optical illusion Archives - Dr. KarenTurnerPhD

How Many Circles Do You See? The Answer

Karen Turner — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:15:17 +0000

If you looked once and felt certain, then looked again and changed your answer, the illusion did exactly what it was designed to do. What appears simple at first becomes surprisingly slippery when light, color, texture, and expectation begin competing for your attention.

How many circles do you see? Look again and see whether you can find the hidden 77. Concept by Karen Turner, PhD. AI-assisted image.

How Many Circles Are in the Optical Illusion?

The intended answer is 14 primary circles. Some viewers may count more if they include the fine decorative outlines, bright glow lines, or outer arcs as separate circles. That difference is part of the illusion, not a mistake.

There is nothing wrong with your eyes or your reasoning if your number was different. The sapphire bands provide the main circular structure, while the gold highlights, shadows, and reflections create secondary edges. Your brain must decide which boundaries belong together, and different viewers may organize those boundaries differently.

Where Is the Hidden 77?

The “77” is intentionally woven into small breaks, angles, and negative spaces among the rings rather than printed as an obvious number. Look slightly above and to the right of center, then let your eyes soften instead of studying every line. The idea is to discover the suggestion of two sevens, not a large, plainly drawn 77.

If you did not see it immediately, that was the point. Once the mind is given a clue, it begins reorganizing the same visual information and looking for a new pattern.

Why Do People Count Different Numbers?

Vision is not a camera that records every detail with perfect neutrality. The brain rapidly groups edges, contrast, light, shadow, and repeated shapes into a picture that feels coherent. In this design:

Concentric rings create several competing boundaries.
Gold highlights can look like additional circles.
Shadows can separate one band into what appears to be two.
Sparkles and texture pull attention away from the complete shape.
The hidden-number challenge encourages the brain to search for angles inside curves.

Is This Optical Illusion a Psychological Test?

No. This is a perception game, not a psychological test. The number of circles you see does not diagnose anger, trauma, intelligence, personality, or mental health. It simply shows how easily visual context can influence what we notice first.

That distinction matters. Puzzles can be playful, thought provoking, and even useful for discussing attention, but they should not be presented as validated psychological assessments when they are not.

What a Second Look Can Teach Us

What we notice first is not always all that is there. Sometimes a second look changes the picture. That is true of optical illusions, and often of life. Curiosity gives us room to revise an answer without feeling that the first answer made us foolish.

Explore more Nimble Mind puzzles, reflections on aging, and conversations about living fully in the Boomer Yearbook Blog. You may also enjoy What Do You See First? The Psychology Behind Optical Illusions and a Nimble Mind.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many circles are in the optical illusion?

The intended answer is 14 primary circles. Some viewers may count more if they include glow lines, fine outlines, or outer decorative arcs.

Why do people count different numbers?

Highlights, shadows, and textured edges create competing visual boundaries. The brain may group those boundaries differently from one viewing to the next.

Is this optical illusion a psychological test?

No. This is a visual perception game, not a validated psychological assessment. It does not diagnose anger, trauma, intelligence, personality, or mental health.

Where is the hidden 77?

It is suggested by small breaks, angles, and negative spaces slightly above and to the right of the center of the circle field. It is intentionally subtle.

77 and Still Standing: A Psychologist’s Guide to Aging Without Shrinking

The post How Many Circles Do You See? The Answer appeared first on Dr. KarenTurnerPhD.

Can You Find the Hidden Face in Under 10 Seconds? The Psychology Behind Optical Illusions and a Nimble Brain

Karen Turner — Sat, 23 May 2026 18:34:09 +0000

What you notice first in an optical illusion says something real about how your brain is currently working, and training that flexibility is one of the quiet foundations of healthy aging. At first glance, the image below may look like nothing more than a tree: branches, shadows, twisted bark. Then suddenly, almost without warning, a face appears. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

Why Does What We Notice First Say So Much About Us?

