Upside down glasses experiment

Zeuzzz

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Zeuzzz
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Dec 26, 2007
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I remember hearing about a scientist who gave some subjects some glasses that inverted their vision, and after a week or so of them wearing the glasses apparently everything flipped back up the right way even when wearing them. After this when they took the glasses off because their brain had inverted their visual field everything looked like it was upside down for a few days until their vision flipped again and they could see normally. Stanfords professor emeritus William Tiller gives a brief talk about it here which reminded me about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZtD4O6BDCs He says it was done by some dude called Slater. But thats not much help in finding it without a surname.

Anyone got the publication or another similar one? Has it been repeated? And anyone know of any other similar more recent studies where our state of mind can directly physically effect the processing of the neural dendrite system? or other networks?

Thanks.
 
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^ Thanks for the links. Didn't realise it was done all the way back before 1900.

So what do you thinks going on here? The conscious information recieved by the mind informs the brain whats going on and gets it to build some sort of tiny reflective neural mirror type thing to invert the neural information? And when the glasses are removed it destroys whatever was created to invert the vision back to how it should be? Theres gotta be something physical going on for this to happen, surely.

I mean, I'm sure the people weren't thinking "Oh if I just get my brain to create a small new neural object to help invert the signals back the correct way I can see correctly again". So the mind just told the brain to manifest something completely new to the human body on its own accord? Or can it be explained as simply the mind working out to interpret the information in a different way without changing any physical things? Or am I thinking of the mind in a non scientific way here? I always get a bit confused between the difference of the mind and brain. Some say no difference they are one of the same, some say they are fundamentally different. Its just puzzling to me how this could happen.

Sorry about all the questions..... thats like six question marks in two paragraphs :)
 
It's a long time since I did anyting on perception, but I doubt it is to do with anything as high level as what the subjects were thinking, but a more automatic process.

Also check out the book link I gave you - it should take you to the right page. I found what he said quite interesting (it won't let me copy the text).

There will probably be someone who knows more about it along soon! I'm just good at googling.

Some more abstracts:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w9n3wk699uu5vcc6/
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118908048/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

And a full article:

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
 
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Long ago, I learned to reverse vehicles using the wing mirrors, a great skill when driving heavy trucks (lorries), vans, etc with no rear window

Yesterday, I was driving a car with no wing mirrors... and the back of the car was loaded to the max (so I couldn't see out through the internal rear-view mirror)... and I had a trailer on the back...

Ordinarily (even if I do say so myself) I'm pretty good at backing a trailer, something that involves initially going the 'wrong way' on purpose and then correcting

Yesterday, looking over my shoulder...I was crap... reversing into my own driveway!

I figure that my brain is so accustomed to a mirror image that my wires were crossed when looking at 'reality' (i.e the non-mirror image)

:o
 
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During my last eye operation, I had a haemorrhage behind one of my retinas and needed cautery and reattachment of the lifted retina with a laser.

Aferwards, I saw everything horizontal half-bent in a shallow "V" shape, like a partially opened book resting on its back cover, and my left eye (the laser-treated one) had a noticable fuzzy spot in my field of vision. Most disorientating. However, after a few days, the blind spot went away, and straight lines became straight again.

I have no reason to think that the image on my retinas is any different now, so my brain is presumably interpreting things for me.

If I want to examine things very closely (about the only advantage of severe myopia), I automatically close my left eye and use only the right. I can't see anything wrong, but I imagine that larger blind spot is still present, and the brain is filling it in with detailless averaged colours or something.
 
Mercutio said in another thead where this topic came up that they still see the visual field upside down, they just get used to it.
 
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I remember an article in Scientific American back, oh, must have been in the late 60s, where they experimented on a strain of cats who had a genetic wiring defect in their optical nerves which switched a vertical part of their field of view with another such section. The experiments showed that the brain corrected the interpretation for them so they saw "normally".
 
Zeuzzz said:
^ Thanks for the links. Didn't realise it was done all the way back before 1900.

So what do you thinks going on here? The conscious information recieved by the mind informs the brain
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Full stop. What's a mind and how is it not merely the emergent property of the brain?

Please cite evidence.
 
I am myopic to the tune of about 10 diopters. Back in the days before contact lenses and before glasses with a high index of refraction, my coke-bottle glasses made every straight line any distance from the center of vision into a severe curve, and the floor look about eight feet away. But when I was wearing glasses every day, everything looked normal to me. Now, even with modern glasses, I would have extreme difficulty navigating with glasses on instead of contacts. I don't even buy glasses any more, since with contacts out I'm better off wandering around half-blind but distortion-free.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
Read the link to the book in my first post (it should open at the right page) and the paper I gave that linked to full text rather than abstract.
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I know I'm not supposed to do this but since you have to pay to read the article:
Despite an opportunity for prolonged prism adaptation,
subjects never reported the environment to appear
upright and consistent with the sensory input transmitted
through other modalities.
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Now, even with modern glasses, I would have extreme difficulty navigating with glasses on instead of contacts. I don't even buy glasses any more, since with contacts out I'm better off wandering around half-blind but distortion-free.
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Is it really that bad that you can't get special lens designed to reduce the distortion?
EDIT: I was thinking of spherical distortion not barrel distortion.
 
