Can human eyes/the brain be trained to see with bidirectional monocular vision?
Most people have a dominant eye, and while it uses its non-dominant eye in tandem with the dominant eye most of the time, the brain, being an expert in eliminating redunant information, ignores the images received from the non-dominant eye. However, with special training or practice most individuals can force the brain to temporarily switch to receiving images from their non-dominant eye, even to receive images from both at once, resulting in a blurred chamelion-like or image.
Some individuals however, have a non-dominant eye so weak, that not only does the brain ignore the images it sends, the eye it self no longer moves in tandem with the dominant eye. This is known as strabismus or Lazy eye.
My question is, if the eyes are capable of not moving in tandem in those people, why can't we all train our eyes to move independently, and couldn't we also train our eyes to focus on two different images (on opposite sides) at once?
Great question! The answer is no. It’s because our eyes weren’t meant to move individually or process information monocularly. The way that the visual pathway is set up causes a lot of cross over from the left and right side of the visual field before it crosses the optic chiasm, into the optic tract before it reaches the occipital lobe. Those with strabismus have lesions early on in the pathway process or have weakness causing one eye to physically move laterally. Their vision isn’t clear and even with that the body’s natural reaction is to force the eye back to neutral.
