Grace Zhang

Attractions | Hanszen | Co ‘29

“Seeing Isn’t Believing: The Great Blind Spot Cover-Up”

I’ve always liked writing since I was young. I wrote creatively when I was younger–short stories and poems–and I always knew I’d be a STEM major. So science plus writing just felt like combining my two biggest interests….For Attractions, I worked on a Blind Spots article. It’s about how there’s a small patch in our vision where we don’t actually get any information–because where the optic disc connects, there are no rods or cones. So whenever we look at anything, we’re missing data from that area. But the brain disguises it by coming up with what it thinks should be there. I included this little test–a cross and a circle–and if you move the screen just right, the other object disappears. I thought it was really cool…Originally, I thought it would just be a quick read about this cool thing the eye does. But it expanded into something bigger. And honestly, the time just flew by while I was writing. That’s how I realized how much I really enjoy science writing. I don’t know if it’ll be a career, but I definitely want to stay involved…When I write, I usually start with a quick outline–just what I want to cover. Then I go into the physiology, the anatomy of the eye, and also the neuroscience side–things like predictive coding. I even brought in some linguistics without realizing it at first. What started as something specific to vision turned into something about how the brain hides inconsistencies from us in general. The biggest challenge was finding a variety of academic sources and figuring out what figure to include. I wasn’t sure if my demonstration really counted as a figure. But through researching–reading journals, going through Nature and PubMed–I ended up learning way more than I expected…One of the most rewarding moments was testing the visual illusion with my friends. I turned my computer around and asked them to try it. They moved the screen back and forth and suddenly went, ‘Oh my God, it disappeared.’ Seeing other people actually experience it made everything feel real.