POWERFUL OCULOMOTOR MECHANISM BEHIND BLINKING EYES

Once in a few seconds, we automatically blink our eyes. And, back in their sockets our eyeballs roll. Have you ever wondered why this shuttering doesn’t plunge us into intermittent light and darkness?

Researchers at University of California, Berkeley, have made a surprising discovery behind this. They have found that the fluttering our eyes does more than just lubricating them and shielding them from irritants. Their study detected that during blinking, our eyeballs are repositioned by our brain so that we can stay focused on what we are seeing. This has been published in the Current Biology journal’s online edition.

"Our findings suggest that the brain gauges the difference in what we see before and after a blink, and commands the eye muscles to make the needed corrections” said Gerrit Maus, the study lead. If we lack this powerful oculomotor mechanism, especially while blinking, we would see erratic, shadowy and jittery surroundings.

Patrick Cavanagh, a co-author, commented that this vision stabilizing mechanism of the brain is like a “steadicam of the mind”. These detections widen our understanding of our brain’s function of continuously adapting to changes, instructing our muscles to rectify our bodies’ errors. 

Content Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170119134546.htm

Image Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpT6-POFDC8