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Did you know that your eyes experience "blindness" every day, or tens of thousands of times a day!
Don't rush to make bricks.
While you may not have noticed it, the latest research has proven that:
When you stare at something and want to see clearly, your vision will be suppressed first, and you will not be able to notice moving objects at all.
The study, from the University of Rochester, has been published in PNAS.
Specifically, the study states:
Our eyes produce a behavior called "micro-eye movement" at a high frequency every day, which is accompanied by brief visual inhibition, during which we are basically equivalent to "blindness".
But after that, vision quickly recovers and continues to improve, and overall vision is briefly enhanced.
What's going on here?
What is micro-eye movement?
When we stare at an object, the eyes seem to be motionless.
But in fact, the eyes are doing tiny vibrations all the time, called "microsaccades".
Micro-eye movement is not controlled by subjective will, and it persists even when staring at a certain point:
This frequency is maintained once or twice a second, and it can reach tens of thousands of times a day.
To perceive micro-eye movements, try staring at the following image and you'll see that they look like they're moving:
Don't underestimate these slight vibrations, they allow us to see the details of the object more clearly.
This is because although our eyes rely on the retina to collect visual information, there is only a very small area in the center of the retina that can collect high-resolution information.
This area is a small foveola on the macula of the retina, which has more photosensitive cells than other retinal areas, which has higher visual sensitivity and can distinguish more details of objects.
Its area is very small, so if the eye wants to see the details of the whole thing in its entirety, it must slightly move the line of sight, so that the photoreceptor cells in the small concave position contact more stimulation, so there is micro-eye movement.
So, how can micro-eye movements be related to "blindness"?
Large eye movements can cause brief "blindness"
This has to go back to our normal eye movement behavior, that is, to move the line of sight more sharply.
△ Similar to this
In previous studies, scientists have found that widespread eye movements can cause us to temporarily "go blind."
Within the visual range that we can be aware of, if there is a sudden shift in sight, such as looking back and forth between two computer screens, visual ability will suddenly decrease during the transition.
This transient visual inhibition phenomenon is called saccadic suppression.
Why do humans need saccade suppression?
As mentioned above, we usually look at high-resolution things, which are through micro-eye movements to constantly refresh the visual stimuli that photosensitive cells come into contact with to avoid neural adaptation (for example, the "+" sign in the figure and lasts for more than ten seconds, you will find that the color gradually disappears):
△ Image source Wikipedia Tuxler's fading
However, too much visual stimulation is not good.
Especially when moving our eyes quickly, if the eyes do not block a large amount of visual information, our brain nerves will receive excessive stimulation, causing a feeling of vertigo, and appearing like the "halo 3D" phenomenon felt in high-resolution games.
Therefore, when there is a large amount of eye movement, the eye needs to be suppressed by scanning, shielding the information generated by a large amount of gaze movement to avoid our dizziness.
In this process, the eye will have a phenomenon of saccade inhibition, that is, a brief "blindness".
However, previous research has remained in the study of the phenomenon of eye movement and saccade inhibition.
Scientists don't know if micro-eye movement itself also exhibits saccade inhibition, and whether this affects the visibility of the macula.
Limited by the accuracy of the device, scientists have not previously conducted experiments related to micro-eye movements.
Micro-eye movements also produce visual inhibition
But now, a team of researchers from the University of Rochester has obtained high-precision experimental equipment and is beginning to explore the effects of micro-eye movements on vision.
The researchers played a game of "catching fleas" on a high frame rate screen. They found 8 testers and looked for 30 electronic "fleas" in the frame.
Among them, the "fleas" are the black dots on the picture, each black dot occupies a viewing angle of 5 points (1/12 degree), when the black dots turn white, it represents the "fleas" jumping up.
The experimental process is as follows, where the yellow X is the center of sight and the cyan line is eye movement:
The tester first used 1 second to adapt to the picture of this "fur", and then began to "catch fleas", that is, press the button at the moment when the flea jumped (the black spot turned white).
The researchers were surprised to find that neither the participants could see the fleas before or after the "flea" transfer, even if they stared directly at where the fleas might appear:
Experimental results show that micro-eye movement is also accompanied by transient visual inhibition, during which we are basically "blind".
No matter how quickly the tester reacted, the eye could not notice moving objects when "blind."
However, after experiencing a brief period of "blindness", vision is quickly restored and continuously improved in the center of the gaze, and overall vision is briefly enhanced:
From the experimental data, it can be seen that after the micro-eye movement occurs, the vision recovers very quickly.
On average, in the macular region, sensitivity has returned to 90% of what it was before less than 25 milliseconds after micro-eye movement ends, and the outer area can fully recover within 25 milliseconds.
100 milliseconds after micro-eye movements, visual sensitivity also rebounded, averaging 12% higher.
Next, the researchers plan to continue to study the relationship between visual inhibition and vision enhancement, and further investigate how these persistent depression adjustments affect eye movement strategies, and how humans can actively respond to these strategies to improve visual performance.
In this way, the difficulty of making artificial eyes has increased a lot.