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Interesting vision research



 
 
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Old August 30th 03, 09:34 AM
Lynn K.
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Default Interesting vision research

There's a research case in No. Cal. that's gotten a lot of coverage in
local papers and on NPR today that I think is pertinent to how dogs
process visual information. A man just regained vision after 40 years
and they are studying how he processes sight. He was blinded at age 3
and they are finding that there are developmental periods where the
brain sets up recognition patterns. Because he lost his sight at a
time when that process was incomplete, he can receive the same visual
stimula everyone else can, but interprets it differently.

What's interesting is that a lot of how he sees is very much like how
dogs see (except for the different number of color rods & cones, of
course). Motion, colors, and shapes are immediately recognizable but
he has to analyze details to come to the same conclusions that most of
us instantly recognize through patterns. For example, he can't tell
the gender of a face without looking at length of hair, whether the
eyebrows are plucked, etc.. And things are perceived as 2
dimensional. If shown a triangle or square he immediately recognizes
them, but sees a cube as a square with lines - until it is moved, then
recognizes it as a cube.

One of the comments from the researchers was that all animals have a
base level of sight perception needed for survival, but the big
evolutionary differences are in the brains, not the eyes. That the
primate brain's ability to file correlations of what is seen is
significantly different from other animals' and that that ability is
developed rather than present at birth.

If that is so, this case could be very useful because the man can
articulate exactly how he perceives what he's seeing and maybe give us
some insight to how those with non-human brains see things. I'll be
looking for more detail on this research.

Lynn K.
 




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