It may seem that the ability to focus on a certain object does not require binocular vision. Indeed, I tried to close one eye and was able to focus on different objects quite successfully. When I shifted focus whatever I focused on became more clear, and everything else less clear. The same as with two eyes, just less pronounced.
It is possible that even when one eye is closed, both sides of the visual cortex are working together. In the visual pathway both eyes are connected to both sides of the visual cortex. In this case a person who has always had one functioning eye since birth can learn to use both sides of the visual system and thus to focus with one eye only.On the other hand, maybe focusing does not even require both sides of the visual system, and it is merely a skill that has to be mastered by the brain.
Either way, I only learned the concept of focusing a few days ago. I probably started getting a feel for it on Wednesday.This is different from mere accommodation of the eyes. My eyes have obviously been accommodating all the time so I could see at different distances. As you can read in some previous posts in this blog, it was even possible to somewhat compare distances by the feeling in the eyes as they accommodated to different distances. However, it was never accompanied by this peculiar highlighting of one or several objects in the focus and blurring of everything else.
According to my mother, when I was a child, it was found that I had a small squint, but not sufficient to cause any problems (so they thought - in fact, by the time they examined me binocular vision is either developed or not, and the amount of squint can change over time, it can even appear or disappear). Thus, they told me to do some eye exercises, which I did, and at the same time my vision was improving. First of all, the exercises were for the squint, that is, for the aesthetic part of the squint. (If you don't know what it is, recall any people you have seen with one eye turned in or out, and think what it is like to live with your eyes looking like that, regardless of how the eyes or the brain are functioning.) That is, the exercises were not meant to improve vision. Secondly, I was doing the exercises totally wrong, as I see now, because those exercises make no sense in the absence of binocular vision. For example, one exercise was to focus on a finger and then follow this finger as it moves. Well, I guess I did not really know how to focus, so I picked a point at the top of the finger and was starting at it intently, as the finger was moving. Another exercise was to shift the gaze from a finger to a tree and back. Of course, both the tree and the finger looked equally clear at all times, so I just picked a point on the tree and a point on the finger, and moved my gaze along the segment between these two points back and forth.
I am quite happy that everything turned out this way, and have no objections that they did not examine my condition properly. However, it is peculiar how I had long remembered those eye exercises that, I thought, had improved my vision, and it gave me a lasting feeling of being able to rely on myself.
There is a lot of commonsense wisdom that implicitly includes the notion of eyes' focus.
For example: Don't look directly at bright lights when driving. In fact, "looking directly" means "focusing"; if you never focus on any object, there is really no problem with looking directly.
Another one is: Where you look is where you go. A biking instructor could say that. The thing is, without binocular vision this is not true. Think about predators such as an owl or an eagle. The prey is tracked with two eyes. This highlights the prey and blurs everything else. As the prey moves, both eyes detect it with a very high degree of sensitivity, and continue tracking. Moreover, this focus reorganizes the whole body of the predator and makes it fly directly to the prey, potentially ignoring everything else that is around. I expect that this is one of those cases where it is really essential to have two eyes, not just two sides of the brain working together. It would be interesting to check if "where you look is where you go" still holds when you bike with one eyes closed.
Actually, this experience of focusing with binocular tracking on something you are interested in and going there is very powerful. I feel how much it has transformed me already. Basically, when you want something and look at it, the visual system tells you: "GO! Get it! Everything else is not important." I guess, those people who do not suppress this mechanism are more likely to get what they want in life. Conversely, if you look at something that you want, and then you look away, this should be destroying the mechanism of focusing, regardless of the presence or lack of binocular vision. Thus, if you routinely don't allow yourself to look at things or people that you are interested in, I guess you are likely to lose direction and interest in life.
Another insight I've got is that when I look at people, they really know that I am looking at them. Even previously, when I looked at people without binocular vision, they probably felt that I was really interested in them in whatever sense, whereas I just happened to look in this direction, and accommodated my eyes (the eye that was leading at the moment or both, if they were switching back and forth) on some random point in the proximity of whatever I wanted to look at. Conversely, when I was not looking at people directly, they probably thought I was not interested in them at all, where as I was able to see a lot looking a little bit to the side, since I was not focusing on anything else either.
Of course, I still had the experience of eye contact, even with following somebody else's eyes in space, but those were rather exceptional situations with a strong emotional connection. I also learned a lot about eye contact from Argentine Tango and probably found all kinds of compensations. The feeling of eye contact was also different. Instead of energy flowing between the eyes as I feel now, it felt, allegorically speaking, more like touching with the eyes.
I had certainly understood the social importance of looking at people in different ways in different situations. As a rather striking example, think about a man "scanning the body of a woman" with his eyes. This now seems rather strange, but I learned to do this "scanning" because I perceived it as socially important, even though I derived no visual information from this "scanning": in most cases, the whole image was there from the very beginning, like a drawing, without any focus.
