"ow I think of it is this: we look at a painting on a wall, it seems flat, we can see it is flat, stereo information tells us it is flat. If we can remove the stereo information of flatness our natural tendency to see the world (and images) as a volume, not a cyclorama surrounding a bunch of 3d objects in the foregound can emerge."
I work with disabled war veterans sometimes, and the brain is an amazing thing. People that have had thier limbs blown off, sometimes the limb still feel like it is there, and even itches or burns or gets cold. I agree, you remove certain things, the brain will compensate and make information that is not there originally. I recently saw a show on the science channel with that Katu guy, also had ray kurzweil in it, it was about superhumans and amazing human powers. One guy run a marathon in freezing temperatures and was A OK, most humans would die from exposure to cold like that. They had another guy from germany that could do all kinds of advanced algorithms in his brain, compute really large numbers - but he was special because most savants only can do 1 algorithm, but he could rewire his algorithm to do any kind of computing. Anyways they had this one guy who had been born without eyes. Now back in psychology glass my professor asked me once to describe a red apple to a blind man who had never "seen" anything. I could not figure out how to describe the color red to a blind person who had never experienced sight - can you do it mediavr? Well this blew my mind, this blind guy who had never had eyeballs, he was from italy I think, he was painting pictures, with accurate representations of the physical objects - like a ship on the water - and with proper colors! I still don't understand how he did it - it was fascinating. I can only speculate that genetically something has been passed to him that gave him the neurons necessary for sight, even though he never had eyeballs and couldn't develop sensory experience that way, so the sensory stuff must have been passed from his parents somehow. Anyways the scientists wanted to see if he would accurately paint this 6 sided building and do the convergance right on the 3d aspect of it. He DID! It blew their minds too, they don't understand how with no eyeballs he could properly understand sterescopic stuff like that. Anyways they put his brain through an MRI and saw some parts of his brain were working like a guy who had been born with eyeballs, but they couldn't explain it, because he never had eyeballs that stuff never should have worked in his brain, he was "seeing" without ever having his own eyes, perhaps cellular memory from his ancestors possibly? Anyways he said he didn't like how the MRI made his brain feel and would never do it again.
edit: here is the show
http://www.discoveryhd.ca/shows/castdet ... 0&sid=4608" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.discoveryhd.ca/shows/castdet ... 5&sid=4608" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Esref Armagan
The Blind Painter"
Esref Armagan - 'The Blind Painter'
The Superhuman and Quest: Esref Armagan, of Ankara, Turkey, is a 53-year-old blind painter. Blind since birth, Armagan is a gifted visual artist who can draw and paint in three dimensions; drawing comparisons to Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi, the first artist to master three point perspective. Armagan paints houses, boats, birds and butterflies, even though he's never actually seen any of these things. He paints with lively colours and has even learned to draw in perspective, yet his brain has never detected hue, light or shadow. Over the years, Armagan developed his own methods for creating his artwork and no one has taught him or described what techniques to use. He started with pencil and paper, and by 18 he was painting with his fingers, first on paper, then on canvas with oils. Nowadays, he works primarily with fast-drying acrylics. After displaying his work at more than 20 exhibitions in Turkey, Holland, the Czech Republic and China, Armagan's disarmingly realistic work and his abilities have revolutionized our knowledge of how much congenitally blind people can understand about the layout of space. Dr. John Kennedy, a psychologist and Director of Life Sciences at the University
of Toronto, researches the psychology of perception and cognition in both sighted and blind people. He put Armagan through a battery of tests in which he successfully drew a series of solid objects, including a cube, in three-point perspective. Further tests, at Harvard University's Neuroscience laboratory, tested Armagan while drawing and revealed that as he drew his visual cortex wasn't lying dormant - it had been recruited by his other senses and lit up as though he was seeing. For the ultimate challenge, Dr. Kennedy takes Armagan to Italy to recreate Brunelleschi's perspective masterpiece - the Baptistery in Florence.
Portent: For centuries, it was held that the brain was a fixed entity and hard-wired for each independent function, incapable of adapting itself after injury. Armagan's story has revealed that the brain has the potential to adapt and rewire itself according to individual needs. The brain's ability to reorganize its functions based on new information and experiences is defined as neural plasticity. Dozens of medical therapies have been developed as a result of breakthroughs in thinking about plasticity - specifically strokes, autism, schizophrenia, spinal cord injuries, epilepsy, chronic pain and many other previously "untreatable" conditions. The next steps lie in learning enough about plasticity to harness it for individual needs. But in the next stage of our evolution, when we have the technology to program human life and fix any identifiable defects, would people like Armagan be eliminated before they are even born? While most people acknowledge the differences between coercive and elective forms of eugenics, will there be room in this future world for those of us who are considered "genetically unfit?" In this vision of the future, we must look not only at what we will gain, but also at what might be lost.