Biovail
Bluelighter
Some remotes emit visible light too so you can tell when the battery is dead (it stops lighting up)
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Colors outside the spectrum
- Thread starter Synaps3
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Some remotes emit visible light too so you can tell when the battery is dead (it stops lighting up)
am i reading you right, you can only see the IR with one eye and not the other?
you can also apparently build yourself some 'infra red goggles' http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Infrared-Goggles!-For-Under-$10/ that block out all visible light, enabling you to see near-infrared with your own eyes.
thoughtsUnThought
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2006
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- 925
Years ago found a scientific team's nfo on studies of light deprivation...
Apparently within a cave they would leave people for like 30 days...no light, food was brought to them. They claimed that participants begun to see in other spectral frequencies. Heat-vision was a re-occurring effect they noted, the people bringing the food became easily noticeable from the heat. Maybe the eyes have degree of processing ability for these other ends of the spectrum, but it is normally never perceived due to a lack of necessity. Or maybe this heat-vision is an effect of the perceptual facilities drawing a visual picture out of subtle stimuli other than retinal-imaging. < kind of like a synesthesic effect of blending stimuli into an all-encompassing sensory exp
Apparently within a cave they would leave people for like 30 days...no light, food was brought to them. They claimed that participants begun to see in other spectral frequencies. Heat-vision was a re-occurring effect they noted, the people bringing the food became easily noticeable from the heat. Maybe the eyes have degree of processing ability for these other ends of the spectrum, but it is normally never perceived due to a lack of necessity. Or maybe this heat-vision is an effect of the perceptual facilities drawing a visual picture out of subtle stimuli other than retinal-imaging. < kind of like a synesthesic effect of blending stimuli into an all-encompassing sensory exp
\/apor
Bluelighter
Yeah, it's not super bright or anything, it just looks like a really really dim light, even with fresh batteries
psood0nym
Bluelighter
Interesting. That reminds me of another study on teaching brail learning to sighted volunteers in a blindfold study. IIRC there were two blindfold groups and a sighted control. One of the blindfold groups got to take the blindfolds off for certain things like eating or using the toilet, the second group kept the blindfold on CONSTANTLY.
Only the constantly blindfolded group learned to read brail at all at the end of five days. When their brains were scanned with fMRI during brail reading attempts it was revealed that the visual cortexes of the constantly blindfolded group had been recruited for processing the somatosensory input from their brail reading fingers. There was no fMRI activity observed during attempted brail reading in the visual cortexes of any other group. The visual cortex is set up in a way that’s preferential to optical information, but under strict circumstances it can adapt to receive somatosensory information from the fingers, so as to visualize and interpret what’s being felt on brail. A single exposure to light, from taking off a blindfold to use the bathroom for instance, ostensibly wiped out any processorial reorganization in the visual cortex that had been taking place (the ones who took the blindfolds off even once never made headway on learning to read brail). Conscious visualization, perhaps, is more independent from optical visualization than previously imagined (which is to say visual experience is so fundamental that even being blind doesn't take it away). It is likely the visual cortex can functionally adapt to incorporate information from many modalities (additionally, case studies where brail readers have had their visual cortexes injured through accidents reveal they can no longer read brail; and so a blind person with a damaged visual cortex truly lives in darkness).
If we are both interpreting these studies correctly: in the caves, the visual cortex adapted to accept infrared light information from heat signatures (weather from subtle optic response … or what else do you suggest?), and in the blindfold case it adapted to accept somatosensory information from brail. In both cases it learned to process information that is usually screened out in order to produce some meaningful visualization for consciousness.
