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Asked by to Andrew, Elaine, Emma, Michael, Nancy on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Nancy Carlisle answered on 17 Jun 2014:
When we sleep, there are a lot of changes to the way our brain works. This is why we can dream about running around, without actually running around! In many ways, alot of our actions and our processing of the outside world gets turned down (not off, but down). Our brains are still processing the visual information that is coming in to some level (which is why we wake up when someone turns on the light), a combination of darkness and having our eyelids closed limits how much our brain is actually processing. Hope that helps! đŸ™‚
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Michael Kelly answered on 17 Jun 2014:
I like this question, it gets to a difficult idea but one that explains a lot about how we see things. The process of vision is not only the sending of signals from the eye to the brain. There is also feed back from the brain to the earliest signals from the eye.
This causes a problem for people who loose their vision in old age. They often experience a type of hallucination where patterns look like people they knew. It can be very distressing as you might imagine, its called Bonnet’s syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bonnet_syndrome)
There is more to see than having your eyes open, or even being fully awake!
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