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At least I can sometimes confuse up with sideways, with sideways orientated images. Don’t know if it is the same thing, or if it really reverses the way you see things.
 
For what it's worth I saw a television show in the UK in the early 80's where someone wore goggles that inverted everything. Showed the two or three men stumbling around for a few days then getting used to it. Note, they never said their vision flipped back or anything, just that they gradually got used to it. After a while they could function normally and then had to go through the whole process again once the goggles were removed. It showed them trying to catch balls, shoot pool, etc as demonstrations of their progress.

I can't recall the name of the show but it had several hosts and it was the same show that asked about 6 people not to wash their hair with soap or shampoo for 6 months and the once the natural oils took over their hair was beautiful and manageable and they swore they'd never wash their hair again.
 
Well, my story is tangentially related. When I was in high school I was struck in they eye with a piece of glass. It put a deep scar right across the center of my cornea from about 1:00 to 7:00. It's sort of like looking through a piece of glass with a crack in it.

The image below is what I see looking at a white circle of light on a black background with just my bad (right) eye.



Of course, one rarely looks at just a bright circle on a dark background, so it's hard to explain what that eye sees in a complex image. Basically, everything is distorted. It's also darker (about one f-stop for those into photography).

For a few years I had double-vision (one good, one bad). It took a while to get over that. I had to relearn depth perception. Things I normally did with my right eye (taking photos, shooting a rifle) had to be relearned with my left eye.

If I shut my right eye, the only difference in what I see is that I no longer have the peripheral vision of my right in the picture. If I shut my left eye, everything switches to the darker distorted image. Thus anything I do in detail (read, watch TV, drive) is done essentially with one eye.

My brain has done an amazing job of learning to merge these two very different images into a single coherent image. With both eyes I barely notice the distortions in the extreme example shown above even when that's the center of focus. When I shut my good eye that's when I see it.
 
Zeuzzz said:
WTF?
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In my youth the encyclopedia stated that the visual field actually reoriented, IE the field flipped so that up was up and down was down again. Mercutio said that actualy people still see the visual field as reversed with the earth at the top and the sky below, they just get used to it.
 
UncaYimmy, been to an eye surgeon lately? Cornea transplants are done every day now.
 
casebro said:
UncaYimmy, been to an eye surgeon lately? Cornea transplants are done every day now.
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Nope. But my regular eye doctors get a kick out of looking at it. Seems it's not something they run across all that often. I'm so used to it now that it's not even on my radar. I really don't notice it until I'm in a situation where I have to look at something with just one eye (you know, like under the dashboard in your car), and the logistics demand I use my bad eye. Then it's really annoying.
 
When pointing to a region of your face with your finger to show someone where he has a stain on his face, do you point to the mirror image side, or the side the stain would be on if you were sitting in the same direction as him?

I generally go for the mirror image side.
 
I have no doubt that people could learn to see normally with inverting glasses, but I am inclined to be skeptical about their inability to see after removing the glasses.

Anecdote follows:

I learned to read books upside-down (ask me some time what the practical advantage of this is), to the point that I was unaware of doing so. There was not a second of confusion in attempting to read right-side up afterwards.

Similar brain-rewiring not involving vision had similar results: typing with a Dvorak keyboard, driving with my left foot.
 
I read about this many years ago. The image doesn't actually visually flip back upright, rather you relearn the expectation of how your body relates to your visual field. If you turn your head over so that everything is visually upside down you have no problem reorienting to body to the visual field. This is because your brain has already learned to automatically adjust visual orientation wrt the angle at which you hold your head. When the field of view is flipped independent of a change in body orientation the brain must learn to reset orientation independent of actual orientation. The brains capacity to do this is already inherent and doesn't need to rewire the entire visual system. Just rock your head side to side and notice that it doesn't make the room appear to lean left and right to demonstrate this. The only thing that the brain must relearn then is how body orientation relates to the new visual field. It would be nearly immediate adjustment if you could take your head off and put it back on upside down.. :D. The only thing missing in the minds preexisting skill in adjusting is the perception that your head is not upside down.
 
Ive seen this done on british TV when I was a very young child. I seem to recall it was featured on some type of topical program. They had a woman? pouring a jug of water while wearing these reversible spectacles (which seemed to look a lot like watchmakers glasses). She performed her task flawlessly, however could not do it with her glasses removed. I cannot recall the name of the program, the year or even the host, as it was a very long time ago now. I think it may have been sometime around 1980.
 
Do a hand stand and then read a book which is the right way up. Bet you can do it with no problems (I certainly can anyways). In fact scrap that, just stand upside down and look at something, anything it doesnt really matter, and your brain will sort the image out so you know what is up, what is down, what is left and what is right. Its all a matter of perspective, for an every day example try inverting the controls on your first person perspective shoot em up on the ps3, prettty soon you'll get used to it - I always have mine on invert on whereas all my mates have invert off, give me 10 mins of game play and I can change from one to the other

skb
 
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I was hoping for a physical explanation for what occurs to flip the image, rather than metaphysics. I dont think that just saying 'our mind just realises its upside down so we simply see it the right way up after a while' is really satisfactory.

