Does the “Right Brain vs. Left Brain” Spinning Dancer Test Work?
- asks Aki from San Francisco
Jeremy Hsu • October 29, 2007
![[Credit: Internet Movie Database]](https://scienceline.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/oz.jpg)
[Credit: Internet Movie Database]
A new “brain test” floating around online shows a spinning dancer and asks whether you see the image rotating clockwise or counterclockwise. If it spins clockwise, you supposedly use more of your right brain. Counterclockwise, and you’re more of a left brain person. The test then lists functions associated with each side of the brain – the left side includes “uses logic” and “facts rule,” while the right side includes “uses feeling” and “imagination rules.”
A good friend complained that the test told her she was a left brain person, even when she knew herself to not be into left brain associations such as “math and science.” A similar discrepancy was discerned by one of the authors of the Freakonomics blog, when he conducted a quick, nonscientific survey of blog readers, which cross referenced college majors and spinning dancer test results.
If the test sounds flawed, that’s not just because one shouldn’t use spinning dancers to characterize their brain strengths. Rather, the test is coming up inaccurate because it provides a crude view of the “lateralization of brain function,” or the concept that each side of the human brain specializes in certain mental activities.
The concept was born in the 1960s, when Roger Sperry studied epilepsy patients who had had a nerve connection between their hemispheres surgically cut. He found that the left brain hemisphere seemed to possess “speech and a rational, intellectual style,” while the right side was “inarticulate, but blessed with special spatial abilities.”
Modern neuroscience studies using brain imaging technology such as fMRI – which shows active areas of the brain while a person is trying to perform a task – have further suggested that language ability tends to be localized in the left hemisphere, while spatial ability tends to be in the right hemisphere.
However, neuroscience-minded blogs like Neurophilosophy point out that doing any complex mental activity requires cooperation from both sides of the brain, although certain processing tasks required for that activity may be concentrated on one side or the other. In other words, saying that “math and science are left brain functions” is an over-generalized statement.
“It’s not that you have a special math module somewhere in your brain, but rather that the brain’s particular functional organization…predisposes it towards the use of high-level imagery and spatial skills, which in turn just happen to be very useful when it comes to doing math reasoning,” said Michael O’Boyle, a psychologist at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in a public statement through the American Psychological Association.
In fact, the best math students don’t even seem to settle for being “left brain” people. A study undertaken by O’Boyle found mathematically gifted students did better than average students on tests that required both halves of the brain to cooperate. This demonstrated that, while the typical person might lean more heavily on one hemisphere or the other to do mental tasks necessary for math calculation, the brightest among us can more fully integrate both hemispheres of the brain.
The idea that emotion processing only occurs in the right brain hemisphere and fact processing in the left is also misleading. Brain imaging studies have showed that people processed emotion using small parts of both brain hemispheres.
“The popular notion of an ‘emotional’ right hemisphere that contrasts sharply with a ‘rational’ left hemisphere is like a crude pencil sketch made before a full-color painting,” noted a 2005 Scientific American Mind article.
Believing in left brain or right brain people also fails to account for the human brain’s mysterious flexibility and plasticity. People who had half their brain removed encounter some problems – like not being able to move or see from one side of their body – but largely retained or relearned mental abilities such as language in their remaining brain hemisphere. All this research clearly points out that while Nobel winner Sperry was onto something with his lateralization research, trying to fully compartmentalize mental activity by brain hemisphere is imprecise.
So what does the spinning dancer tell us? The whole test is more of an optical illusion than anything else, according to Steven Novella, an academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine who blogs on NeuroLogica. When our brains process visual images to make some order or sense of the world, they have to make assumptions. The dancer is just a two dimensional image switching back and forth, but our brains process it as a three dimensional spinning object.
Depending on the assumptions made and visual cues picked up, your brain can make the dancer spin either way. When my friend first sent the test to me, I saw it go clockwise…then switch to counterclockwise as I was staring at the screen. What this tells me about my personality and mental abilities is hardly a no-brainer – the brain test connection to our mental strengths and weaknesses is nonexistent.
172 Comments
Wow – staring at the illusory dancer is really a great way to avoid working. Despite all the right brain, left brain talk, I find it to be delightfully mindless!
Thanks for clearing this up. I had been wondering about the actual science behind the dancing spinner since I first saw it a couple of weeks ago. I had a hunch that left vs. right brain couldn’t be so simple…
A. I have to agree with Christopher I.
B. No matter how I look at it, she’s spinning clockwise. I know it goes the other way, because other people have told me so. Does that mean that I’m an unimaginative right brained person?
I’m with Jeremy, I think this is bunk, but a really cool optical illusion.
Yeah I really don’t understand. I’ve stared at it for like a half hour, and I CAN’T make it spin counter clockwise. It will ONLY spin clockwise…sigh.