That moment matters more than people realize, because optical illusions are not simply games. They are small demonstrations of how the human brain works. What we notice first is shaped by experience, emotion, expectation, habit, and sometimes even stress. Two people can look at the exact same image and see entirely different things: one person immediately spots the hidden face, another sees only trees, another notices the landscape first, another becomes frustrated and gives up quickly. The brain is not merely recording reality. It is interpreting it, and that interpretation is deeply connected to psychological flexibility.

What Is Cognitive Flexibility, and Why Does It Matter for Aging?

Cognitive flexibility is the brain’s willingness to keep searching for another perspective rather than settling for the first answer. In many ways, it is one of the quiet foundations of healthy aging: not perfection, not speed, not genius, but flexibility. For years, many people have been taught to think about aging primarily in terms of decline: memory loss, slowing down, limitations. But modern psychology and neuroscience increasingly suggest something more hopeful. The brain remains remarkably capable of adaptation throughout life. Neural pathways continue developing, new connections can still form, attention can still sharpen, and curiosity can still expand the mind. In fact, many older adults develop strengths that younger people often lack:

Improved pattern recognition
Emotional insight
Better judgment
Deeper intuition
Greater tolerance for complexity

The aging brain is not simply losing abilities. In many cases, it is reorganizing them, and that distinction matters, because the way people think about aging often shapes how they experience it. If people begin seeing themselves as mentally “finished,” they often stop challenging themselves, stop learning, stop exploring, and stop engaging, and slowly the world becomes psychologically smaller.

How Can Something as Simple as an Optical Illusion Help?

The mind thrives on stimulation, not frantic overstimulation, not endless scrolling, not noise, but meaningful engagement: puzzles, conversation, reading, reflection, learning, creativity, novelty. Even something as simple as searching for a hidden face in an image encourages the brain to scan differently, reconsider, and stay mentally active. That process is valuable at every age.

There is also something psychologically revealing about optical illusions themselves. They remind us that perception is rarely absolute. Human beings often assume that the way they see the world is the way the world truly is. But perception is filtered through memory, personality, emotional history, fear, hope, and past experiences. Sometimes we miss what is directly in front of us because our minds are trained to look elsewhere, and that is true in relationships, families, aging, and identity.

What Is the Hidden Face Really a Symbol Of?

Many people spend decades focused entirely on responsibility and survival. Then later in life, they suddenly begin noticing parts of themselves that had long been hidden beneath obligation: a quieter desire, a creative side, a longing for peace, a need for boundaries, a wish to finally become more fully themselves. In that sense, perhaps the hidden face in the image is symbolic too. Sometimes life asks us to look again.

A nimble brain is not necessarily the fastest brain. It is the brain willing to remain open to new information, open to reconsidering old assumptions, open to learning and growth. That kind of mental flexibility often becomes one of the greatest emotional assets of later life. And contrary to cultural stereotypes, many people become psychologically wiser with age, not less relevant. They become less reactive, less performative, less consumed with proving, but often more observant, more reflective, and more emotionally accurate.

The Takeaway

The goal is not simply to stay busy. The goal is to stay engaged with life: to keep noticing, questioning, exploring, and thinking. Growing older should never require shrinking intellectually, emotionally, or psychologically. So, did you find the hidden face in under 10 seconds? More importantly: what else might your mind be capable of seeing when it stays curious?

This article is part of our Nimble Mind Series, which explores how optical illusions and mental agility support healthy aging. See also What Do You See First? The Aging Brain Still Loves Surprise, What Do You See First? The Psychology Behind Optical Illusions and a Nimble Mind, and Aging Is Not a Straight Line: Why a Nimble Mind Matters More Than Ever.

How Normal is your Brain???

Karen Turner — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 11:00:05 +0000

If your brain works normally this is neat.

This is another example of an amazing illusion!!! The last sentence is so true.

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, the dots will remain only one color, pink.

However if you stare at the black ” + ” in the center, the moving dot turns to green.

Now, concentrate on the black ” + ” in the center of the picture. After a short period, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see only a single green dot rotating.

