"Ambiguous illusions are so powerful because even after we know that both images are on the page, we can only see one of them at a time. When we see the young girl, we can't simultaneously see the lines in context of the mother-in-law. When we switch our perception, the young girl disappears and we only see the old woman...Essentially, when we focus in on certain details, our brain makes sense of the rest of the image around these contours. Ambiguous illusions show the way that vision is a work of both the eye and the mind. The eye takes in a set of lines, and, depending on what they are, the brain organizes them into a recognizable pattern which we then "see." We can't see both images at once, because, at least at first, it isn't possible for the brain to construct both images and overlay one on the other. While it is possible to train the mind into recognizing two sets of patterns at once, that fact that it is a process shows that "seeing" is still a matter of mental practice, not simply taking in an image passively with one's eyes."
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