Brain Can Hear by Seeing

Research suggests the brain actually links hearing with sight because simply seeing a vase shatter activates the brain's auditory areas. In other words, you can "hear" even when you only "see" the sound being produced. MRI scans of silent videos of things being broken or instruments being played revealed activation of the auditory cortex and categorization of the sound.

Shoe Thrower Helps Neuroscience

When President Bush ducked shoes thrown at him, Prime Minister Maliki, standing right beside, barely flinched. This confirmed a theory that we have a dual vision system - human brains "see" things far before the eyes.

President Bush ducked because his brain’s action pathway labeled the trajectory of the shoe as a threat well before his perception pathway began to track its flight. Maliki's brain, however, realized the shoe wasn’t headed his way - so he didn't duck.

The findings have implications for sports, among other things.

Eyes Do Math

Researchers scanned brain activity of people moving their eyes right or left and asked participants to do mental math. They found that the brain circuitry that moves the eyes right does mental addition and the circuitry moving eyes left does mental subtraction. The finding demonstrates that math's development is too recent and advanced to have a brain region solely devoted to it - we reuse preexisting systems.

Tennis Referees Handicap

It takes at least .10 second for humans to register an image. With moving objects, we have to construct our perception and the brain requires us to consistently think something has gone slightly further than it really has. It is no surprise then that
research of 4,000+ randomly selected tennis points revealed 83 incorrect calls of which 70 were of the predicted type.

Maybe John did have a point.

Gene Therapy Cures Color Blindness

Nature reports that researchers used gene therapy to cure a form of color-blindness in adult squirrel monkeys.

Lacking a visual pigment called L-opsin, these monkeys cannot distinguish reds and green. Scientists introduced the pigment gene into the eyes of color-blind adults. 1 month later, the monkeys with the new L-opsin gene could see hues they’d never seen before.

Research is not mature enough to be tested on humans, but it is promising

Depression Affects Vision

Biological Psychiatry reports that depressed people have much lower retinal responses —even if they’re on antidepressants. The worse the depression, the worse the retina's performance. Also, the retinal reaction itself was a good diagnostic of depression.

So the world really can look "blehh" to a depressed person.

Eye Tattoos

Yes - there are such things as eye tattoos.

First tattoo artists use a traditional needle with ink. If the ink doesn't hold, they switch to a syringe that injects ink into the eye. The ink then slowly floods across the white portion of the eyeball over the next few weeks.

As expected, cornea tattooing is extremely dangerous. Infection, even perforation and hemorrhage are very possible. Most enthusiasts find that doctors, while willing to consult on the procedure, never performed it, leaving it to a tattoo artist.

Cosmetics aside, there are medical benefits to eye tattoos such as if the eye is burnt or cut, the tattoo can cover scars. It also helps with leucoma - an opaque white blemish - and keeps the eye's natural appearance.

Here's a scary video of a cosmetic eye tattoo.

Quit Smoking - Save Your Vision

A UCLA study reveals that smoking increases risk for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in Americans over 65. AMD damages the macula, the retina's center allowing us to see fine details. Cigarette smoking may increase AMD risk by reducing serum antioxidant levels, altering blood flow to the eyes and decreasing retinal pigments.


The effect is significant, even for individuals over 80 years of age ... so it really is never too late to quit.