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thoughtsUnThought
Bluelighter
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That's intense man..! 
cool info
I was thinking maybe a heightened sense of feeling, making the pressure-changes from wave compressions noticeable. Lol I dunno, I can picture feeling someones heat from afar, and I can picture a mastery of the perceiving of such. In the right scenario, like light deprivation, I can see the brain using all sorts of usually subtle pixels of stimuli information to attempt to 'keep itself afloat' and continue its duties of drawing intelligable and conducive-to-eficient-navigation perceptual depictions. who knows, fun to think about though
Also the fact that you said only under certain conditions does this alternate profile of stimulus assimilation occur makes me ponder...first thing that came to my mind was cave dwelling ancestry. Maybe way back when we spent regular prolonged periods in caves, during times of cataclysm or hard winters. Perhaps we have this currently-dormant ability to use the visual cortex for information processing other than optical stimuli because we, at one point in our lineage, developed the ability to do this for survival purposes. Like we still have the hardware but its not normally fired up, perhaps this ability will cease given a few thousand years without furthering its function....who knows..!?
cool infoI was thinking maybe a heightened sense of feeling, making the pressure-changes from wave compressions noticeable. Lol I dunno, I can picture feeling someones heat from afar, and I can picture a mastery of the perceiving of such. In the right scenario, like light deprivation, I can see the brain using all sorts of usually subtle pixels of stimuli information to attempt to 'keep itself afloat' and continue its duties of drawing intelligable and conducive-to-eficient-navigation perceptual depictions.
who knows, fun to think about though Also the fact that you said only under certain conditions does this alternate profile of stimulus assimilation occur makes me ponder...first thing that came to my mind was cave dwelling ancestry. Maybe way back when we spent regular prolonged periods in caves, during times of cataclysm or hard winters. Perhaps we have this currently-dormant ability to use the visual cortex for information processing other than optical stimuli because we, at one point in our lineage, developed the ability to do this for survival purposes. Like we still have the hardware but its not normally fired up, perhaps this ability will cease given a few thousand years without furthering its function....who knows..!?
Survived Abortion
Bluelighter
Very interseting prospect, thoughtsUnThought. I've got a few ideas on this, if you will allow me the indulgence
The human eye can pick up an enormous dynamic range in optical intensisty, it's simply that we just don't usually notice the changes from light to dark being that extreme, because they usually happen gradually throughout the day and night. The dynamic range of perception at any given static moment (at least 14 "f-stops", which is 16384 x difference between the lightest and darkest luminance in a given scene) seems quite small in comparison to the overall dynamic range (29 stops), because of the masking effect of bright sources of light, but still we are able to perceive a far greater instantaneous dynamic range than the best cameras. And that range is even greater after adaptation to low-light conditions such as starlight. The overall 'adaptive' dynamic range is almost 1,000,000,000 (one billion) times the luminous power from brightest to darkest. And that is what we have measured so far.
I have a feeling that the actual visual cortex is quite capable of handling an even greater dynamic range than this. It wouldn't suprise me to learn that the brain has a near infinite dynamic range potential, given the correct circumstances. The reason I'm saying all this is because, if you were put in to a pitch black cave for thrity days, your cellular chemistry would have more than enough time to adapt your retina to the complete lack of light 'visible' light. But given that there is much still going on in the lower (redder) wavelengths, and that there is, presumably, not a brickwall high-pass roll off in the frequency responce of retinal cells, the visual system would likely focus it's instantaneous dynamic range on that input. I would assume, just like when your eyes adjust to starlight, that the magnitude of that red input - without competition from far brighter sources of illumination in the 'visible' spectrum - would be upscaled by the visual cortex so that the subjective perception of it would become noticeable.
I think that the self-noise would become an issue here. Since the brain can also regulate it's noise floor with neurochemistry changes (the NMDA receptor is implicated in noise floor alteration and coincidence detection if I am not mistaken), it may also be possible to naturally feel your way in to a different state of consciousness in which the noise floor is lowered in the visual cortex, and coincidence detection is raised, so that images from very low-level photonic sources could become clearer and more perceptible.
