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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: 2) by requerdanos on Friday January 27 2017, @07:07PM

    by requerdanos (5997) on Friday January 27 2017, @07:07PM (#459649) Journal

    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.

    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.

    Regardless, your brain does a scary amount of processing to fool you into not noticing things.

    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.

    Have you ever shifted your eyes over to a clock... second hand...brain fills in...retroactive vision adjustment...

    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.

    There's another good one involving a button and a light.

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday January 27 2017, @07:31PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Friday January 27 2017, @07:31PM (#459665) Homepage

    Nah, I think it's just journalistic wafflebollocks.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk