I’d like to share with my readers an email forwarded to me from Dr. Sue Barry. Dr. Bruce Bridgeman is a fellow neuroscientist who, like Dr. Barry had lived with a type of strabismus commonly called walleyes where the eyes point outward rather than inward. Dr. Bridgeman wrote the email to Dr. Oliver Sacks, one of the most inspiring neuroscientists in contemporary literature. I decided to post this as a follow-up to “People Who Hate 3D Movies Should Get Their Eyes Examined” because Dr. Bridgeman’s revelation of stereovision happened while watching Hugo. I believe it was the way Martin Scorsese masterfully pushed the stereo envelope that gave him his first sense of volume and depth in the world. The last sentence in Dr. Bridgman’s email summarizing his new found stereo vision once again points to the immense value of immersive 3D in feature films, “I feel myself to be in the visual world, rather than at it.”
Email From Dr. Sue Barry
Dear Barry,
Below
is the complete text of an email that Dr. Bruce Bridgeman, a professor at UC
Santa Cruz, wrote to Oliver Sacks regarding stereovision. As you'll see, Hugo
had a profound impact on his vision.
All the best,
Sue
Email From Dr. Bruce Bridgeman to Dr. Oliver Sacks (published with permission from Dr. Bridgeman)
Dear Dr. Sacks,
Email From Dr. Bruce Bridgeman to Dr. Oliver Sacks (published with permission from Dr. Bridgeman)
Dear Dr. Sacks,
I'm
a neuroscientist who recently had restored stereopsis similar to that of
'Stereo Sue' in 'The Mind's Eye', but with experience rather than professional intervention. My
case combined with Stereo Sue's makes me think that therapy for
stereo-blindness, perhaps beginning with amplified disparity in natural scenes,
should be part of every optometrist's toolkit. I teach the behavioral
neuroscience course at UC Santa Cruz; my website below will tell you more than
you ever will want to know about my career.
I
have had flat fusion since my first corrective lenses at age 21, when my
congenital exotropia (walleye) was corrected without prisms. Here
is a brief piece about my recent experiences. You can call me 'Binocular
Bruce'.
There is a paper
on my previous condition:
Dr. Bruce Bridgeman’s Account Of His Experience With Hugo
Schor, C., Bridgeman, B., and Tyler, C.W., Spatial Characteristics
of Static and Dynamic Stereo Acuity in Strabismus. Investigative Ophthalmology
and Visual Science, 1983, 24, 1572-1579.
Dr. Bruce Bridgeman’s Account Of His Experience With Hugo
In
Mid-February 2012 I saw the movie ‘Hugo’ in 3D. Going into the theater my wife
and I paid a surcharge for 3D glasses, which I thought were a waste of money
for me – having been exotropic since childhood, I was nearly stereo-blind. But
I took the polarizing glasses to avoid seeing annoying fringes in the film. To
my great surprise, I immediately experienced the film in vivid stereo. I was
enthralled. But perhaps the filmmakers exaggerated the stereo disparities in
the film to enhance the value of the 3D technology. I still don’t know whether
that’s true. I could find only qualitative estimates of the disparities used in
the movie; perhaps the filmmakers thought only in relative terms. Hugo’s VFX
supervisor Ben Grossmann said “We checked and checked: We were four to six
times bigger than any other 3D movie. But everything looked amazing.”
I
had to concentrate to appreciate the stereo effects, and purposely-blurred
objects in the foreground bothered me – they captured my attention even though
the filmmakers clearly wanted me to attend elsewhere.
When
the movie ended we turned in our polarized glasses and walked out into the
street. I was astonished to see a lamppost standing out from the background.
Trees, cars, even people were in relief more vivid than I had ever experienced.
Clearly the disparities weren’t amped up on the street. Did a few hours of
enhanced disparity wake up long-neglected binocular neurons in my visual
cortex?
There
was also an effect on memory; I recall vividly what the street looked liked
that night, though I don’t particularly recall the appearance of streets after
exiting other movies before or since.
