A brief period of "blindness" enables us to see finer details better

Small moments of blindness happen so quickly that we don't even realize they're happening, nor do we realize all of the microscopic shifts that occur as we look around us.

Human eye

Humans change their eyesight more frequently than their heartbeat. These rapid eye movements, called saccades, greatly enhance visual acuity by reorienting the follicle in the retina.

New research shows how these subtle shifts also involve a very brief period of "blindness" in which our vision is automatically blocked.

Fine sagittal movements stimulate the follicle

Foveola is a small portion of the retina with a high density of cone cells that contains photoreceptors that are highly sensitive to light. The flap is used to see fine details such as when we are looking for a person in a crowd, or when we are trying to see a small object at a great distance.

When we look closely at something, our eyes make small, rapid shifts in gaze called micro-saccades.

Although these subtle blinking movements generally improve our vision, they also “temporarily” disrupt our vision, or what we might call “temporary blindness,” according to a study published in the journal PNAS in September. the past.

According to a report published on the website "Science Alret"; Periods of temporary blindness that occur in the eye when large shifts in the direction of vision occur in a study published in 2001 in the "Trends in Neurosciences" journal.

At the time, researchers called it a "saccadic suppression system," which is crucial to getting a good view and can be likened to rotating a telescope to get a clear view of our surroundings.

In their new study, a team of researchers from the University of Rochester and Boston focused on the small shifts that accompany the minute movements of the eye that stimulate the fovea, with the aim of finding out if they also cause a stage of temporary blindness, as is the case in Big shifts in the direction of view.

Temporary blindness improves vision

In the press release published by the University of Rochester on November 19, Janice Intwi, a vision scientist and co-lead author on the study, said, "We have observed that fine blinking movements are accompanied by short periods of visual inhibition during which we become completely blind."

"Our results show that the visual center undergoes drastic and rapid adjustments every time we redirect our gaze, such as looking to and from a computer screen."

Six volunteers observed "fleas" jumping on a "patch of fur" on a computer screen. They were in fact only looking at the dots on a "fuzzy natural background" that mimicked the fur of an animal. When they see "digital fleas jumping," volunteers press a button on the control panel.

Results from specialized scans of the follicle area showed that participants could not see digital fleas directly before and immediately after their small gaze shifts, even when they were looking directly at a screen.

Intwi believes that it is possible that "this brief loss of vision occurs so that we do not see the picture of the world change as we move our eyes, and so our visual system is able to create a stable image."

The researchers found that vision recovered quickly in the center of the eye after these brief episodes of blindness, and then continued to improve, concluding that vision has generally improved after this rapid eye movement.

More research

Neuroscientist Michele Rucci of the University of Rochester explained that these small moments of blindness "happen so quickly that we don't even realize they're happening, nor are we aware of all the microscopic gaze shifts that happen as we look around."

"In our lab, we have high-resolution instruments to study vision at such a small scale, while other research has historically focused on areas around the eye where such precision is often not required.

More research is needed that contributes to enhancing our understanding of the mechanisms of fine movements in the eye, enabling scientists to develop the necessary treatments for any defect that may affect this part of the visual system chain.