Sports & Psychology

Pain, vision, and prosthetics ... the August 8 issue of Sports Illustrated covers it all, with a sports twist. Yes, I am ready for some football, which is why when I saw Nnamdi Asomugha on the cover of the library's issue of Sports Illustrated, I picked it up. I kept reading David Epstein's great "special report" on Sports Medicine.

The most interesting, cognitive science-ly speaking, is this: The Truth About Pain: It's In Your Head, by Epstein. In which he talks about how stress-induced analgesia (SIA) -- "the temporary absence of pain" due to stressful events -- manifests for athletes. Hint: it helps cyclists get to the finish line after a long race up a very steep hill.

Also of interest to cognitive science folks is Epstein's article It's All About Anticipation, in which he explains why MLB hitters can't hit softball pitches. It's not because they're too slow, but because the hitters are so unfamiliar with softball pitchers' pitching style. There's a neat sidebar about visual acuity and high performance athletes: most can see at 20-15, but some can even see at 20-9 -- vastly better than the majority of folks whose acuity has been tested.

Epstein does a nice job explaining the science correctly and understandably.

royalty-free image from stock.xchng.

A Rock Star of Neuroscience

I've been meaning to read the May 11 New Yorker article on V. S. Ramachandran and this weekend I finally had time to do so. It is a great read for those interested in "Rama" or in many of the hot topics in neuroscience for the last 15 or so years.

Rama really is a rock star of neuroscience, as Colapinto's article ably demonstrates. Ramachandran has developed a mechanism for people to overcome -- and even eradicate -- phantom limb pain; he has studied synesthesia, mirror neurons, and brain plasticity. The article provides examples of all of these areas of Rama's expertise, as well as several of his other endeavors (hiding habits of flounder, for instance).

Colapinto includes a charming interlude with Rama's wife of over 20 years (Diane Rogers-Ramachandran is a UNC grad!) which provides amusing insight into Rama's inability to find his car in a parking lot.

I've blogged about Ramachandran several times, including a vibrant TEDTalk, and if you are interested in his work, I recommend this article.

For More Information

• Colapinto, John. Brain Games, the New Yorker. May 11, 2009.(registration required for the full article, or read the article in EBSCO's Academic Search Premier database for free if your institution is a subscriber)
  
• Colapinto, John. Ramachandran’s Mirror Trick, blog post at the New Yorker. May 6, 2009. Includes a written description of Ramachandran's ingenious solution to phantom limb pain, the mirror trick, along with a photo of how the mirror should be positioned for the trick to work.
  

About Vision Therapy, II

I get so many hits on my blog for vision therapy, mostly looking for material about Stereo Sue, so I take it for granted that all of my visitors know what vision therapy is. Bad librarian!

It's hard to find a good definition online of vision therapy from a reputable source, in part because it's somewhat controversial.  My impression of it, and this is from my own experience, is that it's a way of retraining the eyes and brain to work together to improve vision.  It's both a personal interest and a professional one, as effective vision therapy relies heavily on the brain's ability to change at any age (also known as brain plasticity).

Vision therapy has been used with people with learning disabilities, with traumatic brain injury, and vision problems like strabismus.  Athletes have used it to improve their hand-eye coordination (useful for baseball players, for instance).  In my case, it was used to correct a convergence insufficiency.  It is generally practiced by behavioral optometrists, whose goal is "to develop or improve fundamental visual skills and abilities" and/or "change how a patient processes or interprets visual information" (College of Optometrists in Vision Development [COVD]).

If you're looking for vision therapy treatment, my eye doctor recommends finding a COVD optometrist. Read what the COVD says about vision therapy; you might also be interested in their information about vision therapy for adults.

For More Information, check out these blog posts about vision therapy

• Stereo Sue and Me, July 1, 2006
• About Vision Therapy, July 13, 2006
• Scholarly Research on Vision Therapy, July 13, 2006
• Links for Vision Therapy, July 28, 2006
• Vision Therapy, a personal perspective, January 5, 2009

Vision Therapy, a personal perspective

My vision buddy Heather has just started blogging about her experiences with vision therapy. She calls it "One Eyed Girl - My Life with Strabismus: [a] Journal of living with monocular vision and learning through Vision Therapy to use both eyes."

I went through a visual revolution several years ago through my own vision therapy, and I appreciate reading someone else's thoughts mid-therapy. I'd read that athletes and children were doing VT to improve their vision, but I didn't know anyone else doing vision therapy at the time -- except for the kids I'd see in my eye doctor's office before or after my appointment. My therapy resulted in a visual revolution -- colors pop, trees have depth, snowflakes are truly three-dimensional -- but I had no one but my eye doctor and vision therapist to tell about these developments. They were happy for me, but it wasn't the same as sharing the milestones with someone who was going through -- or had gone through -- a similar transformation

Heather's visual system is vastly different than mine, and so her rehabilitation is different, but still I like reading her accounts of how her vision is improving. Her descriptions of new visual experiences, large and small, are inspiring, particularly if you have gone through vision therapy. And if you're a vision therapist or behavioral optometrist, it's a nice insight into a patient's experience.

