Imagine you’re having a conversation with someone and they ask you to tell them about the movie “Hitchcock” that you saw last week with Will Smith. For you to even begin your thought sequence, your mind wants to recall the name “Hitchcock” on the cover of the DVD box from Blockbuster. In order to do this, your eyes move up and to the right…
What your eyes new position indicates is the initial activation, maintenance and transmission of the image of the DVD cover. Like any other time, when you are asked for information that requires the accessing of an image, your eyes go upward (to the left, middle or right).
This process is called the “initial replication” cue. Now once the image has been established, it can be, and usually will be moved to the prefrontal cortex (front of your head) so that from there it can be moved to virtually any other part of the visual field. But why the heck would your brain move the image around? We’re getting to that…
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But first, let’s answer the question “why do we look upward?” For our brain to process imagery, it is equipped with a power part called the visual cortex. As you can see from the image below, both sight and remembered sight originate in the rear of the brain near the stem.
In remaining consistent with the principle of inertia, this initial activation always requires more energy to perform than simple maintenance of the image. In the brain, where do you suppose this energy comes from? If you guessed blood flow you are correct… Remember my article on glucose and mental energy?
Where ever the eyes go, the head and then eventually the body follows. So the eyes moving upward is mainly for the purpose of helping to tilt the head back and increase gravitational blood flow to the visual cortex. This increase in blood volume in that area temporarily increases the energy level to help create or recall the image.
Why we look to the left or right will be handled shortly, but first we need to establish why the brain would move images internally in the first place. There are two major reasons:
- In our brain we have what are known as bimodal and trimodal neurons and these are responsible for mixing our senses together to produce a stronger and more real representation of either a memory or the imagination. Bimodal can mix two senses (visual and auditory for example) and trimodal can mix three senses (visual, auditory and kinesthetic). This helps to make things “real”.
- We have “Pyramidal” cells that allow an image to be expanded and contracted and moved just about anywhere in the brain. These let you zoom in and zoom out…
So, once the image has been moved into the prefrontal cortex, via a “gliding solition wave”, the image can be moved to different areas of your brain for the purpose of overlapping it with different senses from the bimodal and trimodal neurons to zoom in or zoom out and/or produce vivid, real and life-like visuals. This is the stuff our thoughts are made of…
Understanding that the gross majority of our stimulus is visual, initial activation of most thought almost entirely occurs in the upward visual field. So let’s take a look at what happens when our eyes are in each field of vision (Upper, middle, lower).
- Upper visual field: Visual patterns will overlap with auditory patterns that start at and come from eye level and above. They also will overlap with kinesthetic information that originates in the upper head area. So things such as a head ache or a bump on the head can be tuned in when the eyes are in the upward position. This increases blood flow to the part of the brain where we will need it.
- Middle visual field: Once the eyes move here we can then enhance auditory information that was picked up from the ear level down to the lower chest area. This means that if we wanted to enhance any kinesthetic information that occurred in the lower head to lower chest area we would keep our eyes at the mid-line. Obviously anything auditory will happen in the midline area as our ears are right there and they are the origination of any auditory stimulus. This keeps the blood where it needs to be while inducing overlapping.
- Lower visual field: Middle of the chest down is where we would “tune in” auditory and kinesthetic information for that area. Naturally, almost our entire kinesthetic stimulus (internally or externally) comes from the shoulders down as this is where out body is (motor, tactile and emotional sensation). So in looking downward we will increase gravitational blood flow to the appropriate areas in the front of the brain and induce overlapping.
So what does this mean? That if you are remembering what the dog looks like that was barking at you last week and why you ran away… although you may originate the image in the upper hemisphere to spark the appropriate energy levels, the image will be moved into the lower quadrant to enhance it with the auditory coming from below your chest and the spike of kinesthetic “fear” that happened in your chest.
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So today we dealt with all three visual vertical positions, tomorrow we will deal with the left and right visual fields and the lower fields of Kinesthetic and Auditory Digital. Once we understand all of these we can speak more intelligently about the efficacy of reading them.
To learn more about Eye Accessing Cues and other forms of effective communication, please visit my blog The Communication Expert or catch me on Skype.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi David,
I found your articles on Eye Accessing Cues quite interesting.
Particularly the paragraph on: “Where ever the eyes go, the head and then eventually the body follows. So the eyes moving upward is mainly for the purpose of helping to tilt the head back and increase gravitational blood flow to the visual cortex. ”
This is interesting but not necessarily accurate. Since the part of the brain responsible for physical sensation is at the top of the head, it doesn’t hold that looking down brings greater blood flow to the area.
One hypothesis that came to me but that I’ve never tested or taken forward is that eye position channels light energy in a certain direction which ends up stimulating specific parts of the brain.
Notice how this might hold:
Sight can be stimulated by gazing forward or up. If you trace a line that goes from line of sight into the brain, you’ll land on the visual cortex.
Sound can be stimulated by looking laterally. Take a look on a brain map where the auditory cortex is found: right on the sides.
If someone looks down and you trace a line from line of sight into the brain, you’ll land right on the part responsible for physical sensation.
Might light be responsible for stimulating the brain? Might the eyes be the lenses that channel light to specific parts of the brain?
What do you think?
Hi Steve,
I really appreciate your time in reading my post and giving a well thought out comment. Let me preface my response with the fact that I am only a part-time neurologist
As such I employ everyone to do their own research to keep me honest…
It is important to understand that although gravity is a factor in the movement of blood volume during head movement, it is not necessarily a draining effect that moves the blood. Simple inertia resulting from gravity also works to keep the blood “still” while the head moves “around it”. Take auditory access for instance, the head is simply moving from side to side and as such there is no draining of blood, only “movement” to parts such as the Broca’s area.
With respect to experiencing and processing light, the information that we receive is based on frequency and regardless of the angle that the light is presented to the retina (unless it is out of peripheral vision) the frequency doesn’t not change. As such, the information is processed and disseminated according to that frequency (for instance a blue shirt against a white wall presents different frequencies at their intersection and the “difference” is the root of what is processed). It is not the eyes necessarily that channel the light (meaning the lens) but the retinal wall and the optic nerve that are at first responsible for (at a course level) filtering and channeling the information to the visual thalamus (which shoots rough information directly to the amygdala for immediate fight/flight processing) and then along to the visual cortex (for finer processing and dissemination along to the prefrontal cortex [complete processing] and medial temporal lobe [memory development]).
If you are really interested in finding out more, I implore you to do some in depth research. I would be very interested to hear more from your findings. Thanks again for commenting and please keep in touch.
DP