Normally, babies learn how to look at the world before they can communicate their experiences. The rare cases of people who have been blind all their lives and then had their sight restored offer scientists a unique opportunity to study how we learn to interpret visual signals. MIT professor Pawan Sinha is studying children and adolescents in India who are seeing the world for the first time after treatment for blindness.
Research so far suggests that seeing moving objects is crucial for learning to interpret visual signals in the three-dimensional world. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Sinha Laboratory/MIT)
MIT neuroscientists asked patients who had recently had their sight restored to identify and trace the shapes they saw. While a normally sighted person would likely trace two overlapping squares, these patients interpreted the drawing as three separate shapes.
Research so far suggests that seeing moving objects is crucial for learning to interpret visual signals in the three-dimensional world. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Sinha Laboratory/MIT)
Reminds me of that movie with Val Kilmer, whatever it was called.
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Yeah! The one where he did stuff with the thing!
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Yeah and then the thing came in then did all that stuff to the other thing
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Yeah, yeah... That's the one.
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I guess our knowledge of what squares are meant to look like make the trained eye see the two squares but at base knowledge you would see the three different shapes because that is what is truly represented. The two squares would be a short cut of sorts.
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