A viral optical illusion making waves on the internet again proves our brains aren't big enough to grasp physical reality as we perceive it to be.

The illusion was developed by Prof. Kokichi Sugihara, a Doctor of Engineering at the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences in Japan. It won second place at the annual Best Illusion of the Year contest hosted by the Neural Correlate Society in the United States.

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First place in the Best Illusion of the Year contest went to Mathew Harrison and Gideon Caplovitz of the University of Nevada Reno in the U.S. for their "Motion Integration Unleashed: New Tricks for an Old Dog."

Second place was won by Christine Veras of the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore for her "Silhouette Zoetrope."

In his "Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion," Prof. Sugihara is shown holding various square-shaped objects that become circle-shaped objects when reflected on a mirror. The objects also change shape as they're rotated.

No magic here, just intricate shapes produced by a 3D printer that don't all have straight edges. The objects aren't exactly squares. Some of the sides are slightly rounded while the others are pinched.

The top edge of the squares are serrated. Viewing these shapes that aren't truly square or truly round forces your mind to take a shortcut so it can understand what it sees. The result is you see the squares as circles reflected in the mirror.

An optical illusion fools our minds because it tricks our mind into making sense of something it sees but can quite understand. The result is our mind takes a "shortcut," which is the optical illusion.

We see anything because light bounces off that object and enters our eyes. This image is converted by the brain into electrical signals. This process takes about a tenth of second.

Our eyes, however, sees a lot and it's really tough for our brains to try to focus on everything all at once. To compensate, our brains take shortcuts by simplifying what we see to help us concentrate on what's important. That compensates for our brain's tenth-of-a-second processing lag.

You can view Prof. Sugihara's YouTube video here.

You can also view the explanation as to how one YouTuber did the same thing here.

TagsProf. Kokichi Sugihara, Best Illusion of the Year, Neural Correlate Society