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
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:35PM
The amount of image processing my brain does is scary. I am pretty sure my eyes are failing, yet my "mind's eye" is very sharp.
Details get filled in with interpolation, or even outright guessing.
It became noticeable one day when I got on the wrong bus. The display above the driver miraculously corrected itself when I asked the driver why he was going the wrong way -- and he said: "I'm not." The phrase "you can only see what you expect to see" rang true that day.
I think in an old comment I mentioned occasionally beating the diffraction limit (by scanning as far as I can tell -- focusing breaks the image). Wish I could do that on demand.
(Score: 5, Funny) by takyon on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:43PM
𝓷𝓲𝓬𝓮 𝓫𝓻𝓲𝓪𝓷
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:49PM
Yes, self proof-reading is difficult for the same reason :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @04:40PM
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.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:53PM
Either I have been blinking "wrong" for about five decades, or my eyes are way more precise with motion control than the average UC Berkeley researcher's eyes.
My blinks generally happen quickly ("in the blink of an eye", you might say), failing to give my eyes time to roll randomly around. Is that not what I am supposed to be doing?
Sure, I can close my eyes and rest them for a few moments (orders of magnitude longer than a blink) with a little eye motion involved, but during blinking, I mean, really, who has time to move their eyes around?
There's an interesting bit in TFA about the actual research involved,
But that does not seem to explain TFA's leading sentence...
Every few seconds our eyeballs roll back in their sockets? Seriously?
(Score: 1) by charon on Friday January 27 2017, @03:49AM
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday January 27 2017, @09:38AM
Every few seconds our eyeballs roll back in their sockets? Seriously?
Your eyes are constantly moving, google "saccade". You don't realise it because your brain makes up stuff to cover up the movements, google "confabulation across saccades". This causes various weird effects, e.g. google "chronostasis". I'm being lazy there and substituting Google for typing up a ton of stuff...
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday January 27 2017, @12:53PM
I don't question this at all. It's "Your eyes are constantly rolling back in their sockets" which seems to imply a greater degree of movement than actually occurs.
There's a video/animation recording of someone blinking in TFA, and sure, her eyes technically do not remain literally fixed with micron precision, but neither do they constantly roll back in their sockets from what I can tell.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @01:49PM
I've before watched myself blink in the mirror and taken video, my eyes sure as hell do not "roll back inside their sockets every time I blink." Your eyes more around a lot but they don't move THAT fast.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @06:44PM
The eyes move around during a blink to get better lubricated. The whole point of blinking is to lubricate the eyes.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday January 27 2017, @06:57PM
Either I have been blinking "wrong" for about five decades, or my eyes are way more precise
No, you only think they are, which is the point. Although I do wonder if they're not drawing enough of a distinction between your regular blinky-blink and a good solid bliiiink.
Regardless, your brain does a scary amount of processing to fool you into not noticing things.
Have you ever shifted your eyes over to a clock and caught the second hand lingering, as if it had gone "tick tock tiiiiick tock"? That's because your brain shut down your visual perception while your eyes were moving to stop you getting dizzy. Then it retroactively fills in your perception, so you think you've been looking at the clock since the beginning of the eye movement.
There's another good one involving a button and a light. Push the button, light lights up. Do it again. And again. But in this experiment, there's a bit of electronics which is gradually delaying the lighting of the light. Your brain starts to compensate, based on what it expects to see - so much so that when, after a while, the delay is suddenly removed, you'd swear the light came on before you pushed the button.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday January 27 2017, @07:07PM
As I understand it, they are talking about the blink that happens every few seconds. That's the blinky-blink, not the good solid bliiiink.
A true and otherwise fascinating statement that does not in any way support the idea that your eyes roll back into your head every few seconds, which is one of the dumbest things I've heard this week.
This is very, very neat, but doesn't do much for the idea that my eyes roll around like certain folks are claiming. The woman blinking in TFA is demonstrating what my eyes do as well. Her eyes do not have a bad case of the roll-back-into-her-head disease, and neither do mine.
I am sure there is, but what has it to do with the idea that everyone's eyes roll back into their heads every few seconds? I get, and am amazed by, the awesome visual processing that the brain does to deliver smooth real-life-definition video.
I just don't think that everyone's eyes move more than a millimeter or so during the typical blink every few seconds.
If I am missing the point, and am making rather a fool of myself, I genuinely would love to understand the fact.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday January 27 2017, @07:31PM
Nah, I think it's just journalistic wafflebollocks.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Thursday January 26 2017, @11:02PM
Yeah, there's no way on god's green earth I'm clicking on a URL that looks like that.
I spend enough of my time teaching other people "for the love of god, don't click on links that look like that" to do it myself. I don't care how much I trust the editors or submitters here.
Not that a plausible URL is a guarantee of legitimacy, but no thanks on one that looks like that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by stormwyrm on Thursday January 26 2017, @11:31PM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Thursday January 26 2017, @11:35PM
A fine point, perhaps, but...
Well, that's the identifier of the linked article, such as it is, and therefore that's the link text, but the URL itself looks like this:
I.e., dx dot doi dot org slash something.
