eli5- why when we close one eye it completely shuts off but when we close both we only see darkness?
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You actually do see the darkness in the one shut eye, but your brain is ignoring it in favor of the eye that’s open.
If they’re both shut, there’s no useful information to show you instead of the darkness, so you notice it now.
If you close your left eye and then look down and to the left, you see darkness. Same for right (obv looking down and to right)
Our brain tries to correlate patterns between each visual field. If patterns in one field differ markedly from the other, the brain focuses attention one field and ignores the other.
In some cases (like looking through a rifle scope but with the both eyes open) it is possible attend to each field independently, swapping back and forth. But when one visual field presents essentially no information at all, the brain simply won’t process this field.
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