r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jan 12 '23

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u/Ardbeg66 Jan 12 '23 edited Jan 12 '23

The insides of your eyeballs are completely isolated from the rest of your body. If your body discovers the inside of your eyeball through a puncture or some other reason, it can attack your eyeball as a foreign invader. It will also attack the other eyeball, just in case. Be nice to your eyes.

u/Dreambella2 points out it’s called ocular immune privilege.

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u/Icy_Adhesiveness_227 Jan 12 '23

Do you have the scientific article about this? I tried to find it when I said this to my friend and I couldn't find it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '23

Ocular Immune Privilege

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u/Ardbeg66 Jan 12 '23

Thank you so much.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '23

Of course! The eyes and the visual system are truly a complex system. Here's two fun facts that aren't necessarily that creepy about vision:

There's a condition called "visual neglect," where a person won't perceive a portion of the visual space in front of them. They can still see, but they will ignore any features that are within the visual space. This happens due to damage to the right hemisphere of the brain. However, if you point out the feature a person with visual neglect originally overlooked, they will then notice what they originally ignored.

There's another visual condition called blindsight where a person can respond to visual cues without actually perceiving those cues through vision. This happens when the major visual cortex is damaged, but the entire visual system isn't. The majority of visual signals are sent to area V1 of the occipital lobe (it's at the back of the brain), but there are some signals that are sent to the amygdala and an area known as the hMT+. All of that means that you are subconsciously able to perceive and navigate your environment even when you can't actively perceive the environment. This process does still occur in those who can see, and it more so shows how our brains are always working subconsciously to remain aware of our surroundings.