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In Brief
- Even when you think your eyes are staring, fixed in space, they are actually on the go. Their miniature motions prevent you from being blind to most of what is out there.
- Tiny “fixational” eye movements also support our ability to search a visual scene, in concert with the bigger shifts of our eyes of which we are often consciously aware.
- Minute flicks of the eyes called microsaccades can reveal objects that attract our attention.
Look up from this page and scan the scene in front of you. Your eyes dart around, bringing different objects into view. As you read this article, your eyes jump to bring every word into focus. You can become aware of, and even control, these large movements of the eyes, which scientists call saccades. But even when your eyes are apparently fixed on something—say, on a tree, face or word—they are moving imperceptibly, underneath your awareness. And recent research shows that these minute, subconscious eye movements are essential for seeing.
If you could somehow halt these miniature motions, any image you were staring at would fade from view. In fact, you would be rendered blind for most of the day. Although these eye movements have long baffled scientists, only recently have researchers come to appreciate their importance. Indeed, we now have garnered strong evidence that the largest of these involuntary meanderings, the so-called microsaccades, are critical to everyday vision.
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4 Comments
Add CommentI may have experienced something similar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA few times when I woke up at night and went to the bathroom, while standing up in front of the toilet I rested my gaze, a bit to the left, on our white porcelain sink. I noticed that if I didn't move and if I maintained a detached and fixed gaze on the sink then the drain started to fade to white and blend in with the sink, and the rest of my vision, beyond the sink, could also fade to white leaving me with a complete white field -- and at any point a slight movement brought back my vision.
This was a few years ago and it took some practice and experimentation over a few nights, and at most twice I lasted until my vision appeared to go completely white. I haven't tried since because it was somewhat discomforting, and there seems to be an urge to move, blink, or regain reference.
Before writing this I tried gazing at my computer screen in front of me, thinking, that as the background is mostly white, then maybe I can lose sight of the page in the same way ... but it was discomforting enough that I stopped ...
I'm supposing there is much more info being conveyed by my screen (the first top 12 inches of this page) than by a white porcelain sink, so to "disorient" vision is probably a bigger step than when looking at a sink, not to mention I was thrown of by the sensation of groups of different bold fonts starting to turn into black rectangles and also by the image of eye shifting its position slightly while a deep black edge appeared just around it, moving slightly, but lagging its position just behind the movements of the eye image.
Anecdotes. Others?
You spelled minuscule wrong. Otherwise... interesting article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Miniscule"? Really? From Scientific American?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess the spelling has been corrected, but for the information of people who happen on this page, these are the Oxford English Dictionary's comments on the spelling of minuscule:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The standard spelling is minuscule rather than miniscule. The latter form is a very common one (accounting for almost half of citations for the term in the Oxford English Corpus), and has been recorded since the late 19th century. It arose by analogy with other words beginning with mini-, where the meaning is similarly ‘very small’. It is now so widely used that it can be considered as an acceptable variant, although it should be avoided in formal contexts."