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Up and Coming
May 1, 2013
Question

Simulating animal vision?

So, I've heard the anecdote that if a person lives long enough upside down, the brain eventually flips the view, allowing the person to comprehend the world in this new orientation.

If we use OR to simulate animal vision that are drastically different from humans, say lateral eyes like fish, or compound vision, or even ones that don't exist in nature like fisheye, 360 spherical, front/back split, would this cause our brains, after a long enough exposure period, to rewire itself to handle the new ways of perception?

    19 replies

    Participant
    May 21, 2013
    You may want to track down a copy of this 1988 BBC nature documentary series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersense.
    Up and Coming
    May 21, 2013
    "Upside glasses" experiment from 1890:
    http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/mar97/858984531.Ns.r.html
    Reported intermittent automatic inversion of vision after 5 days.

    Larger test group in 2001:
    http://wexler.free.fr/library/files/richter%20(2002)%20long-term%20adaptation%20to%20prism-induced%20inversion%20of%20the%20retinal%20images.pdf
    No reports of vision inversion after 7 days.

    And another report (same study) calling it a myth.
    http://wexler.free.fr/library/files/linden%20(1999)%20the%20myth%20of%20upright%20vision.%20a%20psychophysical%20and%20functional%20imaging%20study%20of%20adaptation%20to%20inverting%20spectacles.pdf

    http://www.gizmag.com/reversing-goggles-upside-down/21595/

    While no practical use for the goggles comes to mind, the company selling them suggests that fun could be had trying to do things like shaking hands, writing, pouring water or walking around while wearing them. For God's sake, though, don't try driving with them.

    Actually, according to experiments performed as long ago as 1896, if you wear such goggles for long enough, your brain will adapt and everything will appear right-side-up again.
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    Inspiring
    May 21, 2013
    Wow! The upside-down vision thing was bogus!!! Funny how stuff like this gets repeated so many times people take it as fact. For example, you always hear that "10% of people can't see in 3D" but I don't think there has ever been a published study with those numbers.
    AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
    Up and Coming
    May 22, 2013
    When I studied psychology at University in 1973, they taught that the upside down vision thing was real. But as I recall, it took 14-days for vision to invert, which they claimed was the same amount of time it takes for you to perceive a new residence as "home". None of these studies linked above went for 14-days... Interestingly, the South Beach Diet book says it also takes 14-days to kick your addiction to carbohydrates.

    So failed studies do not disprove the possibility of visual inversion adaptation...

    This inversion is also called "Erismann and Kohler inversion":
    Part 1:


    Part 2:

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    Up and Coming
    May 22, 2013
    And this old "Optical Flow" study looks very relevant to VR:


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    Up and Coming
    May 24, 2013
    I actually read that the image entering the eye is upside down by the time it hits the retina:

    http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/curriculum/vision_science_intro/vision_science_intro.php

    Therefore upside down glasses makes it right side up on the retina.

    So its not so farfetched that we could adapt to upside down glssess after all. LOL
    “My ally is the Force. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock…everywhere!"
    Up and Coming
    May 24, 2013
    It just occurred to me that maybe the image isn't corrected in our brains but maybe our eyeballs are in upside down and when the image hits our eyes its upright to them. Just a theory! If anyone receives nobel prize for this discovery you need to split the money with me. :lol:
    “My ally is the Force. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock…everywhere!"
    Up and Coming
    May 24, 2013
    "360FOV" wrote:
    It just occurred to me that maybe the image isn't corrected in our brains but maybe our eyeballs are in upside down and when the image hits our eyes its upright to them. Just a theory! If anyone receives nobel prize for this discovery you need to split the money with me. :lol:

    You are the first person to discover that the image on the retina is upside down and the eyes are installed so that they automatically correct for the inversion? Awesome! I hope you get that nobel prize you are hoping for...

    If I mount the cameras in my robot so that the images are not upside down, do I need to pay you any royalties for using a derivative work based on your invention?
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
    Up and Coming
    May 24, 2013
    I'll give all Rift developers a royalty exclusion. LOL
    “My ally is the Force. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock…everywhere!"