Saturday, July 28, 2012

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

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