How a movie changed one man's vision forever (BBC)

Bruce Bridgeman lived with a flat view of the world, until a trip to the cinema unexpectedly rewired his brain to see the world in 3D.

On 16 February this year, Bridgeman went to the theatre with his wife to see Martin Scorsese’s 3D family adventure. Like everyone else, he paid a surcharge for a pair of glasses, despite thinking they would be a complete waste of money. Bridgeman, a 67-year-old neuroscientist at the University of California in Santa Cruz, grew up nearly stereoblind, that is, without true perception of depth. "When w'd go out and people would look up and start discussing some bird in the tree, I would still be looking for the bird when they were finished," he says. "For everyone else, the bird jumped out. But to me, it was just part of the background."

All that changed when the lights went down and the previews finished. Almost as soon as he began to watch the film, the characters leapt from the screen in a way he had never experienced. “It was just literally like a whole new dimension of sight. Exciting,” says Bridgeman.

Full BBC Report: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120719-awoken-from-a-2d-world

"You move much faster if you are healthy first than if you are wealthy first"

"You move much faster if you are healthy first than if you are wealthy first" Hans Rosling on his statistics about developing countries and the role of health care systems. This is true for individuals as well as groups of people...Anyways, I remembered it since a long time and it reappeared on my screen. :) For the complete speech, find him on youtube!




Short BBC version:

Full one hour lecture:

Tu intuicion comienza a florecer y empiezas a ver las cosas con mayor claridad (Spanish)

"Si te limitas a sentarte a observar el mundo, veras lo inquieta que esta tu mente. Si tratas de calmarla, solo conseguiras empeorar las cosas, pero si le dejas tiempo se va apaciguando, y cuando lo hace deja espacio para escuchar cosas mas subtiles. Entonces tu intuicion comienza a florecer y empiezas a ver las cosas con mayor claridad y a vivir mas en el presente. Tu mente deja de correr tan rapido y puedes ver una tremenda dilatacion del momento presente. Puedes ver mucho mas de lo que podias ver antes. Es una disciplina; hace falta practicarla." Steve Jobs in his Biography

Session 37

Still struck by the sinus infection so I didn't feel like fridays session was very productive... I felt a bit feverish, but nonetheless I tried my best :) It seems like my brain is adjusting quite well in order to fuse the images but the joint eye movements need more work, especially long distances. Diverging remains the sore spot... Ironically I'm a farsighted esotrope, so my accommodation is set for long distances but eye movements (vergence) is set for short distances. I'm trying to make them meet in the middle and reconcile haha :) Fussion is popping up near as well as far but to sustain that. Distances further than two meters are the main point to work on so I got some homework on that :)

Session 36: Bring on the chill pills

After missing my previous appointment due to a sick optometrist we are back in business :) In the meantime I discovered that an everlasting toothache turns out to be a sinus infection (since the tooth in gone now). After the extraction of the tooth, things seemed to improve somewhat for a while untill the wound healed and the pain reoccured along with a new exhaustion wave. These new developments have crippled my eye game somewhat but the good news is that now I know what is ailing me. So I'll get on it...

Anyways, so what about yesterdays training? No mindblowing improvements but no setbacks either, which is not too bad given the infection hitting hard. At a short distance I'm getting quite good as I said before but it's not an automatism yet... So now we are extending the distance up to two meters. You might think that if you can do it close up, the switch to longer distances might come quite easy... That doesn't seem to be true. The position of your eyes might be the same at some point but the lens accomodation has to be more relaxed. So I should learn to look more widely WHILE relaxing my lens... Basically, I can't point my eyes correctly if I don't relax that lens. Which is not that evident (for me haha). She said 'the hardest part for you is relaxing those muscles/lense, it's the relaxing part that's mostly missing. Your eyes are too tense.' (and the efforts I do make are being used incorrectly since you never used my eyes correctly, draining energy and being tense...) I was like 'Story of my life woman, always trying too hard' Hahah. It does make sense though, in order for any movement to be fluent you need to be able to relax that muscle or bodypart too. Some things can't be resolved by adding more power, you need to let go... All that crap about 'Perfection is not only about control, it's also about dancing to the music', well there you have it... :) It's like fighting polution by burning more combustion fluids. What we need is cleaner technology haha. A dozen other metaphores do apply but let's not bore you guys out... Bottom line, bring on those chill pills.

Last thing I learned yesterday is that it's easier to heal after suppressing the second image, like I did for most of my life. Once you have conscious double vision as I have since the faulty operation it's way harder. Because you are already using both eyes but in an incorrect fashion meaning you are even further from home. In case of suppression you ''just'' need to add the second eye. So once again it's clear that the idiots failed to detect a lifelong window of opportunity untill the day of the operation and almost closed the window for good... Be that as it may... I'm not dead yet so let's try it.