I believe that URLs that start with something dot something dot org and then follow with the name of a document or folder are not quite as dire as would a URL itself that is a soup and salad of random numbers, letters, and dots.
I agree that Digital Object Identifiers [doi.org] are ugly, but I am not sure that judging the URL by its link text is warranted.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday January 27 2017, @12:00AM
We've probably had a couple hundred articles on SoylentNews with prominent DOIs at this point. I insert them into quoted text too in square brackets if applicable. Almost every science submission I do will have:
Article Title (open, DOI: 10.1XXX/stuff) (DX)
at the bottom. DOI string is recognized by my extension and linkified to the service of your choice, and DX is a link to the dx.doi.org/10.1XXX/stuff which is the easiest and most dynamic way to locate an article. In this case, the submitter or editor just linked the DOI to dx.doi.org which is fine too.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2010/03/dois-and-their-discontents-1/ [arstechnica.com]
I'm at a point where I recognize journal groups by the four digit number. 1016 is Cell. Nature is 1038. Science is 1126.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Friday January 27 2017, @12:07AM
...there's way too much information to decode the Matrix. You get used to it, though. Your brain does the translating. I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead. Hey uh, you want a drink?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 27 2017, @12:06AM
Here's some recent DOI samples:
Micrometeorites Found in Roof Gutters [soylentnews.org]
Giant Wave Observed in Venusian Atmosphere [soylentnews.org]
Neonicotinoid Can Cause Brain Damage in Bats; Bumblebee Species Added to Endangered List [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @02:31PM
Uh, just what paranoid and ignorant heuristic do you tell people to use? One cannot judge a book by its cover, and one dang sure cannot judge an internet URL by the characters in it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Friday January 27 2017, @12:09AM
All I know is I try not to blink: those damn weeping angels.....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday January 27 2017, @11:33AM
... quick ... back to the Tardis!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @01:04AM
manual blinking activated
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @01:25AM
I would add my own findings to this research:
Eyes roll around in their sockets during the blink so that when the eyes open, they have to roll somewhat to position the view at the correct location. This movement of eye finds the changes that have occurred in the scenery. Now, for example, you open your eyes and never blink. This causes the rest of the scenery to disappear (and be ignored) gradually, until you are not able to see anything other than the center of the view. This is done so that the person can notice changes.
The brain contains buffers to store images, and stores most of the static image. It only updates in real time the parts that are moving. After blink and eye-roll, the eyes have to move to find the old location. This causes the whole scenery to be updated in the brain buffer. This is a safety mechanism.
I am not a medicine-person.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @02:01AM
I guess I have some kind of brain disorder. Every time I blink I see black for a second. I guess my brain doesn't do that "processing". Possibly I lack some sort of gene. It doesn't get in the way of my life. I can easily ignore the black moments, but unlike things like the blind spot, my brain is not "filling in" the darkness. (i.e., no matter how hard I try, I cannot see my blind spot, and it always is filled in, but if I focus I can easily see blinks, even if day to day I ignore them.)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday January 27 2017, @03:40AM
That is about how much I see blinks as well, and I suspect most people.
I see a lot of flicker if I blink deliberately quickly, for example.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday January 27 2017, @03:55AM
I can see blinks if I'm paying attention to them. Looks kind of like a black flash (slightly brighter after the blink, presumably as the iris adjusts). But I'm ridiculously aware of everything my body does, to the point that my doctor thinks I'm a freak. Might be not that you've got something missing, but that you're hyperaware.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday January 27 2017, @07:24AM
So you see black every few seconds throughout the day? Because if you pay attention you see lots of things that are normally calculated away by your brain. For example, if I want, I can clearly see that my eyes deliver different images, which are misaligned at any distance other than where I focus. But in normal everyday life, my brain calculates that away; I'm not constantly distracted by it. Also, when I think of it, I clearly notice the nose in my field of view (on different sides for the two eyes). But when not explicitly thinking of it, the nose "disappears" completely from my perception.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday January 27 2017, @07:18PM
But when not explicitly thinking of it, the nose "disappears" completely from my perception.
I knew someone who broke her nose and was distracted for weeks because it wasn't in quite the right place in her visual field any more. She eventually got used to it, but it took a while.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @07:27AM
"day to day I ignore them". That's what the publication is about. You CAN ignore them, because the brain does a great job of adjusting what is actually being sent by the eye.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday January 27 2017, @04:19PM
I find that happens to me when I am tired, especially after a long period of coding (staring at the screen). I actually see the black of the blink.
Not sure if my brain is too tired to do the processing, or my eyes are too tired and blink slower than usual.
Get some other effects from time to time as well, like everything becoming wavy. It is kinda trippy, but also a good signal that I should have a long rest away from computer screens.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday January 27 2017, @08:53PM
When I have been up for 16 hours, things start getting desaturated and grainy.
(Score: 1) by Captain Black on Friday January 27 2017, @11:44AM
...damn you!
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Friday January 27 2017, @09:18PM
Our brain momentarily "blacks out" what we see as our eyeballs move to prevent blurring.
Neat stuff, evolution is.