It’s amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don’t disappear. This should be proof enough; we don’t always see what we think we see.

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Online Optical Illusion: Café Wall Illusion

Karen Turner — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 18:07:56 +0000

Café Wall Illusion is a classical online optical illusion; reported in 1979 by Professor Richard L. Gregory and Priscilla Heard of The University of Bristol, England. They derived this pattern from a pile of white and black ceramic tiles on the front wall of a café at St Michael’s Hill, Bristol. Later, this pattern became a very popular online optical illusion. This online optical illusion is another example of the limitations in the human optical system, leading the brain to form deceptive impressions.

In this optical illusion, your see rows of alternate black and white blocks with gray borders. What do you perceive about the horizontal lines in this online optical illusion

Explanation of Café Wall online optical illusion

There are various explanations for the Café Wall online optical illusion. Psychological articles give a neuropsychological explanation suggesting that this online optical illusion results from limitations in the balancing act of the inhibitory and excitatory neurons in the brain. Psychological articles inform us that inhibitory neurons dim down perceived bright areas while excitatory neurons brighten perceived dark areas. Hence, in this online optical illusion, the areas in which white is prominent, become dimmed, and the areas surrounded by dark areas are brightened.

Moreover, the limitation in the reaction between the two neurons projects slopes on the straight line. The slopes are in opposite directions according to the dimmed and brightened areas. Hence, you see the straight lines in this online optical illusion to be wavy.

The Café Wall online optical illusion works on the principle of contrast. Along with numerous other online optical illusions explained in Boomer Yearbook that also result from the effect of contrast on the perception of the visual stimulus.

This Psychological Article on Online Optical Illusions is part of Boomer Yearbook’s continuing series of out of the box suggestions on how to alleviate elderly problems and keep our brains young. We believe knowledge is power. We’d love to hear what you think.

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Online Optical Illusion: Experience and Perception

Karen Turner — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 17:21:11 +0000

To a very great extent, our visual sense is not “objective” in that there is not a perfect one to one ratio between what we see and how we make sense of what we see. In fact, oftentimes our brain interprets what our eyes perceive based not solely on the visual stimuli we are looking at but on our cognitions and experiences.
(http://boomeryearbook.com/blog/2009/03/15/psychological-article-types-of-online-optical-illusions/)
Many online optical illusions capitalize on this common miscommunication between our eyes and our brains, and use it to create online optical illusions; especially of the Cognitive type. Thus, when looking at an online optical illusion, the human brain takes in the visual stimuli and then connects it to past cognitions and experiences, matching the stimuli to our cultural and experiential “Gestalt”, In other words, perceiving the online optical illusion in the context of what is familiar and previously stored in our brains as meaningfully recognizable.
One of the classical online optical illusions that illustrates this example is the “Message of Love from the Dolphins” by Swiss artist Sandro Del-Prete.
Hmmm. What do you see? Well, before jumping to judgmental conclusions about this online optical illusion, it’s important to know that psychological articles inform us that adults see something very different than does the typical child.
If you are an adult, you will probably see two individuals in an intimate position in this online optical illusion. That is all right. Most adults will see the same. It is because you have prior knowledge of what lovemaking is. However, I have to disappoint you. In fact, this image is not of two individuals in an intimate position.
Psychological articles advise us to perform this little experiment. Ask some small children with no knowledge of lovemaking to tell you what they see in this online optical illusion. Will they perceive the image as adults do? Psychological articles tell us the answer is no. In fact, they see nine dolphins in a bottle on this online optical illusion. You may be surprised but it is true. Take another good look to this online optical illusion to find the nine dolphins.
Have you found the nine dolphins in this online optical illusion? If not, let me suggest that you concentrate on the black spots within the picture that you perceived to be human figures.
When you look at this online optical illusion, you perceived the image in connection with your prior knowledge that is within your realm of familiar experiences.
However, for a kid, this online optical illusion is just a school of dolphins in a bottle because they do not have any knowledge about the intimate position.

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