It is possible that even when one eye is closed, both sides of the visual cortex are working together. In the visual pathway both eyes are connected to both sides of the visual cortex. In this case a person who has always had one functioning eye since birth can learn to use both sides of the visual system and thus to focus with one eye only.On the other hand, maybe focusing does not even require both sides of the visual system, and it is merely a skill that has to be mastered by the brain.
Either way, I only learned the concept of focusing a few days ago. I probably started getting a feel for it on Wednesday.This is different from mere accommodation of the eyes. My eyes have obviously been accommodating all the time so I could see at different distances. As you can read in some previous posts in this blog, it was even possible to somewhat compare distances by the feeling in the eyes as they accommodated to different distances. However, it was never accompanied by this peculiar highlighting of one or several objects in the focus and blurring of everything else.
According to my mother, when I was a child, it was found that I had a small squint, but not sufficient to cause any problems (so they thought - in fact, by the time they examined me binocular vision is either developed or not, and the amount of squint can change over time, it can even appear or disappear). Thus, they told me to do some eye exercises, which I did, and at the same time my vision was improving. First of all, the exercises were for the squint, that is, for the aesthetic part of the squint. (If you don't know what it is, recall any people you have seen with one eye turned in or out, and think what it is like to live with your eyes looking like that, regardless of how the eyes or the brain are functioning.) That is, the exercises were not meant to improve vision. Secondly, I was doing the exercises totally wrong, as I see now, because those exercises make no sense in the absence of binocular vision. For example, one exercise was to focus on a finger and then follow this finger as it moves. Well, I guess I did not really know how to focus, so I picked a point at the top of the finger and was starting at it intently, as the finger was moving. Another exercise was to shift the gaze from a finger to a tree and back. Of course, both the tree and the finger looked equally clear at all times, so I just picked a point on the tree and a point on the finger, and moved my gaze along the segment between these two points back and forth.
I am quite happy that everything turned out this way, and have no objections that they did not examine my condition properly. However, it is peculiar how I had long remembered those eye exercises that, I thought, had improved my vision, and it gave me a lasting feeling of being able to rely on myself.
There is a lot of commonsense wisdom that implicitly includes the notion of eyes' focus.
For example: Don't look directly at bright lights when driving. In fact, "looking directly" means "focusing"; if you never focus on any object, there is really no problem with looking directly.
Another one is: Where you look is where you go. A biking instructor could say that. The thing is, without binocular vision this is not true. Think about predators such as an owl or an eagle. The prey is tracked with two eyes. This highlights the prey and blurs everything else. As the prey moves, both eyes detect it with a very high degree of sensitivity, and continue tracking. Moreover, this focus reorganizes the whole body of the predator and makes it fly directly to the prey, potentially ignoring everything else that is around. I expect that this is one of those cases where it is really essential to have two eyes, not just two sides of the brain working together. It would be interesting to check if "where you look is where you go" still holds when you bike with one eyes closed.
Actually, this experience of focusing with binocular tracking on something you are interested in and going there is very powerful. I feel how much it has transformed me already. Basically, when you want something and look at it, the visual system tells you: "GO! Get it! Everything else is not important." I guess, those people who do not suppress this mechanism are more likely to get what they want in life. Conversely, if you look at something that you want, and then you look away, this should be destroying the mechanism of focusing, regardless of the presence or lack of binocular vision. Thus, if you routinely don't allow yourself to look at things or people that you are interested in, I guess you are likely to lose direction and interest in life.
Another insight I've got is that when I look at people, they really know that I am looking at them. Even previously, when I looked at people without binocular vision, they probably felt that I was really interested in them in whatever sense, whereas I just happened to look in this direction, and accommodated my eyes (the eye that was leading at the moment or both, if they were switching back and forth) on some random point in the proximity of whatever I wanted to look at. Conversely, when I was not looking at people directly, they probably thought I was not interested in them at all, where as I was able to see a lot looking a little bit to the side, since I was not focusing on anything else either.
Of course, I still had the experience of eye contact, even with following somebody else's eyes in space, but those were rather exceptional situations with a strong emotional connection. I also learned a lot about eye contact from Argentine Tango and probably found all kinds of compensations. The feeling of eye contact was also different. Instead of energy flowing between the eyes as I feel now, it felt, allegorically speaking, more like touching with the eyes.
I had certainly understood the social importance of looking at people in different ways in different situations. As a rather striking example, think about a man "scanning the body of a woman" with his eyes. This now seems rather strange, but I learned to do this "scanning" because I perceived it as socially important, even though I derived no visual information from this "scanning": in most cases, the whole image was there from the very beginning, like a drawing, without any focus.
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