NeuroNugget 2: You See the World Upside Down

 You See the World Upside Down But Your Brain Flips It

Here’s something weird.
You’re seeing this sentence upside down.

Not in a metaphorical way. Literally.
When light enters your eyes, it bends through your lens and lands on the back of your eyeball inverted. The top becomes the bottom, the left becomes the right.

So why doesn’t the world look upside down?

Because your brain is quietly fixing it for you.

👁️ Your Eyes Flip It. Your Brain Fixes It :)

Your eyes are like little cameras. The lenses bend light and project the image onto the retina, which is the back of your eye. But thanks to how lenses work, the image ends up upside down and reversed.

That’s normal. It happens to everyone. It’s just physics.

But you don’t see an upside-down world. Why?

Because your brain knows how to handle it. 

It’s been doing it since you were a baby.

Your brain doesn’t flip the image like turning a photo. Instead, it understands the world based on context, memory, and experience. The visual cortex at the back of your head takes in the upside-down signals and makes sense of them. It tells you what’s up, what’s down, and what’s where.

You’ve never actually seen the world any other way. So to your brain, this is just normal.

 

🥽 A Fun Experiment That Proves It

Picture of Ivo Kohler

In the 1950s, a guy wore special goggles that flipped everything upside down.

At first, he was totally disoriented. He poured water the wrong way. Reached up for things that were below him.

But after a few days, his brain adjusted.
The world looked upright again even though the goggles were still flipping everything.

After a week, he was riding his bike through town with no problem.
His brain had adapted (😱What the helly!!!)

And when he finally took the goggles off, the normal world looked strange until his brain flipped things back.

 

🌀 So What This All Means

You don’t just see what’s in front of you.
You see what your brain interprets.

It fills in gaps, smooths out blinks, and quietly corrects the flipped images from your eyes.

It’s not just showing you the world. It’s building it.

So yeah, you see the world upside down.
But your brain is so good at fixing it, you’d never know…

Kind of cool, right?!