Hi Natalie,
For whatever reasons, i seem to know that Baingio Pinna is credited with this illusion. From Discover magazine...."Vision researchers Baingio Pinna and Gavin Brelstaff theorize that illusory rotation arises from the brain's strategy of making certain neurons responsible for detecting both the orientation and the direction of movement of visual lines and curves.
Neurons in the visual cortex of the brain are organized into subgroups, each of which responds best to lines oriented at a specific angle. Neurons that "prefer" the particular angle of an object viewed at any given moment are more active than those preferring other orientations. A subgroup of visual neurons gets most excited when a line with a preferred orientation is in motion and the direction of that motion is at a right angle to the line's orientation.
Just as the brain determines the orientation of objects by "looking" at which groups of orientation-selective neurons are active, it also assesses the direction of motion of objects by the activity of those same nerve cells. This doubling up of orientation and motion detection works great if a line is moving at right angles to its orientation, but if the line is moving in any other direction, the brain gets confused."
jim
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