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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: 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.