Pretty fascinating prospect. The more one thinks about it, considering things like the braile study psoodonym mentioned, anything seems possible. Thoughts? :D
The human eye can pick up an enormous dynamic range in optical intensisty, it's simply that we just don't usually notice the changes from light to dark being that extreme, because they usually happen gradually throughout the day and night. The dynamic range of perception at any given static moment (at least 14 "f-stops", which is 16384 x difference between the lightest and darkest luminance in a given scene) seems quite small in comparison to the overall dynamic range (29 stops), because of the masking effect of bright sources of light, but still we are able to perceive a far greater instantaneous dynamic range than the best cameras. And that range is even greater after adaptation to low-light conditions such as starlight. The overall 'adaptive' dynamic range is almost 1,000,000,000 (one billion) times the luminous power from brightest to darkest. And that is what we have measured so far.
I have a feeling that the actual visual cortex is quite capable of handling an even greater dynamic range than this. It wouldn't suprise me to learn that the brain has a near infinite dynamic range potential, given the correct circumstances. The reason I'm saying all this is because, if you were put in to a pitch black cave for thrity days, your cellular chemistry would have more than enough time to adapt your retina to the complete lack of light 'visible' light. But given that there is much still going on in the lower (redder) wavelengths, and that there is, presumably, not a brickwall high-pass roll off in the frequency responce of retinal cells, the visual system would likely focus it's instantaneous dynamic range on that input. I would assume, just like when your eyes adjust to starlight, that the magnitude of that red input - without competition from far brighter sources of illumination in the 'visible' spectrum - would be upscaled by the visual cortex so that the subjective perception of it would become noticeable.
I think that the self-noise would become an issue here. Since the brain can also regulate it's noise floor with neurochemistry changes (the NMDA receptor is implicated in noise floor alteration and coincidence detection if I am not mistaken), it may also be possible to naturally feel your way in to a different state of consciousness in which the noise floor is lowered in the visual cortex, and coincidence detection is raised, so that images from very low-level photonic sources could become clearer and more perceptible.
Pretty fascinating prospect. The more one thinks about it, considering things like the braile study psoodonym mentioned, anything seems possible. Thoughts? :D
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Aeon Psyche
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2007
- Messages
- 2,146
I read everything said in the whole thread and I find it very interesting but I still am missing a factor as I'm trying to calculate something, something known already , How many variable colours can the human eyes perceive? It's something in the Millions but I don't remember the exact number. Can someone help me out here...
bob_arctor
Bluelighter
I can't recall ever having seen a "new colour" on psychedelics, however, I find it plausible that they can help bring forth some kind of temporary cognitive reshuffling of the everday semantic system for dividing-up of the spectrum into what we recognize as specific colours. Culturally, there are many differing semantic systems which integrate members of a culture, being reinforced by continuous circulation, so if this is possible, maybe some kind of distortion of this system is possible on psychedelics?
panic in paradise
Bluelighter
ever notice a fan turn off all the sudden, that had gone unnoticed,
and thought wow its so much more quiet.?
Really interesting posts.
Have often wondered if my cats can somehow see infra-red and that's why they know to stay away from hot surfaces, and if humans can somehow detect the IR too and get 'a feeling' for how hot things are, even if we don't interpret it visually.
People apparently use a form of echo-location naturally, using the sound of the echo of your breath to detect when you're close to a wall in the dark.
Always wondered if we sometimes become consciously aware of the correlations with outside stimuli where we couldn't possible actually experience the event - for example, when you check your phone at the exact second a message came in, has your brain learned to spot the GMS microwave radiation signalling pattern? I think this kind of thing could explain a lot of coincidences.
Have often wondered if my cats can somehow see infra-red and that's why they know to stay away from hot surfaces, and if humans can somehow detect the IR too and get 'a feeling' for how hot things are, even if we don't interpret it visually.
People apparently use a form of echo-location naturally, using the sound of the echo of your breath to detect when you're close to a wall in the dark.
Always wondered if we sometimes become consciously aware of the correlations with outside stimuli where we couldn't possible actually experience the event - for example, when you check your phone at the exact second a message came in, has your brain learned to spot the GMS microwave radiation signalling pattern? I think this kind of thing could explain a lot of coincidences.