WHEN you first read the title above, you will blink your eyes automatically. Is it right? So, why doesn’t it get dark when you blink?
About every five seconds we close our eyes and blink to moisten them. During this brief moment no light falls on our retina yet it is not constantly dark and we continue to observe a stable picture of our environment. The brain seems to remember the percepts that have just happened. Scientists have now identified a brain area that plays a crucial role in perceptual memory. Even though we constantly blink and move our head and eyes, we still see our world as a stable, unified whole. It must therefore be possible for the brain to retain visual information for a short period of time and then put it together to form a conclusive image without interruptions.
A team of neuroscientists explained that a specific brain region known as the medial prefrontal cortex plays an important role in short-term memory and decision-making. The medial prefrontal cortex calibrates current visual information with previously obtained information and thus enables us to perceive the world with more stability, even when we briefly close our eyes to blink.
