A Game of Our Brains: What Is The Thatcher Effect?

We often come across interesting posts on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. What you see properly in an inverted photo, but rather quite when flipped straight different and creepy looking faces You may have come across these posts as well.

The main reason why we see these faces normally is; Thatcher effect. So how does this illusion come about? an abnormal face causes us to perceive properly? In today’s article, we’ll take a look at how these faces were created and how it first appeared.

Contrary to popular belief, the Thatcher illusion is not something new.

This illusion, first ‘developed’ in 1980, was actually the result of an academic study. This effect, revealed by Peter Thompson and his team at the University of York, that our brain puts all the pieces together separately accepted as the greatest proof.

The Thatcher effect is named after that period. From Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister taking. This is because the first photograph in which the effect was tested was of Margaret Thatcher. However, nowadays we can see this effect almost everywhere, in different photographs.

So why does our brain perceive these faces as normal?

The nerves that cause this in our brain have not been fully explored. After many years of research, this situation is in our brain. from psychological cognitive modules thought to originate.

In other words, our brain perceives these images separately and then like a normal face It causes us to perceive. As a matter of fact, we can see a similar effect when our brain automatically completes a sentence written in missing letters. Of course, this situation works somewhat differently under the Thatcher effect.

Creating an image with the Thatcher effect is pretty simple.

The steps to create an image with this effect are quite simple. In fact, when you look carefully, you can clearly understand the difference in the images above. What we need is very simple; a human face.

To replace the human photograph we have with this effect, we only turning the eyes and mouth part upside down will suffice. “Why don’t we turn the nose or ears inside out?” If you ask; The feeling that this is an inverted image will disappear when we turn the nose or ears upside down and our brain will recognize that there is an abnormality. However, when the other organs are straight, the reverse of the eyes and mouth is automatically corrected by our brain.

Sources: York University research article, Scientific American, The Guardian, Independent