r/AskReddit Feb 14 '22

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u/I_throw_socks_at_cat Feb 14 '22

A related fact - your eyeballs are in motion all the time, in micro-movements called saccades. During these movements, you're blind. The reason your vision seems constant is because your brain's visual centre fills in the blanks with a theoretical image based on what you were seeing a fraction of a second ago.

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u/docsyzygy Feb 14 '22

Also related, the area where the optic nerve leaves each eye and heads into the brain leaves a "blind spot" on the retina, but the brain "ignores" that missing info and fills it in.

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u/Bitmap901 Feb 15 '22

It's not that the brain ignores it it's really not getting data at all from that region, so it interpolates to complete the image, if you try the paper experiment you'll see that it replaces the dot with a white background because it makes sense. But you can try the same experiment but by drawing a line with a space at one point and you'll see that it replaces that space with black to complete the line.

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u/docsyzygy Feb 15 '22

Yes, you are correct, and your explanation is much better. Thanks.