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Re: [Phys-l] inversion goggles



A lot of the experiments on vision are detailed in Ings' book, "A Natural
History of Seeing". it's a marvelous popular science book, and I immediately
became fascinated by the work and workers. I highly recommend it.

In particular, I remember research done with people wearing glasses with cameras
mounted. Images, much like the tongue experiment mentioned below, were
translated to a haptic system mounted on and stimulating the subject's back.
After a while of getting the feeling of the system, subjects could navigate
quite well, etc. But one of the researchers threw a ball at the subjects.
Despite having a _back_mounted_ system, the subjects would flinch backwards, as
though the ball came at their face.

Brain plasticity, indeed!



/**************************************
"The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown.
Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the
one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the
unknowable." ~~Roger Zelazny, in "Lord of Light"
***************************************/




________________________________
From: John Clement <clement@hal-pc.org>
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Sent: Thu, May 12, 2011 10:16:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] inversion goggles

I too had read about this research, but locating the paper may be hard. As
I recally it may have been mentioned in a psychology class and I remember it
as being inverting spectacles, but it may have been misreported or
misremembered.

There is modern research where they use a camera mounted on a hat to help
blind people. They project the image as pixels on the person's tongue.
After a while the person learns to interpret it and even can identify object
fairly well. Apparently people who lost their sight reported that they
could see again. An even more amazing experiment is that you can make
colored objects appear at different locations by using a prism. Actually
you can cover half of your eye and see this quite clearly. Primary colors
on a screen will appear at different distances. When they use this with
someone who is color blind they learn to percieve the different colors.

I have strong colore vision and also very strong binocular vision so I often
see colors at slightly different depths on computer screens. Of course this
sort of thing will not work with people who have no binocular 3D vision.

Also I know someone who normally has no binocular 3D vision, but the first
time he looked through a viewer at good 3D slides, he could percieve depth.
He instantly became a 3D photography addict.

The brain is amazingly plastic and adaptable. Our ability to change long
term memories is another sign of this plasticity. I called this an ability,
but it often is done inadvertently and leads us to have false memories. We
remember what we believe.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX




On 2011, May 12, , at 12:13, Anthony Lapinski wrote:

Did research like this ever happen?


Yes, but very long ago -- The glasses weren't inversion, but
distorting, IIRC. The "subject" after a time was able to
ride a bicycle, then took them of while riding and fell off!.

bc thinks it was in Switzerland -- not surprised if J.
Clement knows about this.

p.s. I think Iread abourt this in Psych 1 @ UCSB, so 1959

I thought this would be impossible to "Google" but here's
the first rsponse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_adaptation


Not incidentally all dentists do this experiment.


A bit more detail:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:-O9Bg7saee4J:https:/
/netfiles.uiuc.edu/wang18/www/psych334/readings/harris1965.pdf+p>
erceptial+adaptaion+eyes&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESj_UGqj
DbHDxbCxHRJ_9NUAzYaUbWnQNzRUVATjr9jyfyVDIjzDHEto-Lg8cSJMapvFDc
bywUEPwPk4hHLm0pDbUE0YGDVQqVMfnefe5>
_oMqoftywYWVhDVwETgaKMMOm6WCLh_&sig=AHIEtbRwMUiQ_n0Id7jQv-YNtQSk9f5z-A
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Forum for Physics Educators
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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l