How to find your dominant eye?

Did you know that you have a dominant eye that’s more powerful than the other? It’s completely true. It’s about time you get to know about these visual corridors a lot more now. Many people have a dominant eye or one eye that performs a lot more tasks than the other.

Even if you are looking at your screen while reading this, you are unconsciously using your dominant eye more to this surprising new information. You can easily find your dominant eye while using a camera, telescope or a microscope.

Why does the dominant eye occur?

You are more likely to be familiar with a dominant eye used quite often in sports, opticians or other situations. You might be under the dilemma of the dominant eye having better clarity and vision than the other non-dominant eye but it’s simply not true. Yes, it does work more than the other but that doesn’t prove it's better in vision. And there’s also no dominant eye colour that’s more significant than the rest. It also doesn’t mean that the dominant eye doesn't require prescription glasses since vision changes can occur with any eye.

A dominant eye simply means that this particular eye is better and faster in transferring information to the brain’s visual cortex than the other eye. The cortex is the biggest part of the brain responsible for visual processing information. The cortex is made up of bands of neurons that respond biasedly to input from one eye or the other. It’s just the bias for one that determines the eye’s dominance, not the visual clarity of each eye.

And how do we know which eye the cortex prefers?

The eyes that the cortex chooses have more neural connections to the brain than the non-dominant one.

We all have a dominant eye, even if you’ve barely noticed any difference. You can have one dominant eye where only the one works better in viewing stuff. And you can also have both of the eyes as dominant in their particular visual tasks, making it a case of mixed ocular dominance.

How to find your dominant eye?

As we mentioned earlier, you can find your dominant eye by looking through a camera or telescope. But at times, it may still not be clear to identify the dominant eyes so, for all curious minds, we’ve got a solution.

If you are really into knowing your dominant eye, several dominant eye tests help you to find it easily. Such tests include cards with a hole made while others involve the use of rings and pinholes. Or even better, you can take an eye test to understand your eye even better.

If that’s not helpful, you can try the Miles Test below which is often considered quite accurate for identifying the dominant eye.

Follow the mentioned below steps -

1. Choose any object such as a clock, or a painting on the wall to look at that is placed at four to five meters away from you.

2. Bring both of your hands in front of you. Overlap your fingers and join the tip of your thumbs with each other to create a triangular-shaped gap between your hands.

3. Now, lift your hands and place it on the target. Look through the triangular-shaped gap in your fingers, you’ll be able to see the objects quite clearly.

4. Switch between your eyes while maintaining the same hand posture in the same position. Looking through only one eye highlights the object even better. With the other eye closed, the switching will make you feel as if the object has been shifted or hidden from your view.

Results - The open eye that’s open on its own and permits you to see the object is your dominant eye. While the other eye that finds itself in trouble with seeing the object is the non-dominant eye. If none of the eyes that are closed result in prodigy an image where the object is centred, you might have mixed ocular dominance.

What’s the benefit of eye dominance?

A dominant eye has several benefits once you identify which one is out of the two.

Eye dominance significantly helps photographers when using a phone camera with a viewfinder, rather than relying on the phone screens. You just need to look through your dominant eye to get the perfect alignment in shots.

Many photographers are automatically accustomed to knowing which eye feels more comfortable. Dominant eye photography involves placing your dominant eye in the center of the photo to give an impression that the eyes are following the viewer. It’s made to captivate people through imagery.

However, it must be checked to see if you are using your dominant eye since the non-dominant eye displays a few details that are slightly displaced laterally or off-frame.

The benefits of knowing your dominant eye can be at vision correction surgeries. If you are going for Monovision treatment, it’s usually the dominant eye that ophthalmologists correct for distance since it’s stronger than the other.

The non-dominant eye is used to treat near vision, giving a balance between both the eyes and allowing great vision for multiple distances. It’s the same case for cataract surgery, where surgeons choose the dominant eye while setting the visual distance.

What’s the disadvantage of a dominant eye?

You don’t experience any defect from a dominant or non-dominant eye. As long as there’s a case for the strong disparity between the eyes, a strong dominant eye can impact the other eye and for other visual conditions. Eye conditions like Amblyopia ( a sight disorder also known as lazy eye where the brain’s unable to process inputs from one eye and over time prefers the other eyes) and strabismus (eye disorder where the eyes don’t look in the same direction at the same time) are one such example.

It results in such eye conditions because one eye transmits stronger visual signals than the other, making the non-dominant eye weaker over time as the brain gets used to its visual signals less and less. This type of phenomenon can result in the weaker eye turning either inwards or outwards, giving you misaligned eyes.

Eye disorders like Amblyopia can be treated by using a patch on the dominant eye to strengthen the other in its early stages. Since Amblyopia mostly develops in childhood, kids can be easily trained to rely on their weaker eyes more than the other.

Overall, the dominant eye means no harm to your vision on a day to day basis. Although knowing your dominant eye can prove to be beneficial for sports, photography or studying science. As long as your eyes are aligned accurately and you don’t notice the superiority of your dominant eye over the non-dominant one, then it’s mostly an interesting fact you can share at a party.