Movement is an amazing phenomenon, well for me ah. Certainly, it is an important factor in our life since it makes our evolution and adaptation possible (true right?). It makes our life go round or in motion. Our perception of motion is indeed incredible, bizarre like WHOAAH! For example, look at the image below.
Ohaaa! Cool, right? Did you see it, did you see the images moving?! This is just one example of how we perceive motion even if it’s not really moving. This image is what you call a Motion Perception Image. Tricky stuff there ha! It forms an illusion in our mind on seeing things moving when they actually don't. Thus shows that our mind is capable of perceiving things that are not true. Hence, when we think or see something weird or fuzzy, let us think again! Maybe we are just fooled by our motion perception.
I found an article by Ramachandran and Rogers-Ramachandran (2010) where they mentioned about Psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, who developed this series of images called Rotating Snakes. Yes, it’s the image you just saw above. They do look like rotating snakes right, awesome! HIHI
As discussed in the researchers’ article, viewing the image with your peripheral or minor vision makes the motion appear more pronounced. Staring fixedly at the image may lessen the sense of movement, but changing your eye position briefly by looking to one side refreshes the effect. Try to look at the image again. You can see that in this image movement in the direction that follows the colored segments from black to blue to white to yellow to black. However, the researchers said that the colors are merely added for aesthetic appeal and have no relevance to the effect (Ramachandran and Rogers-Ramachandran, 2010).
The question in our mind says, “Why does this illusion arise?” Well, for sure, others know but majority do not know. Researchers mentioned in the article that what we do know is that the odd arrangements of luminance-based edges must somehow "artificially" activate motion- detecting neurons in the visual pathways. That is, the particular patterns of luminance and contrast fool the visual system into seeing motion where none exists (Ramachandran and Rogers-Ramachandran, 2010). 
Guys! Do not be worried if you don't see the movement, its fine, because some people with otherwise normal vision simply do not. So yeah… HAHA Try this other cool image.
In addition, the researchers explained that “each motion-detecting neuron or detector receives signals from its receptive field: a patch of retina. When activated, a cluster of receptors in the left side of the receptive field sends a signal to the motion detector.” Hence, activation of motion neurons and activating motion detectors will result illusory motion, the brain is fooled into seeing motion in a static display.
Indeed, moving influences seeing. Factors like patterns, shapes, figures, color, etc. in a stationary image or scene can create illusory motion, which makes us see things moving when they actually don't. Amazing! :) The article was simple but certainly an interesting study. Perhaps, future researchers can do further studies about this and test this kind of motion perception in order to find a more reliable answer to our questions.
Source:
Ramachandran, V., & Rogers-Ramachandran, D. (2010). A Moving Experience. Scientific American Mind, 20(7), 22-24.
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