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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: 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.