Getting more excited about the prospect of stereopsis

I think I'm getting better at Space, in Vivid Vision.

When I had a vision therapist, one of the things that she would say when doing vision therapy exercises is that I should try to relax my eyes and look 'soft'--or gaze softly.  Does that make any sense?  Weird that I immediately knew what she was talking about even though there's nothing obvious about the meaning of looking 'soft'.

But here's my attempt at explaining it.  It's the opposite of looking 'hard'; relaxing the eyes, and trying to make the act of visual gleaning as passive as possible: trying to make the eyes like a window through which visual information passes.

I don't know why that thought came to me.  I think it was because when I was playing Space, I was noticing the things I was looking at.  I could see the rings and the asteroids with my left eye.  I could also see the spacecraft with the right eye, but because of the suppression, it's somewhat tricky to get all of the detail simultaneously.  So I sort of automatically probe for ways to get the information that I know is there, and that's where looking soft sort of spontaneously came to me.  Just relaxing the eyes, and letting the information stream through.

Just earlier today I had a really good session of Vivid Vision.  It looked better than ever before.  Things look big!  And in my face.  My field of vision is getting giant.  It's pretty amazing.  It's really amazing to think about how much humans can see.  Perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising since so much of our brain is dedicated to visual processing.

I can't help but think that having stereoblindness (or being half blind, which is what it really is) must have a very substantial neurological consequences for those who have it.  I've talked about this before, so I won't get too much into it now.  But it is a major reason why I'm so invested in stereopsis recovery.  It isn't just about the stereopsis.  It's more about having hardware that works the way it's meant to work.  There's every reason to think that a person who recovers stereopsis is going to have a better life than someone who doesn't, all other things being equal.  Sure, the vision part is awesome, but it's all of the other things that are going to be affected by the improved vision.  The second order effects.  Although I admit that I'm pumped about the prospect of the subjective experience of stereopsis, it's the second order effects that I'm counting on.  That's what I'm really after.  Perhaps I'll some day beat my brother at Badminton.

Vivid Vision

I feel compelled to make an entry today because I had a particularly good vision day.  I almost want to say that I'm beginning to experience fusion.  Not quite there, but I'm beginning to understand why James Blaha renamed Diplopia to Vivid Vision.

Heh, well first of all, Diplopia is a bad thing.  You don't want it.  It's something that you want to fix.  So naming the game Diplopia--a game whose purpose is partly about assuaging diplopia--is sort of like Imodium AD instead naming their product Diarrhea.

'What the... No!  That's exactly what I don't want!'

Vivid Vision, on the other hand, is a very good way to describe how I see my vision changing.  It's... just becoming more... vivid.  It's useless using words to describe it.  But it's like the stimulation is turned way up.  I notice more, colors are brighter.  And it has a lot to do with less suppression.  I'm aware of what's going on in the lazy eye now.  Its input is being noticed simultaneously, and it's all of this extra input that's causing me to use the word vivid.

Interestingly I think my recent progress has a lot to do with an update that James made to his software.  For months I was stuck on version .62 beta (Diplopia), because all of the newer versions would crash on my machine.

About three week ago I gave the latest version a try (I had updated my graphics card's drivers and also the newest Oculus Rift runtime).  When I tried it again, the game actually ran without crashing.  Now, Diplopia *ahem* Vivid Vision is really vastly improved.  Now I can appreciate all of the improvements James has made to the game.

The controls are much improved on Space.  The sensitivity is much dialed down.  The graphics are improved.  There are some new game elements (hard to describe).  I think the biggest improvement is the rendering of the spacecraft itself.  It has these bright, bright thrusters, and the spacecraft has quite a lot more detail on itself.  The spacecraft is only seen on the right eye.  Everything else is seen on the left eye.  Normally I want to sort of suppress the right eye, but because the spacecraft is so big and bright, it makes it much easier to notice input from both channels simultaneously.

