What exactly do we look at when we close our eyes? Is it a boundless, empty void… or is it complete darkness. Well, close your eyes now and evaluate what you see. It’s not pitch black, its more of a dark tan, red mixture. Why is that? Science finally has the answer.
Let’s take a look at the concept of blinking. We blink thousands of times a day, yet it never interrupts our daily routine. We don’t remember the darkness that ensues mostly due to the part of our brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex. This region of the brain deals with short term memory and object permanence. Basically, this takes the memories of what you saw before you blink, your occipital region then deals with what you currently see, and the two overlay the sensory inputs to create a seamless image.
In layman’s terms, your brain is filling in the gaps due to its advanced procedural processing. Despite not being able to actually see, our brain is working to take the objects we just saw and store them so that, when we open our eyes, we maintain that object permanence.
