Can Living In Total Darkness For 5 Days "Reset" the Visual System? 155
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.
This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:4, Interesting)
That seems like a really bad idea for people who still need their visual cortex for vision. If you want to jack up the wiring in your brain, just abuse dangerous drugs. It'll save you a lot of time.
I don't know what you mean by "jack up the wiring" but mushrooms will probably get you there and they're not dangerous.
Re:This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know what you mean by "jack up the wiring" but mushrooms will probably get you there and they're not dangerous.
And they grow in the dark!
I'm sensing an opportunity for synergy here.
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Some mushrooms are not dangerous (and are hallucinogenic). Others are dangerous (and hallucinogenic). And still others are dangerous (and are not hallucinogenic).
Generalising, it is not safe to rely upon generalisations about the safety of mushrooms.
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By his account he said that after some days he started to experience mind-created visions and that he lost the notion of time. He said that the 49 days seemed to be, in the end, like twelve days. He also said that he had some training before the retreat, because people that does it without some inst
DeepDream (Score:2)
This reminds me of DeepDream [wikipedia.org], Google's neural network that looks at images and tries to see things that are not there.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:4, Interesting)
That is pretty standard for isolation. If you're out of the normal day-night cycle, most people tend to drift round to a longer-than-24 hours circadian rhythm. A forend of mine did a number of experiments on this in various cave systems in Yorkshire in the 1960s, where he'd have light from lanterns he controlled, and food / water dumps would be left in the cave at irregular intervals (to remove circadian prompting). His body clock went up to something in excess of 30 hours.
Of course, since he had lanterns (OK, miner's light) to turn on, he wasn't experimenting on "resetting" his visual cortex, but on removing the circadian prompt. But relevant.
Anyone who has been a caver and has been waiting for several hours for the rest of the party to come back (or catch up), will have turned the lamp off to save the battery. (Of course, the wise troglodyte carries spare lights. but you still keep your system-level redundancy.) And the colours come and the patterns happen. and you hear the water getting louder and you wonder about whether it's raining up top. Some people freak. Most people turn the light back onto the low power setting.
Re: This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:5, Interesting)
It took about 5 minutes for me, but had to be *total* dakness. So dark I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or shut. This was in a lab where we were doin nuclear emission spectroscopy (just gas discharge tubes). Any outside light would pollute the results, so the lab was really dark until we turned on the juice.
During that period I could see as clearly as i'm seeing this screen flowing sheets of glowing pastel paint sliding down a wall that wasn't there.
Not true hallucinations of course--by definition if you know it's not real it's not a hallucination. Phosphenes I think they were called.
Anyhow, very beautiful and unusual. I don't think my lab partners saw anything--at least they didn't say they did. Or they were afraid people would think they were nuts.
Later i blacked out my dorm room & reproduced the effect. And learned it's really hard to produce absolute darkness. Tinfoil is *full* of tiny holes! And black paint is not as opaque as it seems.
Re: This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:4, Funny)
Tinfoil is *full* of tiny holes!
I wondered why the Lizard Overlords' thought waves were still getting through.
Not that hard (Score:1)
One finding: Eating ravioli in the dark is hard.
He should try being blind.
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Isn't that what he tried? (Score:2)
Wait for the results. (Score:5, Insightful)
Testing (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Testing (Score:5, Informative)
Barry Marshall, who discovered ulcers where caused by a bacterial infection, tested it by drink a petri dish of the bacteria and got gastritis and then cured himself with antibiotics.
Got the Nobel prize.
Re:Testing (Score:5, Informative)
There's a long history of doctors and scientists in medicine testing their ideas on themselves.
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There's a long history of doctors and scientists in medicine testing their ideas on themselves.
Yes, although it is the fastest way to get a qualitative result it is usually frowned upon... best wait until you have some meaningful result tested in a controlled way before you go talking to the press about how you were running human experiments on yourself.
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I think what you meant to say was that he had it verified by his strictest opposition, he already knew it would work as he had done other tests. What he did was submit to the acid test under conditions that were indisputable.