It's funny to think that a simple software patch could make such a tremendous difference in the quality of my life.  I know I've said this before, but in case you stumble upon this, Thank you, James!!

Still making decent progress

Yeah, it seems that I've had a decently productive month.  I'm noticing quite a bit less suppression.  Particularly with up close objects.

I've been sticking to my normal regimen which consists of this: about 5 minutes of standing on my head.  I found a much easier way of doing it, which is against the wall and I use my meditation cushion for my head so it's not on bare linoleum.  After I can't bear it any longer, I quit that.  Then I strap on the electrodes to o1 and o2 and continue playing Diplopia.  I've stopped playing the Breaker game, and have focused exclusively on Space.  I do that for 20 minutes, and then I'm done.

I've noticed that in the past week in particular that Space looks quite a bit more stimulating.  The asteroids are really getting into my face.

It's been almost a year since I started using Diplopia, so it's definitely taking more time to work its magic on me than it has for many others.  There could be many reasons for that.  I tend to think that I have a brain which is less plastic on average than others.  I learn slower than average, but I also tend to not forget things once I've learned them.  My brain is hard, which perhaps means that vision therapy is going to take more time for me, and it's going to require a higher level of stimulation.  If this was true, it might explain why meditation has helped quite a lot.  Meditation facilitates a higher level of brain function.

I'm sort of now just enjoying watching the process, not at all stressed about the outcome.  Kind of like, 'Oh wow, I haven't seen/experienced that before.  This is pretty cool.'  Heh, perhaps not being so concerned with the outcome has a positive effect on my progress.  That is a thing which I notice about life in general: being unconcerned with the outcome will very often result in a better outcome.  This is probably most true with love and relationships, but I think it's generally true.

Anyway, I've been extremely busy with my new job and haven't been able to participate as much with the group (DIY Vision Therapy).  But I do follow it.  It looks like Benjamin is doing very well.  I suggested that we do another Skype/Hangout and I'll post an update on his progress here as well.

Ciao per ora

VT-lite

I can't believe how much time has elapsed since the previous entry.  I've been really busy lately with work, VT, and doing my best to live a balanced life.

So what's up, and what's interesting?  Well, we're more than a quarter through the new year, and I've been thinking that I need to re-evaluate my current strategy.  I think I'm going to experiment with doing two vision therapy sessions a week.

Why?  There are a number of reasons.  My vision therapy sessions take up around 25 minutes, but it interrupts my other activities.  There's a lot of opportunity cost incurred.  Another reason is that I think I may be causing progress to retard by doing so much vision therapy.  I'd mentioned this in previous entries.  You need to give yourself time to rest and repair.  James Blaha, on his blog, said that he began seeing 3d after a few sessions of his game Diplopia, and he would only do a few 20 minute sessions a week.  Yet another reason is burnout.  No, I'm not burned out, but having been actively doing vision therapy for four years, I have to come up with ways of keeping it sustainable. Burnout is why people quit things.  It's why they quit diets.  Almost all diets work, but all diets stop working when people quit doing them.  The key is to figure out a way to keep yourself doing them.  One way is a cheat day, so you're able to replace your will power 'reserves'--a way of treating yourself in a controlled way so your reserves don't run out and you then break down say 'fuck it man!' and eat everything in the world.  Anyway, I have pretty high reserves, but I want to keep them high so I have energy for other things.

So doing around 50 minutes a week (once on Tuesday, once on Saturday) should perhaps help me get further faster, while allowing me to pursue other activities.

As far as progress... where am I?  Well, it's been a month and a half since the previous entry, although I still do think of progress on a week to week basis.  I have been noticing changes in my vision.  In fact, it's something that I still think a lot about, especially as of late.  I've been noticing, particularly yesterday, about how little suppression I have.  Sometimes I notice it a lot when I pick myself up and change activities.  I was sitting at a meeting watching people's double faces float past each other.  I was sort of surprised by how little preference my brain had for each input channel.  Each image might as well be equally as real as the other.  Things are definitely changing still.

