Why don’t we see our noses? Before you rush to answer the question with explanations confirming the fact that we don’t see them, science confirms the opposite, proving the reality of seeing them and explaining why we think it doesn’t happen.
For you to see something, it must reach your eyes, be received visually by your brain, and processed as new information occupying a space in consciousness. The final step does not happen with the nose.
As explained in a report, the brain treats information like the nose as constant and predictable, so it does not give it your conscious attention. We do not see the world as it actually is, but as the brain expects it to be.
It is clarified that when the eye sees something and the information is processed in the brain, the brain constantly asks itself: “What’s new? What’s different? What’s dangerous? Where’s the surprise?” Consequently, anything predictable and constant (like your nose) is automatically ignored.
The matter can be likened to a security guard at a facility monitoring the security situation. Their consciousness is not occupied by a wall that hasn’t changed for years because there is nothing new, but they immediately notice any unexpected movement.
Logical Reasons for Ignoring
The brain’s ignoring of this information is explained from the perspective of not wasting mental energy, to invest it in what is more important. It is said that “constant attention to the nose, or to the body’s stillness, or to things that do not change wastes mental energy, which should be saved for more important things like spotting a predator, finding food, or navigating the environment. For this reason, the brain erases the nose from consciousness, not from vision itself.”
It’s not just the nose that the brain ignores; it does so with things stranger than it, like the blood vessels inside the eye.
It is explained that “behind the retina, where the photoreceptors (the cells that gather light) are located, there is a network of blood vessels that partially obstruct vision because they are between the eye and the outside world. However, they usually do not appear to us. The reason is that the brain automatically cancels out these visual ‘obstructions,’ so you do not perceive them in your daily life. But during an eye exam, if the doctor shines a strong light through the eye, you see dark, winding lines in your field of vision. These are the shadows of the blood vessels that your brain has been hiding all along. This means your brain does not display constant and unimportant things to you, even if they are directly in front of your eyes.”
Another example is given, also related to the eye, which is the so-called “blind spot.” It is said that “each eye has a blind spot, which is the area devoid of vision corresponding to the point where the optic nerve exits the eye. In this place, there are no photoreceptors, meaning it is a complete gap in vision about five degrees wide—more than twice the apparent size of the full moon in the sky. The amazing thing is that we never feel this gap. The reason is that the brain automatically fills the gap using surrounding information. For example, if you are looking at a white sheet of paper, the brain infers that the area in the blind spot is also white. The result is that we see a complete and continuous picture of the world, even if some information is not actually present.”
When Do We Start Seeing Our Noses?
Based on the above, if you are preoccupied with seeing your nose, you will achieve what you want when you think about it. Conscious attention breaks the “automatic cancellation” practiced by the mind.
A practical experiment that can be performed to realize this fact is mentioned: “When you close one eye