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While that is fairly uncommon today, that's not the case here. Isolation experiments have been carried out in various forms for a long period of time. Some have used volunteers (e.g. the ones I describe above), some have involved literal torture, but the field is definitely not short of prior experimentation. The precise question which this researcher wants to answer may not have been addre
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At least it's more interesting than most of the crap that gets posted online today such as top ten lists of celebrities who have pets that look like other celebrities or whatever Bennet Haselton is doing.
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Well he *is* going to test the hypothesis. But he has to test the *procedure* as well on a smaller scale before he uses it on his research subjects.
People underestimate how much of science is like this. Advancing science isn't just a matter of creating more theoretical knowledge; a lot of the time it's about advancing know-how.
Where are his grad students? (Score:5, Funny)
>> Eating ravioli in the dark is hard.
Isn't this what grad students were invented for?
Ravioli tastes better (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but eating the grad students in the dark is really no easier, and the ravioli tends to taste better.
Re:Ravioli tastes better (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ravioli tastes better (Score:5, Funny)
It wasn't that hard.
You're doing it wrong.
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Solitary confinement (Score:1, Flamebait)
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.
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Not a good idea (Score:5, Funny)
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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Ah... and me without points to give out today. :-) That one brought a smile to my face.
Re: Not a good idea (Score:1)
Not if you pay someone to do a surgical shine-job on your eyeballs.
Overkill (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just glue them a mask on their face?
Way cheaper.
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I like this suggestion, a whole mask covering the face and head with no light leaks and only holes for the mouth and nose, now where can I find one of those...?
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Try your friendly adult toy store.
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Speaking as a person who has been a student on astronomy camps, a photographer back in the days when you loaded your own film into the cassettes in the dark, and a caver : you didn't experience total darkness then.
For a start, it would have taken your eyes 20 minutes to a half hour to achieve dull "dark adaptation" to reach full sensitivity to light.
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If you can sell an HD virtual reality system that simulates being in the dark you may be able to make a tidy profit.
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They make black-out contacts, but they aren't perfect. Don't google unless you can imagine what they are for ...
Can you give us a clue?
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Halloween costumes, according to Google. Maybe I should've searched for something other than 'black-out contacts'.
Blindfold Anyone? (Score:1)
Why not use a blindfold for 5 days?
Are these people stupid or just trying to make everything more difficult than it seems?
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TFA states that their hypothesis called for as close to "no photons" as possible. They brought in photo-sensitive paper to ensure at the end of the test their was no light whatsoever present in the room. Previous experiments with lab rats showed increased plasticity in the visual cortex after being immersed in complete darkness for a period of several days. A simple blindfold wouldn't be able to meet those conditions.
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How do you check the photosensitive paper?
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Do a quick search for the term "photograph". That should explain it all.
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Put it in fixing solution before turning on the lights. If it comes out white, there was no light. This is with photographic film negative. Not sure if there is any real difference.
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It's effectively like a simple Polaroid photo sheet. If it comes out black, not exposed to light. If it comes out white, exposed.
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Take photosensitive paper off of wall.
Place into light-proof envelope.
Open small hatch in wall, which leads to drop box.
Place envelope into drop box.
Close hatch.
Alert the people outside the experimental room that they can now open their hatch, and retrieve the envelope.
They then take the envelope to a photographic darkroom and proceed as normal.
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You wouldn't leave yo
Re:Blindfold Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not use a blindfold for 5 days?
Are these people stupid or just trying to make everything more difficult than it seems?
A) Some light is likely to get in, and they would need to be in a mostly-dark room regardless to account for slip-ups. Even then, they wanted to get 100% darkness, not 99.5% darkness (by timeslice)
B) Ever worn a sleep mask or eye pillow? Your eye does different things when it's covered or has pressure on it (and a lot of pressure would need to be applied here, most likely). Having your eye "free" to look around (but having no source of light in the room) is likely to be physiologically different than wearing a dark blindfold.
