Human Steady Cam

Human Steady Cam

EUREKA!

NEW FINDINGS AND RESEARCH

The brain stabilizes our vision.

Our brains trick us into seeing the images moving across our retinas as stable, according to new research led by psychological and brain sciences professor Patrick Cavanagh. “The brain has its own type of frame-based steady cam, so we don’t see a shaky image like we do in handheld movies taken with a smartphone,” he says. “That is the visual stabilization that the brain has, but video cameras do not.”

In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, participants viewed moving frames and flashes of light on computer monitors and were asked to mark the distances they saw between the flashes. The researchers found that subjects discounted the motion of the frames, perceiving flashes that were actually at the same location as far apart. “Something quite sophisticated is happening to tame the images we see as we scan the world in front of us,” Cavanagh says.

Maud McCole ’23