Margaret S. Livingston, Ph.D. Talk at UCI

Key Words/Phrases/Notes/Quotes from the lecture:

  • The Visual System
  • Shares works of art that are important because they help us understand how we see; low-level vision.
    • Line Drawings
  • First and most fundamental stage in visual processing
    • Center Surround Antagonism
  • “Vision is information processing, not image transmission.”
  • “All your visual system cares about is contrast.”
  • Your visual system has to compute distance and depth (3d) using a number of cues:
    • Relative motion
    • Shading
    • Perspective
    • Occlusion
    • Stereopsis
  • “Colors are only symbols. Reality is to be found in luminance alone.” – Pablo Picasso
  • Color and Luminance do different things
  • “I do not paint things; I paint only the difference between things.” Henry Matisse (vision is information processing)
  • 45:00
    • “You move your eyes 2-3x a second. So your retinal images are constantly changing. How do you knit this together into a constant perception?”
      • Fading + cut in motion (film editing)
  • ***50:44 is on Stereopsis (but it’s helpful to have 3d glasses to watch)
    • “If you [have stereopsis and] you go to a museum and want to fall into a painting, close one eye.”
    • “Stereo-matching is a difficult problem.
      • Cyan to right, white to left, vice versa
      •  Steps in an escalator – have slats that you can misread by mistake at different distances (I think this is a good example of a moment when someone experiences stereoblindness)
      • Klimt had no Stereopsis!!
      • “You cannot have stereopsis if your eyes are misaligned because the computations for depth begin in early visual cortex where they are mapped retinotopically, that is across the visual field, and if your two eyes are pointing in two different directions the information from two eyes from the visual field don’t even end up in the visual cortex so you don’t have any depth perception.”
  • Dyslexic Brain Explored
  • Stereoblindness in famous artists
  • “Stereoblindness may not be only a disability but an asset for an artist”

 

More on “Stereo Sue” from Oliver Sacks’ book

Professor Sue Barry, dubbed “Stereo Sue” by neurologist Oliver Sacks in his book The Mind’s Eye, actually wrote her own book on her experience with Stereoblindness called Fixing my Gaze. I ordered it from my local library and will share quotes/notes when available. http://www.stereosue.com/


Short Interview with Oliver Sacks and Sue Barry.

In this video, Prof. Barry shares another example of her experience with Stereoblindness.

 


Neurologist & Professor, Sue Barry, gives an excellent Tedx Talk on Steroblindness

This presentation gives an incredible account on Sue Barry’s personal experience with Steroblindness. She explains the condition, the cure, and debunks research in detail.

Key Words/Phrases/Quotes from Tedx Talk:

  • Double-vision
  • Combined Input vs. Singular 
  • Eye turn
  • The Critical Period Theory- time in childhood for visual development
  • Developmental Optometrist & Vision Therapy
  • “In distance, everything seemed to jitter”
  • “Didn’t know to aim the eyes at the same place in the same space and time.”
  • Normal viewer (develop between 2 to 4 months of age)
    • Convergence action = while looking at a close object, aim eyes by turning eyes both in together 
    • Divergent action= turn both eyes out to aim that the more distant object
  • Prof. Barry learned to do the above at the age of 48
  • More on the Broch String: https://www.seevividly.com/info/Lazy_Eye_Treatments/Eye_Exercises/Brock_String
  • “An adult brain changes as a result of active learning. You have to become very self-aware. You have to learn how to change very entrenched habits into new ones. And these experiences have to be accompanied by a sense of novelty and a sense of accomplishment in order for you to continue with all the hard world and practice it is going to take. So if you read in a text book that something is not possible, it ain’t necessarily so.”