Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Isaiah_6_8 t1_j1ym6kj wrote

Reply to comment by AirborneRodent in ELI5: When scientists say babies have blurred vision, how do they know? by DreadMCYT

I'm 40 and havent worn any eyeglasses up until about a year ago. My (general) doctor decided to do one of those eye chart exams during an annual physical and found that I was having a semi difficult time.. and so I was referred to the actual eye doctor. They found that I needed very minimal adjustments-- so much so, that the actual lenses look like I'm wearing fake/fashion glasses lol. Anyway... It was amazing how much clarity I was missing out on!

During the first few months of wearing them, I didn't notice too much of a difference with them off. But now, a year later, without them, it's very blurry. Did my brain do that favoring thing you talked about? instead of favoring a good eye over the bad eye, it's choosing glasses over no glasses?

9

Vanyeetus t1_j1yonmc wrote

From what I've gathered (lifelong glasses user) your brain can adjust for your crappy vision. It refines and fixes based on what it thinks should be there and is usually pretty good at it. When you get glasses and it no longer has to do that work (because the eye is transmitting a clearer image) it gets lazy and stops working on that refine and fix for the blurred vision. If you kept your glasses off long enough it may stay the same or you may adjust to it and think the blurs are normal because your brain is "erasing" them in real time based on what it knows something should look like.

The refine/ fix thing is a perfectly normal thing for the brain to do and it does it constantly in ways we mostly don't pay attention to (peripheral vision is a huge one for this) because it gets it right 99% of the time. The times it doesn't tend to produce things like shadow people or things that make you double-take and focus on an object because the fix the brain did was off enough for you to recognize it but focusing gave it more data to do it right.

tl;dr your brain is fuckin' weird and makes shit up constantly and when it doesn't have to do that it's a lazy fuck that sits on the couch and demands sugar, fat, and caffeine.

13

-WhatCouldGoWrong t1_j21rjce wrote

my eye doctor told me a story about an older dude in england. lived alone. his children came round now and then to make sure he was looking after hisself and his cupboards had food in them. for a decade or so this was the routine. one night he had a bad fall and during the course of his recovery and assessment if he could still live alone he went the doctors, they sent him to the eye doctors, the eye doctors concluded he was fully blind and had been for a long time

​

There was a bit of investigation into neglect from the children had they just let him bumble around this house fully blind for a few years but ultimately they concluded his brain had built an image of his house, the furniture, everything within the property from when he could still see stuff, so though he could not see, he could still see how it all was in his brain so he never seemed like he was blind to his children

​

I'd love to know if there's a link to that. It's a story that always stuck with me and made me wonder.

3