New Twitter owner Elon Musk’s disturbing optical illusion shows how easily our brains can be fooled

IF you thought Elon Musk buying Twitter was weird, wait ’til you see this bizarre optical illusion.

That Billionaire Tesla founder apparently snagged the social media app — but this photo of Musk might be harder for you to navigate.

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At first glance, the Happy Snap might not look like anything – except that it’s upside down.

On closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that his facial features are not quite right.

Turn the picture upside down and you’ll see that the South African’s eyes and mouth are actually right side up.

The brain can’t see the small changes when the figure inside is upside down, but it notices them immediately the moment it’s rotated 180 degrees.

It is a optical Ilusion It’s been around since 1980, when a scientist created what is believed to be the first iteration.

It was featured in an article by York University’s Peter Thompson and contained a manipulated image of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The snap of her face was rotated 180 degrees while her eyes and mouth were reversed.

Upside down, she looked normal, while erect, she looked grotesque.

Hence the illusion is sometimes referred to as the Thatcher Effect.

Many similar images have emerged in the decades since, each revealing a great deal about how the brain processes images.

Faces seem unique to us even though they are all quite similar, and that has to do with our cognitive processes.

It is believed that we develop specific processes to distinguish between faces based on the configuration of features – such as eyes, nose and mouth – as the details of the facial features themselves.

This enables us to recognize a person’s face when it is upside down, even if the eyes and nose have been rotated.

There is evidence that rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees experience the Thatcher Effect.

This suggests that our ability to process faces evolved from a common ancestor about 30 million years ago.

To try it yourself, a website thatchereffect.comyou can try famous faces – or your own.

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