Have you ever looked into a mirror in an attempt to see your eye's movements? You probably noticed as you shifted focus from one to the other that you couldn't see the movements, but you knew that it was happening. It's as if your eyes don't move at all.
If you've ever tried to have another person confirm what you were seeing, they probably disagreed. They could see your eyes moving, the way your gaze shifted.
Saccades
People have probably been wondering why they can‘t see their own eye movements for as long as there have been mirrors. In fact, scientists in the mid-1970s did a study to answer this question.
You might remember that rapid eye movements are called saccades. Scientists studying this phenomenon found that our vision is suppressed right before, and during each saccade. It‘s called saccadic suppression.
So, why does it happen?
Our brain creates perceptual stability by suppressing our vision whenever our eyes shift rapidly from one point to the next. If it didn't do this, the world would, and this would be very disorienting, appear to move every time we moved our eyes.
If you want to read another post about saccades, click here. And if you've ever wondered why exactly you appear to have red eyes in photographs, click here.
Thank you to Nicholas Port of Indiana Univerity's Optometry program for reviewing this episode's script.