Show threadLorenAmelangMay 21, 2025
@skinnylatte
Are your internal feelings of direction aligned with compass north and 360° ? My first childhood sense was based on the front of the house I lived in, looking east. When I later learned about north I had to imagine lots of those little "front views" posted like icons in the overall north-based world I could only logically imagine in my head, not "see". Later I was forced to wear weird bifocal #PlusLensTheory glasses, and the little "front view" worlds I lived in expanded to way more than 360° - to bridge the perceived motion as I turned my head to the logical 360° I knew I should see. I suspect this mess contributed to my #aphantasia ...
LorenAmelangJan 31, 2024

@danilo shared a post about Apple's #VisionPro “Spatial Computing”, that resonates with my childhood experience of #PlusLensTheory glasses.

https://visionprototypes.com/resources/why-spatial-computing

Instead of the single "cyberspace" out in front of my body, I had two different views that were vaguely related to reality, but with different sizes and movement patterns. Like two VR screens one above the other, with even more motion sickness and vulnerability to tripping over real space items. Like the ostrich in the other illustration, I eventually learned to "shove my head in that cave while my ass hung out."

"AR is loaded with cameras and sensors, and if Apple’s approach is to be believed, eye tracking is essential to making the illusions of AR persuasive." I wonder how they will cope with people like me whose sense of visual space is based on wildly distorted proprioception and vestibular awareness. Or even just people who always wear glasses to see "reality" but can't wear them with the AR headset.

Looks like Apple offers prescription inserts for the VisionPro. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213965

That could deal with focus and clarity issues, but leave conflicts due to head and eye movement.

Is there an initial setup procedure where the headset somehow learns to duplicate the movement distortions the user has incorporated into their visual world? Seems that could become a valuable diagnostic tool for quantifying the kinds of distortions I'm struggling with IRL.

"A sufficiently advanced version of this technology could create persuasive images that left reality feeling lacking, depending on your reality." Maybe it could be employed to gradually guide visually distorted users back to a healthy perceptual system, where "reality" would become more affirming?

Why 'Spatial Computing'

Apple put us on notice last year that we're on the threshold of a new computing paradigm. The era of ostrich malarkey is at an end.

LorenAmelangJan 31, 2024

@danilo shared a post about Apple's #VisionPro that resonates with my childhood experience of #PlusLensTheory glasses.

https://visionprototypes.com/resources/why-spatial-computing

Instead of the single "cyberspace" in front of my body, I had two views that were vaguely related to reality, but with different sizes and movement patterns. Like two VR screens, with even more motion sickness and vulnerability to tripping over real space items.

"AR is loaded with cameras and sensors, and if Apple’s approach is to be believed, eye tracking is essential to making the illusions of AR persuasive." I wonder how they will cope with people whose sense of visual space is based on distorted proprioception and vestibular awareness. Or even just people who always wear glasses to see "reality" but can't wear them with the AR headset.

Looks like Apple offers prescription inserts for the VisionPro. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213965
That could deal with focus and clarity issues, but leave conflicts due to head and eye movement.

Is there an initial setup procedure where the headset somehow learns to duplicate the movement distortions the user has incorporated into their visual world? Seems that could become a valuable diagnostic tool...

Why 'Spatial Computing'

Apple put us on notice last year that we're on the threshold of a new computing paradigm. The era of ostrich malarkey is at an end.

Show threadLorenAmelangJul 12, 2023

@SepiKeshavarzi @AnnualReviews
@katejjeffery
@lisamelton

Glad to see the relationship between #Vestibular and #Visual Cues is being studied! I'd like to share a bit of my experience...

When I was nine years old I was prescribed #PlusLensTheory glasses, plano on top, +0.75 in the #bifocal area. And forced to wear them every waking moment. Suddenly the area where my next footstep would fall was magnified, unless I tilted my head way down to see over the bifocal add. And turning my head side to side caused the lower part of the world to appear to rotate way more than expected.

Six months later the main lenses became -0.75 with a more extreme bifocal add. That continued into the usual ever increasing negativity, until age 15 when they gave up and prescribed hard contact lenses.

