Seeing

Our ears feed information to our brains when we listen. Of course, our eyes play a part as well. Scientists estimate that about one-third of your brain is linked to vision (your eyes). It takes a lot of brain power to make sense of what you’re seeing.

Your eyeball is actually pretty big. We only see about one-sixth of it when it’s inside our heads. Doctors tell me it feels like a bag filled with gel. And it’s complicated. It has many different parts that work together. Check out the picture on this post.

Tiny muscles help the lens of your eye focus. Point a camera at something close to you, then shift it to something further away. It takes a second or two for the camera lens to react. Your eye’s lens does it almost instantly.

You have a bunch of light receptors at the back of your eye. Their job is to catch the light from anything you’re looking at. The light travels along the optic nerve to your brain, which figures out the images. It processes at incredible speed–every second of every moment you’re awake and looking at things.

Like hearing and listening, looking and seeing have different meanings. When we hear a sound, our brains don’t take much notice unless we listen.

The same goes for our eyes. We can look at something, but our brains only understand it if we see it correctly.