I’m doing some balance exercise and whenever I close my eyes l lose my balance immediately but regain my balance when I open my eyes.
While my eyes are open during the balance exercise I’m not looking at my body or anything in particular so I don’t understand why it matters to my brain if I stare at a white wall or not.
In: Biology
Even if you do not look at anything in particular what you see has a hug influence on your balance.
Your brain detects the motion of an object in your field of view relative to the motion of your eyes and how you turn you head and the rest of the body. If everything moves together it is likely you that move
The obvious example of this is if you sit in a train cart or something else that moves smoothly and accelerates slowly. If another vehicle outside of window that take up most of what you see start to move it feel like you start moving. You use visual input to determine you linear motion, rotation is just rotational motion that you detect the same way.
So your body uses multiple input sections to determine what happens to you. The inner ear is one part of the balance system but so is visual input from your eyes.
It is very hard to walk in a room like [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Fu5q20n3_7M](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Fu5q20n3_7M) it feels like you rotate along the walkway. People have trouble waking her. If you on the other hand close you eyes and just hold the hand rail it will be trivial to walk straight-
There’s two main things going on. ONE is your eyesight righting yourself. This is the most accurate sense you have, and you’ll use thins for any kind of fine balance. The second is your inner ear fluid. That’s good at knowing what direction is up, but can only get so close, so you use your eyes to supplement that sense.
Interestingly enough, I had a great uncle who had a botched surgery that drained said fluid permanently. With the lights off, he had ZERO sense of what’s up and therefore would fall if he wasn’t touching something that gave him a reference. If you can’t generally feel it, I would check with a doctor, but as long as you can stand in a dark room on flat ground, that’s normal. Doing a handstand or on a balance beam or other balance exercise? You probably need your eyes.
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