.moses.
I love this optical illusion. The key is to figure out which leg she is pivoting on, right?
Kathleen
Good article! I publish a poll / survey to know what is more common, saw her spinning clockwise or anti-clockwise. Here is it:
Right Brain vs Left Brain Survey / Poll – Mind optical illusion
You have to visualize it spinning the other way and focus on small details, then try to change them. If you look at her arms or her lower foot, as opposed to the whole thing, you have a lot more grasp over which kind of cue you get from it. And once it switches, it seems as if you’ve always seen it from that way. I’ve yet to consciously and consistently do it though. I can switch about once every 20 seconds.
I can make her kick one foot in front alternating legs, but it gives me a headache after several times.
When I first saw it, it was going clockwise then while i was reading the paragraph to the left she started going the other way and i could get her to go back and forth.. it’s interesting.. but I understand the above article that it’s worthless really.
o well.
Here’s the trick to making it change directions-don’t look at it DIRECTLY, but look to one side or the other. I did this and made it change directions but when looking directly, it just went clockwise. I agree, cool trick and takes my mind off…homework. Awesome!
If you want to make her switch directions try to touch your thumb to each of your 4 fingers in order back and forth QUICKLY & watch her spin. Now try it on the other hand. I was bored and can make her turn almost instantaneously doing this….cool distraction from grading my Calculus papers with my Left hand..haha
I don’nt understand why i can’t make it turn clockwise, I always see it turn counter no matter how I try, Is there somethng wrong with my brain or am i a special person..hmmm
I found if I watched her for long enough she started to undress and do this really hot dance! Then it was really hard to stop watching and get any work done.
I found this not only interesting because I went through brain surgery for epilepsy- but also because I had made music boxes for my neurologist and neurosurgeon that played music from the Wizard of Oz. Also- last night I was walking with a group dressed up characters from the Wizard of Oz- I was the Scarecrow- and it was odd that Stumble sent me to this one today.
Wow….
This only proves that dancing is a great exercise.
what a body!!!
If you don’t over analyze the dancer and just look at the “big picture”, you will see her in a fan mode, gently going back and forth. At least this is the way I see her…..
Hey, Dakota, Moses and Jon:
At this website – http://ofb.net/~whuang/imgs/spin/ – there are modified versions of the dancer that help you see both directional views, together with the original. Take a look!
I found that if I clicked ‘Hide’ for the picture with the direction I naturally saw (counterclockwise) and stared at the other two, I could make myself see the original dancer turn clockwise. Now whenever I see the original dancer, she flips back and forth randomly.
Do you see the survey results? very interesting:
Right Brain vs Left Brain Survey / Poll
It’s a sham.
If you freeze the spinning girl at a certain point, you see that there is actually a slight line on her right thigh that prevents her from appearing to move clockwise:
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/6530/spinninggirlhq7.png
So that would be why so many people are having trouble with it.
Don’t tell me I’m the only person who’s seen this!
this must be a guy’s idea of a dancer. one with boobs (or a boob job). it don’t work that way, folks.
Most people can see it going both ways…….because you have two sides to your brain. Hello. Its just with some people one side may completely overides the other depending on how dominant that side is. Its about spatial relationships and the brains ability to fill in missing detail. If you can do this well you will see the dancer spin clockwise.
I keep on staring at the dancer and thinking: So peole can actually see her going counter-clockwise? I can’t even imagine her going counterclockwise!
I got this dancer in email. It started out clockwise and then went counter clockwise. It changed a couple times and then stayed clockwise. Your explanation solved a lifelong mystery for me. When I was growing up in the late 1940’s we would go to Laguardia airport to pick up my dad from a business trip. There was a radar antenna turning on the roof of the terminal building. I would look at it as it would switch between clockwise and counter clockwise. I knew that it wasn’t really changing direction.
i can only see clockwise. i must be weird…….
The site http://anuragworld.googlepages.com/mysteryofthespinningdancer explains the reason for the illusion very well. It also has a trick for those who can see the dancer rotate only clockwise or anticlockwise.
How can anyone see it spinning clockwise, I can’t understand at all. It’ just counter clockwise for me and I’m trying really hard lol.
If you can’t see the change try taking your hand off your mouse, or move you mouse to your other hand. Or try holding something in your left hand and making counter clockwise circles.
all you have to do is look away from the screen or close your eyes when her leg that’s sticking out is about to go behind her. then, at least for me, she changes direction. but don’t close them for too long or she will switch again. freaky!
What does it mean when she is going back and forth instead of making a complete circle?
