative, creative and often believed to be better at the arts.
However, left-brained people are often considered more analytical and may pay more attention to details and logic when making decisions.
Left brained people are sometimes believed to be better at thinking in sequences, doing mathematics, and can be better at things like reading and writing.
So according to these widely accepted ideas, if you see the horse walking backwards, you might be a more creative, artistic person.
Equally, if you see the horse walking forward, you could be more of a logical thinker.
In recent years, however, scientists believe the way the brain functions might be more complex than this – with both sides of the brain working together to perform different tasks.
Science writer Carl Zimmer explained in an article for Discover magazine: “The left hemisphere specializes in picking out the sounds that form words and working out the syntax of the phrase, for example, but it does not have a monopoly on language processing.
“The right hemisphere is more sensitive to the emotional features of language, tuning in to the slow rhythms of speech that carry intonation and stress.”
Optical Illusions
This mind-boggling video of the moonwalking horse is the latest in a string of baffling optical illusions that have gone viral online.
In 2015, a photo of “the dress” went viral online after viewers couldn’t agree on whether the dress photographed was black and blue or white and gold.
In just a week, 10 million people tweeted in connection to the dress.
As the different opinions raged, the illusion revealed the differences in human colour perception.
The dress was eventually confirmed to be black and blue.
In another optical illusion, social media fans were split over whether a pair of trainers were grey and turquoise or pink and white.
And in a truly eye-aching image of a white and grey grid pattern, twelve black dots are positioned at different intersections in the image.
But as you look at the image, the dots seem to move around the picture, making it nearly impossible to spot them all at once.
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