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Vision in tunnel: what is it and what are its causes?

Vision in tunnel: what is it and what are its causes?

March 28, 2024

Tunnel vision is a peculiar phenomenon that affects the ability to perceive the stimuli of our environment. It is relatively frequent that, when we are in a state marked by psychophysiological stress, we pay attention exclusively to that which is related to the task, threat or main concern that concerns us.

In this article we will describe what is tunnel vision and what are its causes . In order to do so, we will briefly review the cognitive theory of the different modalities of attention, and explain the difference between the concept of tunnel vision that we use in psychology and the use that it makes of it in medicine.


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Attention as physiological activation

Attention is a broad psychological function, and as such the alterations that affect it can give rise to very different phenomena. Thus, for example, if we attend to attention as the ability to select a stimulus and focus our cognitive resources on it, we can identify disorders of this function in schizophrenia or in manic episodes.

They have also been described alterations related to attention as concentration (such as mental absence and temporary lacuna), as surveillance (which in generalized anxiety disorder has the character of 'hypervigilance'), as expectations (a relevant aspect in psychosis) and as physiological activation, associated with the experience of stress.


The phenomenon of tunnel vision is part of this last area of ​​analysis of attentional processes. However, it is an ambiguous concept that has not been used only in the field of psychology, but has also been spoken of tunnel vision in medical contexts, particularly in the field of ophthalmology.

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What is tunnel vision?

From the point of view of cognitive psychology, tunnel vision is an alteration of attention that occurs in situations of intense stress , particularly when a feeling of threat is experienced. However, this does not always correspond to reality, but some individuals are more prone than others to tunnel vision.

Specifically, it has been proposed that introverts have a greater tendency than extroverts to tunnel vision, if we understand these two constructs as defined by Eysenck: as manifestations of the base level of activation of the cerebral cortex. Thus, introverts are more prone to this phenomenon because of their higher level of general anxiety.


Tunnel vision is also less common in children and the elderly than in people of intermediate age; this is also due to differences in cortical activation. On the other hand, as is logical, the experience of situations that are objectively threatening for a given person they increase the probability of tunnel vision.

In the medical context in general, the concept "tunnel vision" is normally used to refer to the loss of peripheral vision capacity, as in glaucoma. People with this disorder can only see clearly the central part of their visual field; from this, the perception of this is derived with the approximate shape of a tunnel.

But nevertheless, in the psychology of attention the term has a more abstract character ; Many experts not only include visual disturbances caused by stress within it, but the narrowing of the attention to which it should be can affect other senses in the same way. Note the ear, almost as important as the view for humans.

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Causes of this phenomenon

Tunnel vision understood as an attentional phenomenon it is due to specific hypervigilance, that is, selective attention to stimuli that are associated with a potential threat to safety or survival. This facilitates that we attend to the stimuli that we consider relevant, but it reduces the ability to perceive the rest of the factors of the situation.

Cortical activation depends to a large extent on the release into the bloodstream of stress hormones, the most important of which are corticosteroids.This takes place more markedly the greater the person's perception of stress, the more intense the physical and mental activity that he performs and the more demanding the demands of the situation.

Many cognitive models of attention focus on the fact that our attentional resources are limited, so we can only focus our perception on one or other stimulus by dividing these capacities in different ways. In this sense it is relevant to remember that there various types of attention: selective, focused, divided ...

When tunnel vision takes place, our view, and frequently also the rest of the senses, focuses only on the stimuli that we associate with that which most concerns us. This leads to the fact that our probability of perceiving adequately the rest of the stimuli is reduced in a very marked way, decreasing the quality of our behavior.


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