Do not stare at the image below, that is unless you actually want to break your brain.
That’s the warning from Tom Scott of Things You Might Not Know, who claims the two squares of opposing horizontal and vertical black, red and green lines can permanently rewire an individual’s brain.
The McCollough effect, as it is called, does apparently not work on a retinal level but rather a cognitive one, and can leave an individual seeing white gratings as coloured for up to three months after staring at the image for anything between 15 seconds and 15 minutes.
‘I realise that telling people on the internet not to do something is like telling a five-year-old not to stick beans up their nose, but seriously if you work with text or video, don’t do this,’ Mr Scott says.
‘It’s quite scary, it’s a real image that can lock into your brain, change the way it works and stick around for a good while.’