Anyway, an online buddy, Pasquale, reached out to me because I'd been quiet recently and wanted to check in.  I want you, and everyone else to know that I have not given up, and that VT is on the forefront of my mind practically every waking moment.  And perhaps it still will be after I recover stereopsis.  It's just that instead of constantly thinking 'wow, these people's double-faces sure are distracting', I'll be thinking 'Wow, stereopsis is more amazing than I could have imagined.'  Thanks for reaching out, Pasquale!  I hope we can see each other at the next Hangout.

Applying mindfulness to vision therapy

It's been a while since I've done an update here.  A whole month!

It's been crazy.  In the past month I quit my old job, got a new job, and changed locations.  Through all of that I've been doing vision therapy, meditation, and making good progress.

The main reason that I haven't done updates in a while is because I can't think of anything much to say.  I am still making progress, but it's largely subjective.  I've been meditating every morning upon waking for 20 minutes.  I've still been doing tDCS with Diplopia.  I've also been mixing that with standing on my head for around five minutes before VT (not literally standing on my head, but that yoga pose.



The mindfulness practice that I've been doing has helped me make insights about what I'm supposed to be doing while doing vision therapy.  The way that I see it is that the largest problem about curing strabismus as an adult has to do with chunking and decreased brain plasticity in adults.

The reason humans are capable of doing so many things is because of our ability to chunk.  When you see a musician doing an incredible solo you might think to yourself 'That's so complex, I could never do that in my life.  How is it possible that someone can do something so amazing?'  Well, the answer is chunking.

We learn small foundational things, like how to write letters, one line, one curve at a time as children.  After that, we build on those lines, curves, and letters, and then create words.  Then we create sentences, paragraphs, complex ideas, and books with those little lines and curves.  Each additional thing we add to the tower only involves a marginal amount of learning, but over time, as you chunk over and over again, you can do some things which are apparently incredible.

And hence, there might be an adaptive value to the loss of brain plasticity in humans.  By losing our ability to learn, we also lose our ability to forget some of the lower level things that we've chunked on top of.  This allows older people to focus on the larger things in life, and the things which really matter, without ever forgetting how to write an uppercase cursive 'G'.

Of course, the downside is that it's harder for older people to program microwave oven clocks, and Blue-ray players.  And it's also harder to change the way you use your goddamned eyes if you happened to be so inclined.  Everything builds on top of our vision, right?

And this is where the mindfulness has been helping.  Now I'm much more mindful when I'm doing exercises.  I've been finding that my habits are so ingrained that I find ways to adapt to the game that I'm playing without actually doing what the game wants me to do.

But this mindfulness has made me realize that I'm surreptitiously trying to trick the game, while maintaining my old way of seeing.  And this has allowed me to say 'aha!  I see what you did, you bastard!'--to myself of course.  I can then correct myself.  One thing that I'm now doing is, when playing the space game is that I treat the game more like vision therapy than I do as a game.  I make smaller movements with the spacecraft and try to tie that with the movements of my eye which is watching the spacecraft (only one eye can see it).  Of course, my eye is suppressing the spacecraft quite a bit, and I can tell when my fovea is on it because it comes in very clearly.  Before, I really wasn't paying that much attention to tying my perception and movement of my eye muscles together as I was playing the game.  But by being aware of what I'm doing, I'm able to play the game more effectively, and track the spacecraft more with the lazy eye.  It requires a lot of attention.  But I think it's helping me a lot.  The mindfulness has helped me see the habits that I've had which have become so incredibly ingrained.

Anyway, this ended up being longer than I thought.  I am more confident than ever that I will recover stereopsis at some point.  Hopefully this year.  VR is going to be absolutely nuts.

