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The unnoticed eye motions that help us see the world

Eye movements lasting only a few hundredths of a second create an information-laden ‘smear’ on the retina.
A visual representation of saccadic eye movement - left side is a clear image, right side blurry

As we look at a scene, high-speed eye motions create ‘streaks’ (right) on the retina that we do not perceive but that the eye uses to maintain a coherent view. Credit: Martin Rolfs

When we look at a scene, our eyes dart from one point to another an estimated three times per second. Although we don’t perceive this rapid-fire jitter, experiments reveal that it produces visual information that helps us to make sense of the world around us.

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Nature 596, 10 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02058-9

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