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Re:Blindfold Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW The most common treatment today for lazy eye (Amblyopia) is to simply patch (i.e., think pirate patch) your good eye and hope your brain will stop relying on your good eye and start learning how to see again through eye that the brain was ignoring (suppressing). So it is basically a type of blindfold for one eye.
For children with lazy eye, the patch is generally worn for a few hours a day for 6 months to a year. The older you are, the less well patching works (presumably because your brain is less plastic in these regards).
However, new research suggests that there might be a way to retrain your brain (without resorting to trying to "reboot" your brain) by a form of vision therapy that attempts to reinvigorate the part of your brain that uses both eyes to see, by forcing it to exercise.
One researcher has been experimenting with having people play a special version of tetris [news-medical.net] where each eye gets part of the information and the brain has to integrate both views to successfully play the game. Initially each eye would get a version that would be easy to fuse (depending on the problem that caused the lazy eye, such as out-of-alignment/direction), as the treatment progressed, the versions would progress toward the normal viewing. Seems like they got reasonably good initial results which were better than patching
Maybe not every problem needs to be solved by rebooting the system.
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For children with lazy eye, the patch is generally worn for a few hours a day for 6 months to a year. The older you are, the less well patching works (presumably because your brain is less plastic in these regards).
I had lazy eye when I was a child and the treatment was eye exercises using different cards with shapes, focal exercises (a string with focus markers on them held out from the face) and a pen that you move around and maintain focus on. I got some awesome headaches doing it however I didn't need glasses for 40 odd years.
Recently it has made a re-appearance and I was dismayed to find that I was just prescribed glasses, which help, but even for the few weeks I've had them I've noticed that it just makes the g
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Works better w/multiple "friendly" test subjects (Score:2)
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.
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Number 2 (Score:5, Funny)
How can you tell if you are done wiping?
Re:Number 2 (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm guessing sort of like scratch and sniff. Wipe till it the paper smells clean.
Re: Number 2 (Score:5, Informative)
Fold paper in half; if it sticks together, keeping wiping.
Re: Number 2 (Score:5, Funny)
Fold paper in half; if it sticks together, keeping wiping.
+1. This one knows his shit.
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Scotonauts (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like scrotonauts lol
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Re: Hypothesis: Patch the good eye (Score:2)
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Decades ago one of my sisters had a lazy eye. She had to wear an eye patch on the good eye for a while, that's all. Simple solution that doesn't interfere much with their daily lives.
Fixes a decent percentage of the population, sure, but what about those for which the eyepatch fails?
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Fixes a decent percentage of the population, sure, but what about those for which the eyepatch fails?
Get an eyepatch with a better elastic. There's no excuse for an eyepatch to fail.
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I blame it on all those low-cost H1B pirates, they're undermining the integrity of the eye-patch industry.
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Ravioli hypothesis... (Score:2)
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...
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ravioli, marinara, blender, and drink it from a glass. should work for steak, potatoes, and gravy too.
epicure (Score:2)
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.
Experiments in cats... (Score:2)
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?).
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Do cats see IR like rats and snakes can? If so, how do you make it dark when they are glowing in the IR range.
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AH, I doubt it (Score:2)
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.
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Those muscles are under nervous control. It may be subconscious or unconscious control, but it's control nonetheless.
the theory is about re-setting the control system, not the muscles.
Radiohead will never be the same if this works... (Score:2)
Sensory Deprivation and REST (Score:2)
Many associate Sensory deprivation [wikipedia.org] 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) [nih.gov] 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 [wikipedia.org] and Chamber REST [wikipedia.org]In chamber REST, subjects lie on a bed i
Re: not even a lil LED ? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes that is why blind people are crazy.
Re: not even a lil LED ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: not even a lil LED ? (Score:2)
Re:not even a lil LED ? (Score:5, Funny)
... And what can you do? ...
Edit Slashdot stories.
Nope. (Score:1)
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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.
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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)
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talking about poo-poo while in the dark gets me excited
Rule 34, although it won't really work on video.
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[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.
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It's like I'm wiping a marker... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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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...
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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.