Our brain is a master at interpreting what our eyes see, but sometimes changes in vision can trick the brain into seeing things differently than they really are. This happens because vision is not just about the eyes capturing images; it’s also about how the brain processes and makes sense of those images.
When something alters how we see—like an injury to the eye, wearing new glasses, or even certain surgeries—the brain has to adjust. This adjustment process involves something called neuroplasticity, which means the brain can rewire itself based on new information coming from our eyes. For example, if one part of your retina gets damaged and creates a blind spot, your brain tries to fill in that missing information so you don’t notice it as much.
Similarly, after procedures like monovision LASIK (where one eye is corrected for distance and the other for near vision), your brain learns over weeks or months to assign different tasks to each eye. At first, this might cause some confusion with depth perception or focusing quickly between distances. But gradually, through neuroadaptation—a form of neuroplasticity—the brain blends these two different inputs smoothly so you can see clearly without thinking about it.
Vision changes can also affect how we perceive motion or judge distances because parts of the brain responsible for processing visual signals may be affected by diseases like Alzheimer’s or injuries such as traumatic brain injury (TBI). In these cases, even if your eyes are working fine physically, damage in visual processing centers of the brain causes problems like difficulty recognizing objects moving toward you or judging spatial relationships accurately.
In essence, when vision changes occur—whether from physical damage to the eye itself or alterations in how visual information reaches and is processed by the brain—the mind works hard behind the scenes to adapt. Sometimes this adaptation tricks us into perceiving things differently until our brains fully adjust their interpretation of what we’re seeing. This remarkable flexibility helps maintain a stable view of our world despite many possible disruptions along our complex visual pathway from eye to mind.
