Eye brain connection

[inshadowsandlight]

99+% of the time I don’t process the world in three dimensions. Like, when people would talk about things shown on TV looking “flat” I had no idea what they were talking about because that is just how the world looks (most of the time). I remember in elementary school sports thinking that other people were really amazing for being so able to tell where the ball was, especially when it was in the air. I was figuring out where it was based on apparent size and if it was in front of or behind things, and that works just fine for stationary objects but is harder with moving things, especially in the air. Then sometime around 15 (about when my chronic headaches turned into chronic migraines) I realized that if I focused just right it felt like there was a switch I could flip in my brain and suddenly the world was in 3D like one of those magic eye pictures. It was kind of cool, but seemed to overclock my head and require 20x the processing power of just what I consider normal vision and inevitably led to a headache if I didn’t manage to flip the switch back off pretty quickly. Sometimes I wonder if it is something like a muscle that would get stronger if I used it more, but mostly I just don’t want the inevitable headache and forget that it’s even possible. All this to say I just accidentally flipped that switch in my head and the world is in 3D right now and I would like it to stop.

If anyone stumbles across this and has a similar experience I would be very curious to know about it.