to see without seeing (two)

Now I'm reposting the last post from my old blog so there aren't any errors (It's a new tradition!).
I also added some wikipedia links and copied the comments.

>

I have a minor medical condition - Strabismic Amblyopia - a developmental brain dysfunction that affects 1-5% of the population. Amblyopia is characterized by poor vision in an eye that is structurally normal – in other words, the problem is either with the optic nerve or the brain function associated with the affected eye. The visual system does not develop normally due to reduced use during development which leads to the brain “ignoring” the signals coming from this eye. Strabismic Amblyopia indicates that one eye was disfavored due to the fact that the eyes are not properly aligned. In other words, I have lazy eye ‘cause I’m cross-eyed.

So how does this affect my vision? Well, when I have my good eye open (my leftie), my brain pretty much turns off my bad eye. When I cover my good eye I can see out of my bad eye – which last I checked has 20/200 vision (it means I can just barely see the big E at the top of the chart). If this were my only eye, I would probably meet the definition of legally blind – especially because this condition cannot be corrected by glasses. The most annoying side effect of this condition is that it puts more stress on one eye, which has been making my vision worse recently. The second is that I don’t have any depth perception, so I can’t hit a baseball (even when it’s on the tee) or see stereograms or those fucking “magic eye” things. As if I’d even want to. The truth is, 3D vision is superfluous.

I’m not trying to get a license plate here, I’d like to point out a few features of the qualia of perception in my bad eye. I know the color vision in my bad eye is different than in my good eye – especially in the blue-green range (which my bad eye sees as much more grey) but this is a minor point. The interesting thing is that the images are not “out of focus,” distorted, dim, and don’t appear farther away (which is how 20/200 vision is often described by people with structural abnormalities). I can see everything crisply - I can only say that it is “harder to see.” That may seem vague, but I have always had trouble coming up with words for how I see in that eye. Things are just not as noticeable. Trying to see something is more work, it makes me frustrated, and things don’t seem as interesting.

To understand how my vision is impaired we must recognize how visual cognition is divided into a number of tasks handled by different physical areas of the cortex . For example it is hard to count things – I tend to do better if I fix my eye and stare at one point and get confused during saccades (the quick movements of the eye). I have good recognition for motion and brightness – if there were some test that measured acuity in these areas I think I would have pretty good vision. But I am terrible at face recognition and reading. If a group of random letters is written large, I can usually puzzle them out, but it takes a while. And I can’t understand what the font looks like, or remember it, unless I know I am being tested, and then, if large enough, I can check certain details, like if there are serifs, etc. When I see the page of a book, it looks like there are perfectly clear little letters - I just can’t make them out.

But the interesting part is, sometime in my teens I noticed something at the ophthalmologist’s - that is, if I guessed what letter I was looking at I would usually get it right, even though I couldn’t see it well enough to say what it was. This seemed to work best if I said the letters very quickly, without analyzing them. This is related to the phenomena known as blindsight – a condition that has the potential to further our understanding of consciousness. In this condition, patients who have a “scotoma” (blind spot) due partial destruction of the corresponding area of the visual cortex report not being able to see objects placed in this part of their visual field – they are not consciously aware of what is there. But when they are tested (for example - being asked if an indicator light is on or off) they do much better than chance. The patients are usually quite surprised by this, and can be taught to use their intuition to their advantage so they feel confident making guesses about objects in their scotoma, but they continue to claim that they cannot truly see these objects – there are no qualia of vision.

Blindsight raises the question – what is the difference between knowing something and being conscious of it? Most of the time you aren’t conscious of the things you know, for example, you aren’t thinking of where your car’s windshield wiper control is until right now, what kind of food your pet won’t eat, your grandmother’s first name, how to do the backstroke. Where was this knowledge when it wasn’t being thought of actively? Conversely, what about the things you are perceiving, but not conscious of – probably if you listen carefully right now you will realize there is some noise occurring in the background of which you had not previously been conscious.

I feel like my ability to guess the words I am reading with my bad eye is quite similar. I would not say I can SEE what they are, but from experience I have learned that I might KNOW what they are – I have trained myself to an extent to have faith in my intuitions. When reading this way I can, to an extent, use context to figure out what the words are without seeing each letter, the same as we all do when reading. But I have to continue quickly – long words give me trouble and if I stop to try to figure out a particular word I usually can’t – new words also give me fits, so it is much easier to read something with everyday language. I also tend to substitute in words and phrases that might make sense in the context – sometimes the words I put in have to do with other things that are on my mind. I’m not a big believer in the Freudian subconscious, but people say the strangest things, you know? Also, I have almost no ability to recognize when I am confabulating (which is part of the definition of confabulation – mistaking your guesses for facts). This is partially due to the fact that when reading this way I have very low comprehension of what I am reading – it doesn’t stick in my memory well and I can’t form a clear idea of what is being described. In school you may have stayed up terribly late trying to wrench your way through some dense and abstract text – Chomsky or something – and the sentences refused to make sense – that’s what reading “Dick and Jane” is like in my right eye. The whole process quickly becomes a chore, and if I go on I get a headache and find myself unable to resist “peeking” with my good eye (I am diagnosed lazy, remember?). After continuing like this for a bit, even the smallest blur of light in my good eye will seem much more real and beautiful than the whole of my field of vision in my bad eye.

This relates to the way I make art in several ways. First of all, the drawings I have been doing have almost no “depth” to them. I am just not that interested in it, to be honest. When I was younger I was a competent drawer, but I was really upset when a painting teacher (e.h.) described my work as “flat” – he had hit the nail on the head. The other thing is that most of my recent drawings are made of multiple black and white graphic units, “icons” I call them, that closely resemble letters. I’m interested in the meaning that comes from manipulating simple shapes into one unit – including an obsession with the number of different parts and variation of repeating elements and symmetry. These are exactly the things I have the most trouble cognitively analyzing with my bad eye. Perhaps I focus on these elements because – comparatively - I find them the most miraculous part of the vision in my good eye. Perhaps I just find these icons fascinating because my right eye is comprehending certain elements directly without experiencing them visually.

I hope I have not bored you with this explanation – I’ve been very detailed and personal. I’m not trying to get sympathy (I actually quite like my little abnormality), but relating my specific condition in order to get at the universal questions of what it means to be alive. I always write about “consciousness studies”… A field in which our knowledge has become much more specific recently through the use of rational analysis, the advances in brain science including increased knowledge in brain anatomy & the use of Electroencephalography, the questions raised by physics about the role of the conscious observer in the collapse of quantum superposition, and the exploration of consciousness through subjective means such as meditation and drugs. There are many answers to many questions in this field, but there is little consensus. The more we learn, the more clearly the mystery stands out.

[sic.]