I've found two published threads that seem relevant:

The first was long ago, when I dug in the physical card catalog at Stanford and made pre-Xerox photocopies of papers (that have faded to invisibility.) There was a prominent German researcher, Helmut #Rennert (1920–1994), who does not seem to be referenced in English publications, and was mainly concerned with a psychopathological continuity from affective to schizophrenic syndromes.

In the late 1960s he found that as people became more strongly afflicted by schizophrenia their representation of the #horizon line in drawings was displaced downward. Eventually their drawings became maps - schematic representations viewed from above - with isolated images of objects floating in unrelated spaces above them.

That's the most vivid image I've found of my world. I felt the horizon at my foot level, not eye level. I remember meditations where I "turned out the lights" in the upper part of my visual space because it conflicted with the Vestibular and Visual Cues from the lens area. Gradually I swung the left and right peripheral images out and forward until they were walls in front of my body instead of a world wrapping around behind me.

Which brings me to the second thread, Dr. Antonia #Orfield, M.A., O.D., SEEING SPACE - Undergoing Brain Re-Programming to Reduce Myopia

It is still available at:
https://www.oep.org/sites/default/files/referencearticles/Seeing%20Space_1.pdf
but the certificate has expired and you must sneak through the scary warnings to see it. (I'm happy to share a copy if you can't do that.)

She describes the #CyclopeanCave she retreated into because of negative lenses. Very much like I sucked my peripheral world around in front of my face and then inside my head - truly like the world was all inside a mental cave and my body was surrounding it.

The relationship between Vestibular and Visual Cues can get quite complex... I'd love to hear of any other research touching my experience. And I'm happy to answer any questions!

LorenAmelangMay 12, 2023

#Introduction

The kids I grew up with knew I was "different", but my parents and school insisted I was normal. Now I've explored #Autism #Prosopagnosia #Alexithymia and #Aphantasia and have an idea what was going on, but then I thought everyone saw the world like I did, just coped better. I coped by becoming a #PluralSystem by age three when I realized my girl self would have to be hidden. After six "guy" IDs, I'm now back being that girl. Still running the system, but with more E and less T...

Age nine I was forced to wear #Bifocal #PlusLensTheory glasses every waking moment. Shattered my body sense and #CognitiveMap - https://www.psychoros.com/consumed-by-the-light/ Spent endless days of lonely boredom exploring the ~30° wedges of #SpatialViewCells and the flat dioramas between them. Now I'm rebuilding a 3D world around my body, where #HeadDirectionCells can have a single basis and #DorsalStream depth can pop out of the flat distance like content from a random dot stereogram.

Despite all that, I've been online since #ARPAnet and #DJNR, wrote the first magazine article with simultaneous code distribution (via 8" floppies in the post), coded fab robots to move 6" & 8" Silicon wafers, built my (almost) independent #SolarPV and #SolarThermal house (7K lines of C++ from 1998, 42 device outs), and evolved an audio system with bandwidth from DC to a half MHz. Helped raise four unique kids, as adult minds in young bodies. Still mystify most of the adults I encounter...

Consumed by the Light - Psychoros

The dancing ground of the soul

LorenAmelangMay 12, 2023
Age nine I was forced to wear #Bifocal #PlusLensTheory glasses every waking moment. Shattered my body sense and #CognitiveMap - https://www.psychoros.com/consumed-by-the-light/ Spent endless days of lonely boredom exploring the ~30° wedges of #SpatialViewCells and the flat dioramas between them. Now I'm rebuilding a 3D world around my body, where #HeadDirectionCells can have a single basis and #DorsalStream depth can pop out of the flat distance like content from a random dot stereogram.
Consumed by the Light - Psychoros

The dancing ground of the soul

Show threadLorenAmelangMay 7, 2023
@sue_twin2 I'm curious how this played out for you. As a survivor of #PlusLensTheory glasses in childhood, forced on me every waking moment, I'm still trying to undo the bizarre angles /positions /sizes of the images I see in different parts of my visual field. I'm afraid cataract surgery would complicate this mess even more... Did your brain and eye muscles adapt comfortably?