Blinding

"The eyeball cannot register an image at the point at which the optic nerve attaches, and hence that point is known as the blind spot. No one can see an object that appears in the blind spot because there are no visual receptors there. Your brain uses information from the areas around the blind spot to make a reasonable guess about what the blind spot would see if only it weren't blind, and then your brain fills in the scene with this information. That's right, it invents things, creates things, makes stuff up! It doesn't consult you about this, doesn't seek your approval. It just makes its best guess about the nature of the missing information and proceeds to fill in the scene."—Daniel Gilbert (page 90)

"In the early 1950s researchers used technology to counteract eye movements by mounting a tiny slide projector onto a contact lens affixed to the observer’s eye with a suction device. This retinal stabilization technique forces the image to remain still with respect to the eye, even when the eye continues to move. The images, in these experiments, fade away perceptually, because of the lack of neural stimulation."—Susana Martinez-Conde (link)

"My reaction to reading the article was a mixture of incredulity and amazement at the complexity of our biological clocks — and the continuing ability of sleep research to overturn our presumptions. Instead of exposing their subjects' eyes to light, sleep researchers at the Cornell Circadian Rhythm and Sleep Laboratory delivered the light to the skin on the back of the knees. Incredibly, they measured significant changes in the subjects' circadian rhythms as a result of this seemingly innocuous light exposure."—William C. Dement (page 95)