I once read an article about blind spots caused by the movements of your eyes. It seems, for the brain to make sense of what is transmitted to it through the lens of your eyes, the eyes first must focus. When your eyes move left or right, up or down, they are not focused, therefore creating a blind spot. We see and comprehend what was there before they moved, and what is there after, but not during the movement itself.
Ok, I thought, what's the big deal? So I can't see for that millisecond, less than the proverbial blink of an eye, and I let it go at that, until... I read a more recent article about what we actually see and assume we see. How about, it takes 15 seconds for the mind to actually cobble together a series of images from eye movements, and 'then' it decides what's in front of us.
Huh? What? Wait... 15 seconds? Yep, 15 seconds. That's how long it takes for the brain to process the enormous amount of information that it's flooded with just from the blink of an eye. It's just too much info, and no matter how amazing the human brain is, it can't handle all that data at once.
Think about it. Stare at a picture and take note of all that you absorb, every little detail in that picture. Now, move your eyes ever so slightly. Same picture, but from a different perspective, so although the image is the same, the info we get from it is now completely different. Multiply that by how many times your eyes moved while just reading this sentence.
Researchers have found that the brain makes a lot, a... lot..., of assumptions about what it sees, and from the first image it focuses on, to the last that it uses to make a final decision, takes about 15 seconds.
How scary is that?
The article at Science Alert gives an in-depth explanation, and I may never drive, or walk, or get out of my chair, again.
#vision #science #sight #eyes
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