Why Peripheral Vision is Your Secret Asset
Posted: October 10, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Why Peripheral Vision is Your Secret Asset
“Always look people in the eye,” my Pop said, “because Gonifs (thieves, swindlers,
and rascals) never look you in the orbs. They are too busy figuring how to steal your
401K like Bernie Madoff.” That remark got me thinking about peripheral and foveal (central) vision.
When you are jerking around on the Internet, playing video games, watching TV, add reading-and-writing, you are focusing your eyes through a tiny peephole in your retina called the Fovea < Latin for Pit. It produces your sharpest, central seeing.
Foveal vision is one of the differences between Homo sapiens and the rest of the
living things. Animals, insects and even viruses see using wide (outside-of-the-center) peripheral viewing.
When is the last time you saw a lamb, horsefly or Swine Flu virus Googling on their computer, reading an article in Scientific America, or writing a letter home to Mama? All those activities require foveal vision.
See, they want to view the Big-Picture which requires the edges, fringe, and
outside. Peripheral < Greek: meaning - circumference – the sides, not the sharp center.
Remember narrow = foveal, and wide = peripheral (holistic).
So What
Our species, according to the latest scientific research is 4.4 million years old, (see
ARDI from Ethiopia, and forget Lucy who is only 3.5 million). However, modern Homo sapiens, folks who look more like us than gorillas in the zoo, are only 10- 12,000 years old.
The point is that sharp, central, foveal vision is only about – five hundred years old.
That means our kind – plain-old-folks from Europe, Africa, and Asia, have been
successfully surviving and thriving – seeing exclusively with their w-i-d-e, holistic, peripheral sight for more than ten thousand years. Foveal reading-and-writing (narrow sight) are recent, used since Shakespeare (1564-1616).
Harnessing Technology
“Two wrongs do not make a right, but Two-Wrights can make an airplane”.
Electronics is a baby-new technology – call it Edison and his 1,093 patents.
The phonograph went public in 1877, and Electricity (1879) became popular (mainstream) after World War I.
The Computer, TV, Videos, Reading and Writing are newbies, compared to how
our ancients made their living. Forget pussy-cats and Lassie, we have survived
and thrived as Predators eating the meat of the denizens of the savannah, not
petting them.
Our kind needed to see the big, wide picture to catch their prey. When you organize hunters to knock off your food, and all you have to communicate with are vocal whistles, grunts and screams, your eyes are the difference between starvation, and bringing home the wild boar’s bacon for the wife and kiddies.
Voluntary, Not Autonomic
We have will power, (volition) and freedom, to see foveally (sharply) or switch to
wide, holistic peripheral vision. Imagine the NBA player dribbling the ball down court looking straight in front, yet seeing his rivals to his extreme left and right.
Is that foveal or peripheral? Narrow or wide?
Foveal is narrow, peripheral is wide. We need both for different purposes.
We make the switch (Top-Down) using the Executive function located in our Neocortex thinking brain. How? Check out your PreFrontal Cortex.
We choose to change our Eye-Movements by switching focus using our
Extra-Ocular-Muscles. Both eyes together have a dozen muscles, (six in each) unless you are a Cyclops, one-eyed Greek mythical giant. These muscles produce three core eye-movements: microsaccades-drifts-temors.
Who Cares
Your eyes are constantly (82% of the time) making fast, irregular jolts (movements,
saccades) – when changing focus from foveal to peripheral, and vice-versa. If they are not making Microsaccades, Drifts, and Tremors – guess what? You lose the picture. Visual Fading occurs if there is no counteraction from your three Eye-Movements.
For Anatomy students: Google: Super Colliculus, MicroSaccades, Vestibulo-Ocular-Reflex, and the Striatum, which includes the caudate, and is part of the Basal Ganglia. Yes, Inquiring Minds care where the feet-grow-from.
Peripheral Vision
Let’s be pragmatic – what has my peripheral-seeing done for me lately?
Get this: forg
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