In
the next few days (after seeing ‘Hugo’) I began examining the world in a new
light. I also enjoyed using binoculars that also magnify disparities, now with
3 modes of vision, left eye, right eye, and stereo; previously I would look
through only one side or the other, not needing to close the other eye to
suppress the image. Riding to work on my bike I looked into a forest beside the
road and saw a riot of depth, every tree standing out from all the others, a 3D
feast. At first the best stereo effects were limited to stationary or slowly
moving objects, but now a month later I appreciate stereo even as it enhances
parallax.
In
the ensuing weeks I enjoyed new stereo experiences every day. Trees in the view
from our living room previously were just a panel of green, but now were
separate objects jumping out at me. On March 7th, a windy day, I saw
wind-whipped waves of grass in our back yard. It gave a whole new meaning to
‘amber waves of grain’. In dull spots during meetings or talks I can sit back
and enjoy the stereopsis.
Entering
awe-inspiring European cathedrals I always had to keep moving, sometimes to the
annoyance of my companions, to appreciate the dimensionality of the space from
parallax alone; I suspect that I could now experience them even better from
stereo disparity alone. A year ago Dr. Suzanne McKee gave a masterful talk on
stereopsis at our department; I objected that parallax could provide the same
information, but she informed me that stereopsis provides finer-grained
stereoscopic information than motion parallax, at lower thresholds. That took
me aback, as I had thought and taught for years that the two sources of 3D
information should be equivalent, one successive and the other simultaneous.
I
remember only one stereo experience from my childhood. The back of a cereal box
had little cutouts that could be bent forward to stand up when the background
cardboard was lying on the kitchen table. Stooping down to put the figures at
eye level, I saw them pop out. The disparities must have been enormous, and of
course the 3D effect was hyped on the cereal box. I must have been seven or
eight at the time. I have had exotropia and alternating strabismus since childhood.
At the age of eight I was examined at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia,
where the ophthalmologist recommended against surgery. No treatment was
started, but we were poor and may not have been able to afford it. I remained
misaligned until I was worked up at the Palo Alto Medical Clinic in 1968,
having obtained health insurance as a Stanford graduate student. The
optometrist discovered a large horizontal disparity, more than 20 diopters, and
a small vertical one. I got my first corrective lenses and did orthoptic
exercises such as pencil pushups etc. My eyes became aligned most of the time,
but the effect seemed mostly cosmetic.
I
have always had the ability to look through either my left or my right eye at
will – it’s like a saccadic eye movement, except that it’s my end of the line
of sight that moves rather than the far end. I had the habit of doing near
tasks with one eye and far tasks with the other. After getting a spherical
correction that gave me good focus simultaneously in both eyes I was able to
fuse binocularly if I concentrated and if targets weren’t too close, but I got
no benefit from it so I didn’t do it much.
Something
is also lost with stereopsis. Previously I had a vivid perception of
juxtaposition of objects, sometimes seeing amusing illusions where one object
seemed attached to another. Now each object stands apart, no longer adjacent to
more distant objects. But I feel myself to be in the visual world, rather than
at it.
Regards,
Bruce Bridgeman
Research Professor of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Dept. of Psychology
409 Social Sciences 2 Tel. (831) 459 4005
Santa Cruz, Ca. 95064 Fax (831) 459 3519
I wish to thank Dr. Sue Barry for bringing Dr.
Bridgeman’s case to my attention and I wish to thank Dr. Bridgeman for
permission to publish his letter to Dr. Oliver Sacks.
With
over 100 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as several book
chapters Dr. Bruce Bridgeman’s research centers on spatial orientation by
vision and perception/action interactions.
His book, "Psychology
and Evolution: The Origins of Mind" (Sage Press, 2003) explores the
functions and neural basis of consciousness and the
application
of evolutionary theory to psychology. It introduces students to the emerging
field of evolutionary psychology. Dr. Bridgeman applies concepts of
evolutionary theory to basic psychological functions to derive new insights
into the roots of human behavior and how that behavior may be viewed as
adaptation to life’s significant challenges. Examining courtship, reproduction,
child rearing, family relations, social interaction, and language development,
Bridgeman uses evolutionary theory to help in the search to elucidate the
foundations of human perceptions, experiences, and behaviors.