If I look at the silhouette first, it spins clockwise for me. But the shadow below spins anti-clockwise for me. So if I look at the shadow first, then the dancer spins anti-clockwise. Very odd.
i swore this picture was rigged to spin both directions until i downloaded the gif and counted each time the thing would do a full spin each way…
what a waste of time.. i feel stupid -_-
I’ve spotted a flaw! That reinforces the clockwise direction.
The proportions of her swinging leg are fine to the left side of the picture, but there is a software fudge going on on the right side: if she were spinning clockwise we would expect to see her toes progress toward us first, if anti-clockwise her heel would progress away from us first (on the right side of the image remember). This is not so, because both images can’t be generated together, they’ve used one. Sneaky but inevitable!
With that in mind I can get her spinning in either direction and have managed to get her to flip left and right without taking a complete revolution.
stare at her foot and concentrate on the foot and soon it will change.
if you normally see it going clockwise try to see the bottom of her foot.
if you normally see it going counter-clockwise try to see the top of her foot.
it worked for me… i feel like im mind controlling my computer.
I think it has to do if your right or left eye is dominant. I am severely right-eyed, and my partner is severely left-eyed. I had a time making her go anti-c. Just a thought.
Thanks so much for the article. My daughter had me freaking out because the direction flips back & forth as I look at the dancer. Hers only spins in one direction. I emailed it to her.
What if you take succesive snapshots of her after every (say) a millisecond. That will tell you which way she is spinning ..and no left or right brain involved..?
Somebody answer.
Damn!
I had a science project with this in it!
Already got an A= though :P
At first, I saw it anti-clockwise, and then after a few seconds it changed to clockwise…
After concentrating, i was able to see it going back and forth, never completing a whole turn, which was really cool!
Most interesting thing I learned is that some people say “anti-clockwise.” I always thought it was only “counterclockwise”
Ok…i couldnt really see the counter clockwise either UNTIL i stared at the shadow on the ground then she just started spinning the other way!..try it
CHRISTOPHER’S COMMENT IS POINTLESS! OBVIOUSLY, HE DOESNT LIKE WORKING EITHER. OTHERWISE, HE WOULD FIND TIME TO 1) LOOK AT THE ILLUSORY DANCER & 2) TO POST A COMMENT!
That’s definitely the best optical illusion I’ve ever seen. It’s shadowy eye candy questioning reality…
After spending considerable amount of time with looking at her do her thing, I was bewildered, I started to wonder if her making a counter clockwise movement was even possible. What was even more distressing was my perception putting me in the category of not thinking with reason… needless to say I wasn’t happy… I looked at her feet, hands, shadow below and the arch in her back to know the front and back body positions and I still couldn’t see a change in movement.
Then I had a eureka moment. I thought perhaps I need to change my movement to see her change her movement. I looked a away from the screen and glimpsed at her with the corner of my eyes to try see the change… no change… then I put my head down nearer to the keyboard till the image became more dark and when I looked up… voila… there was a CHANGE in movement. It happens every time I do it.
I think it has something to do with the light. Nice tricky perception.
It’s crazy, I can make her change directions…what does that mean?? It’s wierd though. When I change directions, she’s on opposite legs….
at first she goes anti clockwise then she changes to clock wise and so on,but she changed legs also one time right and one time left …check it,
i think its designed to go bothways to appear as if it changed dir. with concentration …
The secret as I see it is that it is an impossible picture of the spin. It has clues embedded in the picture for both directions.
If you look at, or concentrate only on, the lower legs and the shadow, she spins counter clockwise. If you look at, or concentrate only on, the body position, she spins clockwise.
Try covering the body and the legs alternately and see what happens.
I’m with ilia (12/03 comment). Dancer went both clockwise and counter clockwise. I was able to change the direction of the dancer when I concentrated on her feet.
Actually…
There is no right or wrong way to look at the image.
A little more detail and she goes wherever one wants her to go. The perception of circular motion depends upon where the mind imagines the curving line of her outer and inner thigh is positioned…
Here is clockwise… http://www.randominc.net/spinninglady/left.gif… and here is counter clockwise… http://www.randominc.net/spinninglady/right.gif
There is no right or wrong way to look at the image.
A little more detail and she goes wherever one wants her to go. The perception of circular motion depends upon where the mind imagines the curving line of her outer and inner thigh is positioned…
Here is clockwise… http://www.randominc.net/spinninglady/left.gif and here is counter clockwise… http://www.randominc.net/spinninglady/right.gif
I first saw it as counterclockwise. Then I read it was possible to change my perception
I remebered something. I have the ability to change my perception, to create my reality. You think I would have a better paying job!
You can have her rotate to either directions at will by closing your eyes for a second or two whenever you want her to change direction.
After watching her turn, first counterclockwise, then, after concentrating on her foot, clockwise, and back again several times, I came to this conclusion: she’s got a sweet figure, and I would watch her turn in any direction she wanted to.