People's brains can't handle this optical illusion

Warning: this is going to hurt your head.

A truly mind-bending optical illusion - which makes an identical picture of a street look like two completely different photos - has been doing the rounds on the internet.

It is hard to believe the photos are identical, but here's the proof.

Still don't believe it? Think that the gif maker might be in on the conspiracy? Trust nothing anymore?

Well, flick through these pictures from Imgur for more evidence that the only trickery at play is from your own brain.

Here's a doubled up version of the illusion if you feel like truly torturing yourself.

Ouch. One Reddit user theorised that our brain bunches the two pictures together and takes them in as one image.

And it seems this is pretty much exactly what's going on.

The illusion is believed to have been created by French illusion artist Daniel Picon in 2010.

It uses the 'Leaning Tower illusion' effect, first published in a 2007 paper that put two identical pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa next to each other.

The authors suggested the two photos are perceived differently by the brain because we are trying to take perspective into account.

Our knowledge of perspective however compensates for this and leads us to perceive the inclinations of the two towers veridically.

It follows that if the corresponding outlines of a pair of physically identical, receding objects are parallel in the two-dimensional projection, the objects cannot be physically parallel but, instead, must be diverging as they recede from view.

We officially all have warped minds.

More: This 'impossible' maths question is leaving everyone confused