Slashdot Mirror
Can Living In Total Darkness For 5 Days "Reset" the Visual System?
the_newsbeagle writes: That's what one neuroscientist is aiming to find out. He wants to put patients with a type of amblyopia, the vision problem commonly called lazy eye, into the dark for 5 days. His hypothesis: When they emerge, their brains' visual cortices will be temporarily "plastic" and changeable, and may begin to process the visual signals from their bad eyes correctly. Before he could do this study, though, he had to do a test run to figure out logistics. So he himself lived in a pitch black room for 5 days. One finding: Eating ravioli in the dark is hard.
It's supposed that if you can do it for 10 days, your visual cortex will start processing other input and add its extra processing power to your meditations. Here's a link to a presentation: http://hridaya-yoga.com/how-to...
One finding: Eating ravioli in the dark is hard.
He should try being blind.
Why is it a story that someone has a hypothesis? Do the tests, publish your findings.
Yes that is why blind people are crazy.
I've done that for a month or so a cou
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
>> Eating ravioli in the dark is hard.
Isn't this what grad students were invented for?
I think that it's that he's willing to use himself as a test subject before inflicting it on others, fairly rare today.
Not that I suggest a heart surgeon do a transplant on himself or that a doctor inject himself with insulin if he's not diabetic...
But living in complete darkness for ~5 days can have unexpected developments/difficulties, it's probably best to NOT inflict that on kids until you know what to look for.
I don't read AC A human right
Why not just go to any maximum security prison and pull any of the number of guys they have locked up in "the hole" and check it out? They're in there far longer than 5 days. Heck at gitmo not only are they in pitch black for 24/7 for weeks but they get deafening rock music blared at them the whole time too.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Why not just glue them a mask on their face?
Way cheaper.
... And what can you do? ...
Edit Slashdot stories.
Why not use a blindfold for 5 days?
Are these people stupid or just trying to make everything more difficult than it seems?
Otherwise, lots of books on tape. And whatever sort of setup they use when teaching braille, might as well come out with a new skill.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I've had to do it for weeks at a time when my eyes become extremely photosensitive, and my family thinks I'm crazy, so maybe you're right. But if he thinks eating ravioli in the dark, he should try baking biscuits from scratch without a timer. They were good, but it was kind of messy.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
How can you tell if you are done wiping?
Yes, but eating the grad students in the dark is really no easier, and the ravioli tends to taste better.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Myself, I would get a braille computer.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sounds like scrotonauts lol
If this works at all, then it would be interesting to apply a patch/mask to the good eye when coming out of the dark and wear that patch a few more days. Although I have no proof whatsoever, my hypothesis would be that this would train the brain to 'trust' the image from the amblyopical eye. After another week, release the 'good' eye and see if this balances out vision.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
No text
Braille displays are ridiculously expensive. Most blind computer users just use a screen reader. NVDA is a popular free alternative to the overpriced Window-Eyes and JAWS, well-worth your time if you're interested.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Most blind computer users just use a screen reader.
Do they? How are you so sure? The small sample size of blind people I know uses a screen reader (you can get them for ~$3000)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What if he touched poo-poo to his nose? Gross. (btw sorry about the misplaced commas and such in my post, talking about poo-poo while in the dark gets me excited.)
Trolling is a art,
It's like I'm wiping a marker... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Clearly we need a well funded study, followed by publication in a prestigious journal to substantiate finding about the difficulty of eating ravioli in the dark...
Not so hard if you're naked and in the bathtub, which is how I like to eat my ravioli.
That way, I don't get sugo stains on my clothes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Also morse code and touch typing.
This reminds me of DeepDream, Google's neural network that looks at images and tries to see things that are not there.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The cheapest and most efficient solution is doing the "Brock string" exercise on a daily basis. Read all about it on Wikipedia and Youtube.
The concept is that you simply need to retrain your brain to use the correct neurons and reinforce these correct pathways by doing the exercise.
The scientific base for this is brilliantly described and perfectly explained in the book "Fixing my gaze", by a neuroscientist: http://www.fixingmygaze.com/
Because, obviously, blind people have learned just to hold it and never poop. Really, sometimes the asininity of the questions and assertions on /. is mind-boggling...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Yeah, there are some papers showing this return of plasticity in the visual cortex of cats after light deprivation (or, to make it sound more evil, maybe it was kittens?).
I have this, and while they don't know the cause, it seems that there's an issue with the fine-motor balance in the musculature around the eye. Could be genetic, could be damage.
Why would sitting in the dark recondition those muscles? It's not a brain-processing issue (which, who knows, maybe is reset by isolation and lack of input - seems bs to me), it's a muscle issue. After my 47 years of imbalanced muscle behavior, I find it rather hard to believe that sitting in the dark's going to reset that.
-Styopa
So, basically like power cycling the eye, right? Gotta remove the battery from the mother board and let it sit for a while for the RAM to clear, I guess. This should fix most minor eye issues I would assume. Similar processes should also work for the ears, nose, etc.
I think I'm processing the proprioception data visually but I'm not sure. It's an odd effect.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"Each day the two men tacked up a large piece of photosensitive film used in radiology. Days later, after they’d left the room, Backus developed those five sheets of film and was gratified to find them pure black, indicating zero exposure to light."
Most "photosensitive film" is unaffected by darkness - when developed it remains clear. Either they inadvertently exposed it to light, were living in a (dangerously) high radiation environment or Eliza Strickland who is "an associate editor for the science and technology magazine IEEE Spectrum," grew up in the digital age and believes that such bygone technologies as "photosensitive film" are not worth knowing about. It was the "pure black" that got me - it gives a real impression of veracity...
talking about poo-poo while in the dark gets me excited
Rule 34, although it won't really work on video.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If this works, and Thom Yorke gets cured, all them RH hipsters are gonna miss that semi-closed stare he gives out on concerts. Bummer.
Compared to smell or sound, sight is easily controlled. You simply need to control photons in the room. Since the human body doesn't generate photons you only need to control for external sources. With both smell and sound the human body is capable of generating these stimuli on its own.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Many associate Sensory deprivation with torture but short-term sessions have been described as relaxing and conducive to meditation. Sessions of up to 24 hrs for therapeutic purposes are referred to as Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST) There is a substantial amount of research in treating addictive behaviors with REST is reviewed with smoking, overeating, alcohol consumption, and drug misuse. There are two types: Flotation REST and Chamber RESTIn chamber REST, subjects lie on a bed in a completely dark and sound reducing (on average, 80 dB) room for up to 24 hours. Their movement is restricted by the experimental instructions, but not by any mechanical restraints. Food, drink and toilet facilities are provided in the room and are at the discretion of the tester. Subjects are allowed to leave the room before the 24 hours are complete; however, fewer than 10% actually do. With regard to the article, I would be concerned as some studies have had participant experience hallucination after 48 hrs.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
[Shrug] you've never had to wipe your parent's shit off their bum?
Don't worry, you too are eligible for this joy. Because you may have no children whose shit you'll have to wipe up, but you sure as hell have had parents, and there's a good chance that you are going to live long enough to see them in their incontinence.
Paying some one less rich than you to wipe up your parent's shit is simply transferring your problem to someone else.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Not if they're toasted ravioli. (Sprinkling grated cheese on them could be a challenge, though.)
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.