What is peripheral vision and how does it work?
In: Biology
Light hitting your eye from the side is directed into the eye and hits sensory cells just like light coming from in front of the eye, but It hits different ones in a different location due to the angle. Either the sensory cells aren’t as robust or numerous in that spot, or the brain just isn’t programmed to be able to see stuff clearly too far to the side. Either way, what the brain is very very good at is detecting changes in the image that is coming from the side. This gives us almost 6th Sense level motion detection, even in darkness that our forward vision can’t see very well in.
Peripheral vision is everything outside of the centre of your vision. When light hits your retina, the information is converted into electrical signals that are resolved by your brain to create an image. The centre of your retina, the fovea, has the greatest concentration of cones – which gives the centre of your vision great colour vision. The information from here is also less compressed, which means you have greater acuity.
Everything outside of this is mostly rods and dictates your peripheral vision, and these don’t detect colour. The information here is also compressed more, so it has less acuity. Your peripheral vision is basically everything that you’re not looking at, and because you’re not focusing on it, you’re unable to make out finer details. But your brain is able to fill in information based on context so it ‘looks’ as rich as when you’re not focusing in on it.
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