It is funny how our eyes are dominating and even kicking the other senses out. In the last article we saw how multiple senses create a stronger learning experience and longer memory comparing to just onse sense. However, it was not mentioned how important is the vision. Lets take a look how the eyes work.


In one research none of the 54 professional wine tasters could recognize red wine, when white wines were mixed with the tasteless and odorless red dye. Even though tastes and smell send one type of information, our eyes receive priority. In another study authors said that our genes are slowly changing giving priority to the visual sense – they estimated that 60% of smell related genes are affected due to loss of the battle to other senses.


It would be great if eyes were perfect detector of accurate and full information, but they are not. Not because of short or long slightness, which became a standard these days, but because our eyes simply can not take over the functions of other senses and still do make assumptions and guess of what it could be. When the visual information is encoded and passed through various channels of the brain, finally brain takes again all the bits of information and decodes + adds the missing information from previous experience and eventually perceives the picture. This function is amazing from one perspective, since it allows us to see things in motion (interpolating the decoded images, sent by visual senses) and fill the gaps of what we don’t see in the fluid picture, but on the other hand, sometimes too strongly dominates and we start to rely on eyes too much.


This is why we have a saying “picture is worth thousand words”. In one study people remembered 2500 pictures with 63% accuracy one year after the study. In another research 10% remembered verbally told information after 3 days, but 65% remembered when the pictures were added to verbally told information.


That is an important information in many fields. First of all, we should communicate our message with pictures, movies and animation as much as we can. Second, we should train and sharpen our other senses in order to have a more objective view of the happenings around.