speculatrix t1_j75ni1f wrote on February 4, 2023 at 6:37 AM

Yes, only the central part of your retina, called the fovea, has the best high quality vision for colour and resolution, that's part of the macula. This relies on light sensitive cells called cones.

The outer retina uses cells called rods which are more sensitive to light with a faster response time, and are better for night, but only offer monochrome vision. This is thought to be a survival trait, to see the movement of predators at night in your peripheral vision.

So, that full colour vision you have? Your brain is faking it.

https://www.kenhub.com/en/library/anatomy/photoreceptors

_Oman t1_j77yd11 wrote on February 4, 2023 at 7:39 PM

Your brain is faking all of it. The actual visual stimuli from your eye has far less bandwidth than you would think. Your brain builds a 3 dimensional internal representation of the world around you and is continuously updated part by part from your visual input. It's nothing like a computer monitor where all the pixels are being refreshed every single time.

In fact your ears will update the internal representation as well as your eyes. Your brain processes the sounds, directions, and timing of the sounds to help update your location within that representation.

Just how well your visual cortex understands the complex interaction of light on surfaces is truly amazing. There is a particular optical illusion that demonstrates how strong this knowledge of how light should work can influence what you believe is true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion

Your brain INSISTS that A and B are different shades, because the rest of the checkerboard follows a consistent pattern, and part of it must be in shadow. It is one of those optical illusions that is nearly impossible to "turn off" because your visual cortex simply does this processing 100% of the time automatically.

Gyrosoundlabs t1_j79x5re wrote on February 5, 2023 at 5:03 AM

I like this test. The red dot is moving from right to left, and a green dot flashes exactly at the point where they are aligned. But your brain projects the red dot past the green dot because that's where it thinks it SHOULD be. Weird stuff.

https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/reality-constructed-your-brain-here-s-what-means-and-why-it-matters

soMAJESTIC t1_j799klx wrote on February 5, 2023 at 1:34 AM

I use this at night when trying to spot the cats in the yard. They’re practically invisible while directly in front of you, but you can see them almost clearly out of the corner of your eye.

[deleted] t1_j75sgr9 wrote on February 4, 2023 at 7:42 AM

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Jarlentium t1_j769f2w wrote on February 4, 2023 at 11:45 AM

I would bet that this effect is less from the eyes themselves and more from the brain focusing on your center of view and only really watching for movement/changes in your peripheral vision

The_Fredrik t1_j77mdt6 wrote on February 4, 2023 at 6:17 PM

No, it’s a physiological difference in the structure of the eye.

The brain just fills in the gaps, just like it does with the blind spot.

_Oman t1_j77yxe1 wrote on February 4, 2023 at 7:43 PM

It's called your persistence of vision, or retinal persistence. It is not even across your visual field. It is also not the same for all individuals. Some people can detect a pulsing light source at higher frequencies than others.