What is binocular vision for, anyway?

Great talk coming up at UConn, and I've marked this one in my calendar. Maybe see you there?

Speaker: Mark Changizi, Department of Cognitive Science, RPI

Title: What is binocular vision for, anyway?

Abstract: The study of binocular vision typically amounts to the study of the perception of depth it gives us (stereopsis). However, people who have lost an eye tend to have notoriously good vision, and attempts to empirically document real-life performance deficits have led to mixed results. I'll describe a function of the binocular region that has not been appreciated in the literature, the ability to "see through" stuff. If you're an animal in a habitat with lots of clutter, then you can see more of your world by having forward-facing eyes, for although you become blind to what's behind you, the extra amount you can see in front makes up for it. If, however, you're an animal in a non-cluttered habitat, then you can see the most by having your eyes face sideways, having panoramic vision of what's around you and only a tiny binocular region. Evidence across mammals supports this, suggesting that it is the x-ray power of the binocular region, not stereopsis, that is crucial for understanding why our binocular regions are so large.

If You Go
Date: Friday November 30
Time: 4 pm
Location: BOUS 160 [see interactive map of UConn & select BOUS as building name]

Messy Reptilian Brains

Sharon Begley uses her article April 9, 2007 article in Newsweek, In Our Messy Reptilian Brains to review a new book by Johns Hopkins professor of neuroscience David Linden The Accidental Mind.

In it, Begley quotes Linden as saying that while the brain is impressive in function, in design, the brain is "quirky, inefficient and bizarre ... a weird agglomeration of ad hoc solutions that have accumulated throughout millions of years of evolutionary history."

Begley uses Linden's example of blindsight to explain why the human brain is "essentially a mouse brain with extra toppings." Blindsight is when some blind people are able to sense and describe objects they cannot see. Folks with blindsight, then, have lost their "traditional" vision, located in the traditional visual cortex, but still retain some use of the "amphibian visual system", located in the midbrain. They can sense objects, but "because the midbrain is not connected to higher cognitive regions, they have no conscious awareness of an object's location..."

In typical Begley style, she compares the brain and musical technology: "the brain is like an iPod built around an eight-track cassette player."

Read on for more fun, and check out Linden's book for even more fun!

Let There Be Light

All in the Mind has done it again, this time providing a two-part series on the Blind Brain. I've only listened to part one, but I could barely concentrate on driving because the story was so fascinating.

Natasha Mitchell spoke with three scientists deeply involved in the areas of vision, the brain, and plasticity:
- Australian psychologist Zoltan Torey, whom New Yorker readers will remember from the 2003 Oliver Sacks story "The Mind's Eye; What the blind see" as a blind man who replaced his own roof. Torey speaks in detail about how he 'sees' after having been blinded over 50 years ago.
- MIT's Pawan Sinha, who runs Project Prakash, whose goal is to "...help curably blind children, especially in India, access the surgery they need to see, and study how their progress in the effort to gain insights into how the brain learns to see." Fascinating insight into how people can regain sight (mostly those born with curable vision problems), and what happens in the brain when they do.
- Harvard's Amir Amedi, who is studying "brain stimulation techniques to study the brains of blind people" along with Alvaro Pascual-Leone (who's written / studied a lot about brain plasticity).

Absolutely *fascinating* research all around. The All in the Mind site includes the audio version of the show (streaming & a downloadable mp3), a print transcript, brief info. about the show, and links to research by all three of the episode's guests.

If I were a grading kind of girl, I'd give this show an A.

Seeing Red

An article from last week's New York Times describes the importance of the color red, just in time for Valentine's Day. In How Do We See Red? Count the Ways Natalie Angier talks about various meanings of the color red, including "shades of life, death, fury, shame, courage, anguish, pride", and not only for humans:

"Red is the premier signaling color in the natural world, variously showcasing a fruitful bounty, warning of a fatal poison or boasting of a sturdy constitution and the genes to match."

Angier quotes Dr. Nicholas Humphrey, a philosopher at the London School of Economics and the author of Seeing red : a study in consciousness: "Our visual system was shaped by colors already in use among many plants and animals, and red in particular stands out against the green backdrop of nature," he said. "If you want to make a point, you make it in red."

Happy Valentine's Day!

Links for Vision Therapy

If you're interested in learning more about vision therapy, behavioral optometry, or developmental optometry (in reference to my post about Stereo Sue and my eye doctor), here are some links which will provide additional information.

