When we're looking at the world around us, our eyes are constantly readjusting and reassessing what we're seeing – and new research shows how these shifts also involve a very brief period of 'blindness' when our vision is automatically blocked.
Our eyes make small and rapid gaze shifts called microsaccades when we're looking closely at something, and the new study shows how these microsaccades also temporarily disable our vision – which overall seem to improve vision.
A specialized eye scanner was used to record the foveolas of the participants while they were looking at the 'fleas' – and this revealed that they were unable to see the digital fleas immediately before and immediately after gaze shifts, even when they were apparently looking directly at them.
These tiny moments of vision suppression happen so quickly that we're not conscious that they're happening, and nor are we aware of all the microscopic gaze shifts that go on while we look at what's around us.
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