uniocular

Uniocular refers to the use or vision of only one eye. In the context of vision, it describes a condition or situation where an individual has functional vision in just one eye. This can be due to various reasons, including congenital absence of one eye, loss of an eye due to injury or disease, or severe vision impairment in one eye that renders it functionally useless.

Individuals with uniocular vision adapt their perception of depth and spatial awareness, as binocular vision (using two eyes) provides stereopsis, the ability to perceive depth and distance. While uniocular vision lacks stereoscopic depth perception, people can compensate through other cues such as relative size, occlusion, and motion parallax.

The term uniocular can also be applied to optical instruments that are designed for use with a single eye, such as a uniocular microscope or a uniocular telescope. These devices are similar in principle to their binocular counterparts but are constructed for single-eye viewing. This might be chosen for reasons of portability, cost, or specific viewing requirements. The adaptation of the user to uniocular instruments can take time, as the brain needs to adjust to receiving visual information from a single source.