Why This 12-Dot Illusion Is Giving People Fits

(Credit: Jacques Ninio) With one Facebook post, Japanese psychology professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka has sent the internet into fits. Look at the image above, and try to see all 12 black dots at once. Good luck. Honest, we aren’t playing tricks on you. Your eyes are literally deceiving you. Kitaoka posted this image on Sunday, which has since been shared over 10,000 times, and got a further viral boost when video game developer Will Kerslake shared the image on his Twitter page, and it quickly appeared on Reddit. Now, we’re all hopelessly chasing black dots. The image is called “Ninio’s Extinction Illusion,” named after the French scientist Jacques Ninio, who specializes in visual perception at the National des Recherches Scientifiques in Paris. There are actually 12 black dots at the intersections of the gray lines, but most people can’t see them. As Ninio explains in the journal Perception: