Discover what optical illusions are, their main types, how they trick our brain, and what they reveal about human perception. Learn about the visual tricks that fool your brain and how they reveal something about how we perceive the world. Explore examples of the Hermann grid, the spinning dancer, the Ames room, and more. How Optical Illusions Work The human vision system is complex and mostly accurate, but it can malfunction from time to time, hence optical illusions . There is a disconnect between what the eye sees and how the brain interprets it. The brain makes the best guess based on prior knowledge and wrongly fills in some missing information to give context to the visual information and form an image. During an optical illusion , the brain interprets the image, giving you a different perception from ... Optical illusions are instances when the visual system in the brain interprets the reality as something that it isn't, tricking the person in this way.