First, according to my eye doctor, find a doctor who can provide a good diagnosis of your vision problem and provide a customized vision therapy plan. Ophthalmologists do not practice vision therapy, and neither do many optometrists. Behavioral/developmental optometrists are trained in optometric vision therapy, and most are members of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development (COVD). You can search for a Fellow of COVD, ie a doctor with FCOVD listed after his or her name, at the COVD site.

The following sites are part of the Optometrists Network:

• VisionStories Read many answers to the question "What changes have you seen as a result of a Vision Therapy program" or "How has Vision Therapy changed your life?"


• Vision3D Explains what stereo vision is and provides lots of games and puzzles and optical illusions


• Public Information about vision therapy. Provides links to information about vision therapy, convergence insufficiency, double vision, lazy eye, and strabismus. Some links are within optometrists.org while others are off-site.


• What is Vision Therapy? Links about vision therapy, FAQs, and definitions.

Other sites:

• Vision Therapy & Vision Enhancement from the Pacific University College of Optometry. For their 4th year optometry students. Includes images of some vision therapy exercises.


• In addition to providing information about finding a trusted vision therapy provider, COVD explains what vision therapy is and offers (brief) information about other eye problems such as convergence insufficiency and nearsightedness.

Hope that helps!

Scholarly Research on Vision Therapy

There's not much scholarly material about vision therapy, but here are links to searches in PubMed on related topics:

• convergence insufficiency, including a 2005 article entitled " A randomized clinical trial of treatments for convergence insufficiency in children" and a 2006 article called "Home exercises for convergence insufficiency in children."


• A fancy librarian search on ("vision therapy" or "behavioral optometry" or "developmental optometry") retrieves some useful articles. These include "A systematic review of the applicability and efficacy of eye exercises" and "Optometric co-management of vision therapy."


• See a list of clinical trials about vision, including some on convergence insufficieny and strabimus. The link goes to trials that are currently recruiting patients, but you can also search & see results from similar trials that are no longer recruiting patients.

About Vision Therapy

Got a few posts from people wanting to know what I did for vision therapy so they could do it themselves. Well, I'm a librarian, not a doctor -- and I started VT over 5 years ago -- so I don't feel comfortable promoting the exercises *I* did.

Instead, as a librarian, I recommend doing some targeted research. I'm going to pull together some useful web sites & post 'em here, but in the meantime, here's a good approach:

You need to find a doctor who can provide a good diagnosis of your vision problem and provide a customized vision therapy plan. Ophthalmologists do not practice vision therapy, and neither do many optometrists. Behavioral/developmental optometrists are trained in optometric vision therapy, and most are members of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development (COVD). To find such an optometrist, go to http://www.covd.org and click on the Find A Doctor button. Look particularly for a Fellow of COVD, ie a doctor with FCOVD listed after his or her name.

There are some doctors who may provide some "vision therapy" but are not rigorously trained in the techniques as my eye doctor was. An FCOVD doctor is well trained.

Here's some info about vision therapy - it's from a doctor's practice, but it might be useful and doesn't look too commercial:
http://www.optometrists.org/virginia/vision_links.html

Try this Google search for educational sites about vision therapy, developmental optometry, or behavioral optometry:

site:edu "vision therapy" | "developmental optometry"| "behavioral optometry"

Hope this is helpful -- more later.

Stereo Sue and me

My eye doctor was interviewed by Oliver Sacks last year! He wrote about her in the New Yorker! (that's about as close as I'll come to being published in the New Yorker, so I'm rather excited).

Here's the deal: Dr. Theresa Ruggiero prescribed vision therapy for both "Stereo Sue" and me (tho' not at the same time). We both had miraculous recoveries of our stereo vision. Truly amazing, in my experience -- my biggest revelation was three dimensional vision, especially on paper, and especially with colors.

Stereo Sue had an equally amazing experience, which she shared with Oliver Sacks, who wrote the aforementioned article about it. If you want to read that, you can go to you local library & look it up in Academic Search Premier, LexisNexis, or another database with the full-text of the New Yorker.

Here are the details:

STEREO SUE. By: Sacks, Oliver. New Yorker, 6/19/2006, Vol. 82 Issue 18, p64-73.

She was also recently on NPR's Morning Edition -- read about her experiences on the NPR site, see photos of her (including one with Dr. Ruggiero & Oliver Sacks) then track down the New Yorker article.

Fascinating stuff!

Optical Illusions

From David Pogue's New York Times blog comes this:
Technology /
Pogues Posts: A Wacky Persistence of Vision Test
New York Times, June 10, 2005
By DAVID POGUE
This wild and wacky persistence-of-vision test is a new one on me. There is absolutely, positively no green in this circle of dots--but even I, Mr. Color-blind, saw phantom green spots after only about three seconds.

[swb note: there are many more optical illusions at this site, including face perception & emotion and a cool "stepping feet" illusion]