Character with a missing eye

One of my characters is missing an eye but has declined getting a false eye and instead wears an eyepatch. I have never lost an eye or known someone who has, so I have a few questions

• This happened later in their life (early twenties) so would they have problems with depth perception? To what extent?
• Would the entire eye socket be empty? (For plot reasons, to see if one could fit a small vial or such in there)
• If someone could provide me with an image (as non-graphic as possible) that would be helpful as well.

When you lose the vision in one eye, whether the eye is still present or not, you lose your depth perception. This is because depth perception is based on the brain cross-correlating the images coming from both eyes, and processing the slight differences caused by the fact that they are a couple inches apart. Consider that depth perception gets progressively less accurate as the object you're looking at gets farther away (for instance its easy to tell about how far in front of a tree someone is standing if they're only fifteen feet away from you, but if they're a hundred feet away, it's almost impossible to accurately estimate the distance between the person and the tree. You can still see that they're in front of it, but you can't tell whether they're three feet in front of it or ten feet in front of it.) — the differences in the two images are smaller and smaller.

If the eye was removed, the socket would be empty. There would be a space, not large and not spherical, but large enough that a sufficiently small, properly-shaped item could be placed in it (after all, that's what a false eye is — a sufficiently small, properly shaped item, placed in the empty socket.)

here's a photo of a post-removal eyesocket◊ It's a cat, not a human, but it would be essentially the same. this is a series of photos showing someone inserting a false eye.◊ You can kind of see what the empty socket looks like in the first (leftmost) one.

edited 21st Jan '13 7:04:38 PM by Madrugada

^ Wasn't the depth perception thingy proven a myth? Or at least inconsistent? Quite a few people with only one eye have demonstrated competent depth perception before in reality.

Doubly so when the remaining eye was also the person's dominant.

edited 21st Jan '13 8:53:15 PM by MajorTom

Not as far as I know. I believe what happens is that if the eye is lost late enough in life, that is, that if you have long enough experiencing depth, your brain can sort of fake depth perception by making an educated guess at what it should be based on what the remaining eye is sending.

The brain is really determined to extrapolate out from insufficient input. Sometimes it gets it right, sometimes it gets it really wrong.

The trick with getting depth perception with only one eye is to move a bit. (Tilting the head is enough)

The slight difference in position and the image you get will give enough cues to judge distance.

I have a one eyed cat. She manages to judge distances well with caution. However when she moves in haste and her surroundings change she misjudges depth.

It's pretty hilarious when I move furniture for cleaning as she works from muscle memory and misses jumps miserably. She also has issues with rolling off surfaces when getting really into pets.

There's probably some truth to the whole depth perception thing and saying it can be offset.

If you lose it late enough in life after you've learned various skills such as driving a car or riding a bike, you can adapt enough to drive/ride - I suspect because you've already built up an idea of how common things look at distances and judge your position accordingly.

On the occasions I've had to drive or ride with one eye out of action, I've experienced no great difficulty.

That's probably how my mom can still drive despite being legally blind in one eye, yet I have a friend about my age who can't drive for the same reason.

edited 23rd Jan '13 8:59:35 PM by Twentington

Yeah, muscle memory can compensate a bit. An old friend of my father's can still accurately shoot a pistol with no problem; he lost an eye to some sort of health condition when he was 55 and it did not affect his shooting much at all. I don't know about his ability to drive a car (what you can do and what the State lets you do being two very different matters...)

edited 23rd Jan '13 11:19:17 PM by drunkscriblerian

Continuing on that line of thought, is it conceivable for a top martial artist with an exaggerated lifespan (meaning he'd still be in top condition in his 90s and beyond) to remain viable despite the loss of an eye at age (say) 80ish when he started in his 20s?

My experience would say yes, but don't quote me.

From my (admittedly limited) knowledge of spatial relationship, you start figuring it out young and it becomes more ingrained as you age. So, someone who loses an eye at middle age would more easily cope with the loss than someone who either A: never had two eyes or B: lost one early in their lives.

Vaguely unrelated. Those long lifespan martial arts types usually develop some sort of method to conserve energy and apply force when it is needed in generous portions. In that light I think losing a single eye wouldn't really diminish the ability of that sort.

There is a reason the kung-fu movie mentor appears decrepit but manages to wipe the floor with the hero in training or encroaching threats.