This optical illusion of a woman's face will genuinely hurt your brain.

What do you see when you look at this photo?

It's the optical illusion completely confusing women of all different ages, and there's a very good reason why.

Flinders University have put forward a theory about the illusion called "My Wife and My Mother-in-Law" or "The Boring Figure".

Researchers proposed that different people see different things in the optical illusion depending on their age.

Younger people, between the ages of 18 and 30, see a young woman facing away with an old-fashioned headpiece.

Older people see an old woman looking at the camera.

The study concluded that "own-age biases affect subconscious face perception" and we have to admit, we think they are very correct.

Participants in the studies were shown the image for half a second, and asked to recall the age and gender of the person they saw.

The study included 393 participants from ages 18 to 68.

But don't panic if you're young and see the old lady, it wasn't completely conclusive.

And hey, age is just a number baby.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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