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Why the Lights Don't Dim When We Blink

posted by janrinok on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the someone's-eyes-are-open dept.

charon writes:

Every few seconds, our eyelids automatically shutter and our eyeballs roll back in their sockets. So why doesn't blinking plunge us into intermittent darkness and light?

New research led by UC Berkeley shows that the brain works extra hard to stabilize our vision despite our fluttering eyes.

[...] In a study published today in the online edition of the journal Current Biology, they found that when we blink, our brain repositions our eyeballs so we can stay focused on what we're viewing.

When our eyeballs roll back in their sockets during a blink, they don't always return to the same spot when we reopen our eyes. This misalignment prompts the brain to activate the eye muscles to realign our vision, said study lead author Gerrit Maus, an assistant professor of psychology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Target Displacements during Eye Blinks Trigger Automatic Recalibration of Gaze Direction. Current Biology, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.029

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @04:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @04:40PM (#459541)

    Speaking of the amount of processing and blinking: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4849103/ [nih.gov]

    Spontaneous eye-blinks occur much more often than it would be necessary to maintain the tear film on the eyes. Various factors like cognitive demand, task engagement, or fatigue are influencing spontaneous blink rate. During cognitive information processing there is evidence that blinks occur preferably at moments that can be assigned to input stream segmentation.

    http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/08/16397851-blinking-gives-your-brain-a-break?lite [nbcnews.com]

    Tamami’s study finds that a blink switches the brain from the dorsal attention network, which helps someone attentively watch a “Mr. Bean” episode, to the default mode network, showing that the default mode network might play more active roles in various tasks than previously understood

    Try reading a large paragraph of a book without blinking and compare how much you can easily remember and understand vs reading it normally...

    p.s. this SN story's claim of "When our eyeballs roll back in their sockets during a blink" seems like BS to me. My eyes may jiggle about a bit during a blink but that's about it, there's no significant rolling back. And I've not noticed it in most other normal people.