How your EYEBALLS move AFFECT & REFLECT how you think and feel.
Your eyeball movements are tied to how you process memories and interpretations of events and stimuli, including past and current SOCIAL INTERACTIONS.
HOW AWARE ARE YOU OF YOUR EYEBALL MOVEMENTS & PATTERNS?
Where your eyes move are influenced by what you predict. How your eyes move also influences your accuracy of what you are looking at.
There are layers and networks behind just our eyes and vision that make eye movement such an important aspect of wellbeing. A number of therapies include eye movement such as Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART ) annd Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) that help support people with trauma healing, for example.
Our eye movement is a reflection of activity in multiple systems of our body. For example, did you know that our eardrums move when our eyes move?
It’s called eye movement-related eardrum oscillation. (EMREO)
What’s fascinating about this connection is that there is evidence that the eardrum oscillations occur before or simultaneously with eye movement.
This hints at the idea of “dynamic system in which top down signals modulate feed-forward signals” (Gruters et al.)
With feed-forward controls, there is a ‘pre-calculation’ from a control system. In contrast, feedback system can adjust to and take into account incoming signals that may affect the output.
An extreme example of feed-forward that does not incorporate any feedback could be called ‘ballistic’ - which is something we see in the mechanical motions of ultrafast animals, such as the strike mechanisms of mantis shrimp. (where the ultrafast strike motor activity happens before the actual movement)
YOU CONTINUE TO EXPERIENCE WHAT YOU CONTINUE TO PREDICT
I’m bringing up this concept of feedforward and feedback because it illustrates that much of what we ‘notice’ and pay attention to may already be determined by PREDICTIVE ALGORITHMS we have already established.
This offers us even more clues into how our past influences our current perception
HOW AWARE ARE YOU OF YOUR EYEBALL MOVEMENT?
Notice how rapidly your eyes shift and see if you can try to slow them down and let them ‘land’. This is especially powerful with a loved one (pets and people :-)... let your eyes slow down and explore what they see as they look at someone you care about.
The more control and awareness we can try to integrate in our daily movements, the less we are being unconsciously controlled by our past.
#interoception #selfregulation #sensoryneurocience
References
Buck, H. G., Cairns, P., Emechebe, N., Hernandez, D. F., Mason, T. M., Bell, J., Kip, K. E., Barrison, P., & Tofthagen, C. (2020). Accelerated Resolution Therapy: Randomized Controlled Trial of a Complicated Grief Intervention. The American journal of hospice & palliative care, 37(10), 791–799. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049909119900641
"Feed-forward motor control of ultrafast, ballistic movements", Journal of Experimental Biology - Kagaya, K. and Patek, S. N.
"The eardrums move when the eyes move: A multisensory effect on the mechanics of hearing" - Gruters et al. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29363603/
https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/219/3/319/16771/Feed-forward-motor-control-of-ultrafast-ballistic
Valiente-Gómez, A., Moreno-Alcázar, A., Treen, D., Cedrón, C., Colom, F., Pérez, V., & Amann, B. L. (2017). EMDR beyond PTSD: A Systematic Literature Review. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1668. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01668
