We thought we’d go off track slightly to bring up another weird and fascinating phenomenon that we’ve stumbled across. It concerns the wearing of eye patches. When people who have lost either one or both eyes wear an eye patch over the non-seeing eye, they report feeling “really blind”. Moving around becomes harder, and they collide with objects they would normally have sensed.
In studies conducted in the early 1900’s on the ability of blind people to sense objects in their environment, it was concluded that facial nerves provided this sort of feedback. Towards the end of the century, similar experiments disputed this theory, asserting that echo-location – the use of hearing – was the only means by which blind people could “see”.
Could it still be possible that cells in the skin around our eyes play some sort of role in seeing? Or are the anecdotal reports we’ve heard about feeling “more blind” when a non-seing eye is covered, purely the result of a psychological response?
We’d like to hear your experiences and theories about this strange phenomenon.
