• Question: Do our eyes decieve us ?

    Asked by xheneta1 to Susan, Simon, Rachel, Lou, Dilwar on 16 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Susan Skelton

      Susan Skelton answered on 16 Nov 2013:

      Hi xheneta!
      Great question!
      I would say that our brain deceives us – we often see things very differently to how they actually are. I don’t think this is down to our eyes though – our eyes just collect light from whatever is in front of them and pass the information to our brain.
      Our brain is much more clever though. It processes the signals from our eyes and tells us if we are looking at an apple or a tennis ball. Sometimes it makes mistakes: that is why we can see strange effects when looking at optical illusion images!

    • Photo: Simon Langley-Evans

      Simon Langley-Evans answered on 16 Nov 2013:

      Sometimes they do. Our brain has the job of turning the images our eyes pick up into something that we understand and sometimes the brain makes a mess of this. When we see something that we have never encountered before the brain will try and label that thing as similar or different to things we have seen before and sometimes gets it wrong.

      Have a look on the net for optical illusions. There are some fantastic things out there where shapes and patterns confuse the brain so that we see something which isn’t there.

      Humans have evolved so that we try and find recognisable patterns in everything we see. Have you ever looked up at the clouds and see shapes there? People see faces in rocks on Mars, for the same reason. When I was very little I used to see scary faces in the pattern on my curtains… It is all about the brain trying to make sense of the world that the eyes show us.

    • Photo: Rachel Dakin

      Rachel Dakin answered on 17 Nov 2013:

      Hey Xheneta1, I think Susan and Simon have answered this for you : ) It’s not our eyes – they just do there job of dealing with light reflecting from objects – but our brains. I do think our brains decieve us, whether they mean to or not!

    • Photo: Louise Brown

      Louise Brown answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      We are always being deceived a little bit because when our brain processes what our eyes see, it takes a little bit of time, so we are always just a little bit out of time (even if it is a tiny tiny tiny bit)!

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