Thoughts on a healthy brain

For those who follow my blog, you might have noticed that the past few weeks I've seen quite a lot of progress.  What has changed?  I'm not certain.  My regimen has not changed much at all for the past eight months of Diplopia and tDCS.  My guess is that my eyes have aligned to an extent which allows my brain to turn off suppression.  Now that my convergence and divergence are so quick and facile, there's significantly less overall visual conflict and therefore less need to suppress.

But anyway, I wanted to make a post about the topic of brain health and mind awareness.  It's something that I've always been interested in, but that I've gotten more interested in as of late.

My main interest lies in the building scientific evidence of the positive effects that meditation has on the brain and, through the brain, the body.  Some of the benefits include improved concentration, mood, and immune response.  Studies done on longterm practitioners of meditation report having a stronger ability to cope with physical pain.  They will report the same amount of pain (on a number scale) as non-meditators, but they're not as bothered by it.  There is evidence that meditation increases brain mass, and causes the release of GABA (gamma amino butyric acid--a calming neurotransmitter).  Everything that's said about meditation seems to indicate that it's really good for the brain and body--and in all ways in which something can be said to be 'healthy'.

In Sam Harris's book, Waking Up, which I recommend to everybody, he talks about how meditation causes the deactivation of the default-mode network.  This is a network which lies primarily in the medial pre-frontal cortex and medial parietal cortex.  He says that this is a region of the brain which becomes active during the resting state in which one is waiting for something to happen.  This network is associated with the daydream state.  When one is fully engrossed in an activity, this region goes dark, and the subject will lose one's 'self' in the activity.

It is this sense of loss of one's self that happens when one successfully meditates, and when one is able to experience consciousness without a ceaseless onslaught of apparently random thoughts over which he has no control.  In my own experience, this is very difficult.  It requires a lot of persistence, will, and concentration in order to have a strong command over one's own mind.  But the rewards are immense.  Even for me, just ten minutes of meditation will have an enormous impact on the quality of my life for the rest of the day: better mood, improved concentration, and the ability to enjoy sensations, seeing and noticing things around me.

The really surprising thing to me about all of this--and this shouldn't be all that surprising, and yet somehow it is--is that it's just a change in the way of thinking.  It's a completely internal commitment.  You're just sitting there, cross-legged, and committing some time to yourself for 10-20 minutes.  And yet this invisible internal commitment has an enormous, apparently disproportionate return on investment.  It shouldn't be surprising.  Everything is mind stuff, created by minds, especially in an industrial world.  Everything that we use and operate--the bottles at my desk, and computer that I'm working with right now, are products of someone imagination--the invisible internal state of another person.

These facts point strongly to the idea that the mind matters a lot, that it's worth it to develop a discipline of the mind, and to practice mindfulness--an awareness of one's mental state for as much of the time as possible.  This way you can be aware of what you're doing to yourself internally.  This way you can avoid having useless repetitive thoughts which serve no function, but only cause anxiety.  You're aware.  You can see yourself and realize 'Why am I doing this?  This is stupid and futile'.  Being aware, you can then return to where you currently are.

In Waking Up, Sam says that the quality of your mind is the single greatest determining factor of your quality of life.  Sam says, paraphrased, "If you can overcome the problem of the mind, you'll be able to avoid almost of all of the problems you'll ever encounter in life."

I think Sam is right.  The vast majority of our problems are self-created, as a result of not taking taking control of our consciousness--the single most important thing over which it can be said that we are the owners.  To have a high quality life and a healthy brain--based on what all of the studies about mindfulness indicate--is to have a healthy mind.  It pays, in concrete material terms, to be kind to yourself, to be aware of what you are doing to yourself.

I have achieved a significantly improved quality of life as a direct result of improved mindfulness in only the past four months or so, since I'd rediscovered meditation.  I can't help but wonder if this improved mindfulness might have improved the health and strength of my brain, and this has helped with vision therapy.  It is certainly not out of the realm of plausibility.