The mind is created by the brain. So even a simple perceptual change such as this should have a physical explanation in the brain to explain it.

I appreciate that in the eye the light actually is inverted, so when it hits the back of the eye its actually upside down as it inverts at the point of entry, ie, light coming in diagonally from and angle above the eye's normal position actually hits the bottom of the back of the eye when creating a picture. So our brains obviously inverts the picture we recieve anyway so we see it the correct way up, but in this case it seems to have been inverted back again. I just wanna know how this could happen and what has changed.
 
Zeuzzz, I think the point in this thread is that the image doesn't flip after a while, whe just get better at dealing with everything being upside down.
 
I suggest a randomized controlled experiment using newborns. Any future parents want to sign up junior?
 
Since the images on our retinas are inverted at bith, in a sense the experiment has already been replicated numerous times.
 
Jeff Corey said:
Since the images on our retinas are inverted at bith, in a sense the experiment has already been replicated numerous times.
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I was thinking of getting the infants to wear glasses which flipped the images top-to-bottom, to see if there are permanent physiological changes if the images are flipped at a young enough age, similar to how children with a lazy eye need to be forced to use it, or it becomes uncorrectable later on in life.
 
Zeuzzz said:
I was hoping for a physical explanation for what occurs to flip the image, rather than metaphysics. I dont think that just saying 'our mind just realises its upside down so we simply see it the right way up after a while' is really satisfactory.

The mind is created by the brain. So even a simple perceptual change such as this should have a physical explanation in the brain to explain it.

I appreciate that in the eye the light actually is inverted, so when it hits the back of the eye its actually upside down as it inverts at the point of entry, ie, light coming in diagonally from and angle above the eye's normal position actually hits the bottom of the back of the eye when creating a picture. So our brains obviously inverts the picture we recieve anyway so we see it the correct way up, but in this case it seems to have been inverted back again. I just wanna know how this could happen and what has changed.
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The physical process is adaptation or conditioning.
 
Keep in mind we aren't talking about a few minutes upside down, the experiment I saw had the people wearing these glasses for months. I'm pretty sure Bob Dezon and I are talking about the same show. After months of conditioning, when the glasses were removed, the reorientation process had to occur all over again. It didn't just instantly go back to normal.
 
Zeuzzz said:
I was hoping for a physical explanation for what occurs to flip the image, rather than metaphysics. I dont think that just saying 'our mind just realises its upside down so we simply see it the right way up after a while' is really satisfactory.

The mind is created by the brain. So even a simple perceptual change such as this should have a physical explanation in the brain to explain it.

I appreciate that in the eye the light actually is inverted, so when it hits the back of the eye its actually upside down as it inverts at the point of entry, ie, light coming in diagonally from and angle above the eye's normal position actually hits the bottom of the back of the eye when creating a picture. So our brains obviously inverts the picture we recieve anyway so we see it the correct way up, but in this case it seems to have been inverted back again. I just wanna know how this could happen and what has changed.
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There was no metaphysics in the explanation. First off the image never flipped. When you get used to it you may not notice that it's upside down unless you think about it but it doesn't ever flip back upright with the glasses. If your brains doesn't do anything it doesn't normally do every time you tilt your head there is no physical change to explain. Asking for what physical changes occur is like asking what physical changes occur when you see an apple. Seeing an apple does physically change the state of your brain but it's irrelevant to the question because it's not doing anything different than what it does every day. With the proper equipment and testing we can even tell when you are thinking about an apple.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7304
 
Zeuzzz said:
I was hoping for a physical explanation for what occurs to flip the image, rather than metaphysics. I dont think that just saying 'our mind just realises its upside down so we simply see it the right way up after a while' is really satisfactory.

The mind is created by the brain. So even a simple perceptual change such as this should have a physical explanation in the brain to explain it.

I appreciate that in the eye the light actually is inverted, so when it hits the back of the eye its actually upside down as it inverts at the point of entry, ie, light coming in diagonally from and angle above the eye's normal position actually hits the bottom of the back of the eye when creating a picture. So our brains obviously inverts the picture we recieve anyway so we see it the correct way up, but in this case it seems to have been inverted back again. I just wanna know how this could happen and what has changed.
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Nothing physical has changed. There is a great deal of mental processing after the image hits the back of the eye.
or example we mentally automatically "fill in" the blind spot. We can't see a hole on our field of vision, but nothing physical has allowed us to somehow "see" what is mising where the optic nerve goes through our retina so our mental processes fill this in.

I do not really see how you cannot unserstand this can happen without some form of physical change. As per the examples above you ca practice and learn to read upside down, back to front etc. No physical change happens, no tiny mirrors suddenly appear in your brain.
 
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