You are Always Looking at Your Nose fact


Are We Always Looking at Our Nose?

Your nose is in your field of vision, so you are always looking at your nose. Luckily, our brains filter out sensory information we don’t need. The ability to ignore expected input is called “unconscious selective attention.”[1][2]

You don’t walk around constantly noticing your nose or your glasses for that matter (if you wear glasses) because it’s not useful information. If nothing is changing with your nose, your brain will decide it doesn’t need to register it out of efficiency.

TIP: Other things we don’t notice include almost everything. Our attention can only focus on one thing at a time, and our short-term memory only holds about 5 – 7 items at once. If our brains couldn’t filter most of the world out, we wouldn’t be able to make sense of it. Learn about how memory works here; learn about the limits of attention here.

Vsauce, explores the wonky world of vision and sensory perception with “What Is The Resolution Of The Eye?”

FUNNY: Your brain is like an uncle who’s “got your nose”, but in a good way.

we are always looking at our noses

We are being bombarded with countless blips of visual information at all times, and our brain (mostly subconsciously) filters out everything we don’t need and makes composites of the sensory data to give us useful impressions of the world. We don’t take mental photographs; we store sensory-memory blips in sensory specific neurons and then create webs of connections between sensory data blips.

It’s a Matter of Efficiency

You don’t need to look at your nose or glasses all day long, so your brain filters it out. You don’t need to feel every part of your body 24/7, so your brain filters it out, you don’t need to hear your mom telling you to stop watching YouTube videos and clean your room, so your brain filters it out.

The brain is an efficient and calculating machine that continually tries to improve our efficiency. If our brain were less efficient, our bodies would have to eat more. The brain already takes up 20% of our energy even though it only accounts for 2% of our mass.

Sometimes this leads to strangeness, but in the case of our noses, let’s be glad for our limited attention and auto-magic filters.

TIP: Our brain loves shortcuts. One of its favorite types of shortcuts is “bias“. “Oh, we don’t need that information, so I’ll ignore,” says the brain without your input or awareness. “I have seen or experienced that this ‘type’ of people are usually bad so let’s avoid them,” etc. Everyone is chock full of bias.

Conclusion

Our nose is always in our field of vision, but like countless other unchanging sensory information, our brain filters it out and gives us something useful to look at. Most of us don’t have a camera brain, we have sensors that send information to our many parts of our grey matter to develop composite images based on sensory information blips.


References

  1. How can our brain ignore our nose?“. Quora.com
  2. Your Hidden Censor: What Your Mind Will Not Let You See“. Scientificamerican.com

Author: Thomas DeMichele

Thomas DeMichele is the content creator behind ObamaCareFacts.com, FactMyth.com, CryptocurrencyFacts.com, and other DogMediaSolutions.com and Massive Dog properties. He also contributes to MakerDAO and other cryptocurrency-based projects. Tom's focus in all...

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Maria Eunice Arcadio Did not vote.

You really do see your nose, but the brain filters it out of your field of vision so, “You are Always Looking at Your Nose” is a fact.

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Shannon Did not vote.

I’m confused. I always see my nose. What do others see lol I’m always aware of it

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masha Supports this as a Fact.

same i always see my nose! its out of focus of course. and if i try looking to the side a bit i see it more, and looking up a bit i see my brows, looking down a bit i see my lips. i thought thats what everyone sees..

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Clinton Did not vote.

I think it’s awesome to here about stuff about the brain & nose!!!

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Blah Supports this as a Fact.

YOOO this is a fact man!

Reply

LOOK AT YOUR NOSE

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