Many people's lives are repetitive.  They wake up, eat the same meals every day, drive the same car to work taking the same route every day.  The work they do is repetitive.  There is no challenge.  They become comfortable.  The brain deteriorates.  The default-mode network is engaged for too much of the time.  But this mind complacency is a choice.  You can choose to have a healthy brain by paying attention to your internal state.

There are studies that show that if you drive to the same place every day, but you practice taking a different route to that place, you can slowdown the onset of dementia.  Likewise, there are studies which indicate that actively speaking two or more languages promotes brain health.  Learning new skills, like dancing or martial arts will likely also promote brain health, especially if you're a programmer who sits down at a computer all day.  Lately I've been going out for walks while listening to podcasts, and bouncing a tennis ball, alternating between my two hands.  It looks silly, but the experience seems to give my brain much needed stimulation that it wouldn't likely otherwise get.  I know this because it's awkward as hell, trying to bounce a tennis ball with my left hand.

While I'm doing this, there is a part of me that's watching it all happen, as a result of my practice with mindfulness and meditation.  I swell with excitement at the thought that there is something inside of me which is in control of the experiences that I have.  I can choose the quality of my mind, and by extension, my brain and body.  As far as I can tell, this is true for everyone.

"Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain" - Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934)

Plugging away--getting better at Breaker

I'm still getting better at Breaker.  It's pretty awesome.  I've still been beating the game with regularity--just about every time that I play the game.  I seem to have broke through a wall--or that's at least the perception.

I had a really strange sensation when I began playing Breaker today.  There seemed to be some weird rivalry going on between my two eyes.  It seemed like for a moment that my brain couldn't decide which eye was dominant, and what I was seeing was split--like I was seeing the input from the perspective of two different people simultaneously.  It was confusing, but thankfully it didn't last.

Just now when I played I had some perceptual differences. One is that the paddle seemed absolutely huge.  I'm pretty sure that's a perceptual change.  Nothing in the program changed.  I changed.  Also, the amount of compensating that I do is decreasing.  By compensation, I mean this: Before when I would try to hit the ball, in some areas, I would have to hit the ball with the paddle off to the side so that it would appear to me as though I was hitting the ball with nothing. I have to do significantly less fudging.  Also, my accuracy is becoming way better.  It's great.  Because I perceive the paddle to be so much larger now, it feels as though I'm using a much larger portion of my fields.  Like, there is a much larger amount of space that I'm aware of which I have to try and hit the ball.  The paddle is much larger, and now it's way easier to hit, and to hit the ball with different amounts of deliberate angle.

Apparently the paddle is supposed to appear to be really large.

The other day I brought my laptop and Oculus Rift over to a friend's house.  The reason is that she has a small child (three year old) with strabismus.  I wanted to see how he would respond to the Oculus Rift.  He was a really high energy and boy-like three year old, but when I put the Rift on his head, he stayed still, and he seemed to be impressed.  But he had difficulty holding on the HDM, and using the mouse.  It was also a little difficult to communicate with him.  The result?  I think three years is a bit too young for Diplopia.

However, I offered to give the mother a try, so that she could see what her son was doing.  I was explaining the objective of the game to her and asked her if she could see the paddle.  She said no.  Then I moved the mouse around a bit, and then she exclaimed 'ohhh, so that's the paddle?  It's so close!'  She didn't notice the paddle because, apparently for people who have normal stereoscopic vision, the paddle in Breaker is so close that it's hard to notice.

I told her to try and close her right eye, and then the left eye.  She noticed that closing the right eye made the paddle disappear, and that closing the left eye made the ball disappear.  As I explained to her that this is how the game works, she emitted an 'ahhh' of apprehension.  She said that the game looked really cool.

So yeah, as the vision improves to the point of proper binocular function, it seems that the paddle gets bigger and bigger.  That's certainly seems to be true in my case.