Blurred Vision

Just because the world sometimes seems to go by in a blur doesn’t mean the images streaming across your field of vision don’t matter. Writing in the December 4 Current Biology, Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences William Warren and several of his colleagues showed that what we perceive as a blur actually plays a vital role in directing us toward our chosen destination. “With a continuous flow of visual information, your brain allows you to rapidly and accurately adapt your direction of walking,” says Hugo Bruggeman, the postdoctoral research associate in Warren’s lab who led the research. “So we’re constantly recalibrating our movements and our actions based on information such as optic flow.”