Re: 50YO neuroscientist learns to do stereopsis for the first time


"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemore2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"feedbackdroid" <feedbackdroid@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
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Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
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mimo_545@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:


feedbackdroid wrote:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5507789



There was some recent research that went along with the idea
that if you radically change your perceptual input, then that
part
of your brain that is used to compensate, physically changes in
response to new use - like how muscles would.

Generally I feel that perception (not coherence) is a matter
of rationalizing the ambiguities of physical perceptual
limits.
So asymmetry is essential, not unique.

(perception)
(coherence)
(rationalzation)



Notice the 2 pictures of Susan Barry. At 50YO she doesn't look
very
cross-eyed. It's not in the online article, but on the radio
program
this morning they mentioned what "Theresa Ruggiero's exercise
regimen"
actually was all about. Barry used a string with beads on it, and
tied
one end to a chair 4-5 feet away and held the other end up to her
nose.
Then for a number of weeks she practiced focusing both eyes
together
on
the same bead at different distances. Basically she retrained her
eye
muscles to coordinate the 2 eyes better on the same spot in
depth.

One does not really "train muscles." The woman acquired some
operant
responses, and in so doing "could see depth." A physiological
explanation,
therefore, would require a physiological explanation of operant
behavior
and
stimulus control.




Interestingly, 50 years of random pecking around in the 3-D
environment
on her own didn't provide enough positive reinforcement to fix the
problem. OTOH, a few weeks of intentionally bringing both eyes
together
to focus on specific beads located in the proper locations did.

This does not have any bearing on anything I said. Just because a
contingency exists does not mean that an animal's behavior will
necessarily
contact it, where "contact" is far more literal than figurative. In the
case
described, the woman acquired other responses that worked well enough,
especially in the modern world, and changing that behavior involved
arranging explicit contingencies with which her behavior could make
contact.



So what? You really didn't say anything here. Just more generalist
gobbledygoop.

The real issue is trying to understand what happened in her internal
physiology, based upon what is previously known about internal
physiology, cortical function, Hubel+Wiesel critical periods, etc, as
Sacks was doing. The real key is that a way was found to get the
images into proper alignment in her visual cortex, and then she was
able to learn to compensate for what did not develop normally.

As I pointed out, the process in question appears to be operant
conditioning. A class of responses (convergence) produces a class of
consequences, and the probability of those responses are altered. This
type
of phenomenon is widespread in vision (and probably in much of perception)
and is evident in everything from the goggle experiments to the very
existence of "size constancy." Any explanation of perception in
physiological terms must deal with these issues - we cannot account for
vision, physiologically, without accounting for operant conditioning.

You just are a behaviorist monocular.


.

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