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Medicine Science

Can Living In Total Darkness For 5 Days "Reset" the Visual System? 155

Posted by samzenpus from the do-over dept.
the_newsbeagle writes: That's what one neuroscientist is aiming to find out. He wants to put patients with a type of amblyopia, the vision problem commonly called lazy eye, into the dark for 5 days. His hypothesis: When they emerge, their brains' visual cortices will be temporarily "plastic" and changeable, and may begin to process the visual signals from their bad eyes correctly. Before he could do this study, though, he had to do a test run to figure out logistics. So he himself lived in a pitch black room for 5 days. One finding: Eating ravioli in the dark is hard.
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Can Living In Total Darkness For 5 Days "Reset" the Visual System? More

Can Living In Total Darkness For 5 Days "Reset" the Visual System?

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  • This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Visarga ( 1071662 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @02:45PM (#50446137)
    It's supposed that if you can do it for 10 days, your visual cortex will start processing other input and add its extra processing power to your meditations. Here's a link to a presentation: http://hridaya-yoga.com/how-to... [hridaya-yoga.com]

    • Re:This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @03:04PM (#50446307)
      That seems like a really bad idea for people who still need their visual cortex for vision. If you want to jack up the wiring in your brain, just abuse dangerous drugs. It'll save you a lot of time.

      • Re:This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:4, Interesting)

        by umafuckit ( 2980809 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @04:22PM (#50446819)

        That seems like a really bad idea for people who still need their visual cortex for vision. If you want to jack up the wiring in your brain, just abuse dangerous drugs. It'll save you a lot of time.

        I don't know what you mean by "jack up the wiring" but mushrooms will probably get you there and they're not dangerous.

        • Re:This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:5, Funny)

          by dingleberrie ( 545813 ) on Thursday September 03, 2015 @08:52AM (#50450657)

          I don't know what you mean by "jack up the wiring" but mushrooms will probably get you there and they're not dangerous.

          And they grow in the dark!
          I'm sensing an opportunity for synergy here.

        • mushrooms will probably get you there and they're not dangerous.

          Some mushrooms are not dangerous (and are hallucinogenic). Others are dangerous (and hallucinogenic). And still others are dangerous (and are not hallucinogenic).

          Generalising, it is not safe to rely upon generalisations about the safety of mushrooms.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by viniciuscb ( 764480 )
      Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a guru of the Bon (shamanic) buddhist tradition describes in his book "Wonders of Natural Mind" his experiences in a traditional tibetan "dark retreat" of 49 days (among other things).

      By his account he said that after some days he started to experience mind-created visions and that he lost the notion of time. He said that the 49 days seemed to be, in the end, like twelve days. He also said that he had some training before the retreat, because people that does it without some inst

      • This reminds me of DeepDream [wikipedia.org], Google's neural network that looks at images and tries to see things that are not there.

      • Makes sense, actually. If your idle visual cortex starts doing other things (whether useful or not), it stands to reason that the result would be interpreted as a visual hallucination.

      • Re:This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:4, Interesting)

        by RockDoctor ( 15477 ) on Thursday September 03, 2015 @04:29PM (#50453921) Journal

        By his account he said that after some days he started to experience mind-created visions and that he lost the notion of time. He said that the 49 days seemed to be, in the end, like twelve days.

        That is pretty standard for isolation. If you're out of the normal day-night cycle, most people tend to drift round to a longer-than-24 hours circadian rhythm. A forend of mine did a number of experiments on this in various cave systems in Yorkshire in the 1960s, where he'd have light from lanterns he controlled, and food / water dumps would be left in the cave at irregular intervals (to remove circadian prompting). His body clock went up to something in excess of 30 hours.

        Of course, since he had lanterns (OK, miner's light) to turn on, he wasn't experimenting on "resetting" his visual cortex, but on removing the circadian prompt. But relevant.

        Anyone who has been a caver and has been waiting for several hours for the rest of the party to come back (or catch up), will have turned the lamp off to save the battery. (Of course, the wise troglodyte carries spare lights. but you still keep your system-level redundancy.) And the colours come and the patterns happen. and you hear the water getting louder and you wonder about whether it's raining up top. Some people freak. Most people turn the light back onto the low power setting.

    • Re: This is called Kaya Kalpa in yoga (Score:5, Interesting)

      by karlandtanya ( 601084 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @09:14PM (#50448431)

      It took about 5 minutes for me, but had to be *total* dakness. So dark I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or shut. This was in a lab where we were doin nuclear emission spectroscopy (just gas discharge tubes). Any outside light would pollute the results, so the lab was really dark until we turned on the juice.
      During that period I could see as clearly as i'm seeing this screen flowing sheets of glowing pastel paint sliding down a wall that wasn't there.
      Not true hallucinations of course--by definition if you know it's not real it's not a hallucination. Phosphenes I think they were called.

      Anyhow, very beautiful and unusual. I don't think my lab partners saw anything--at least they didn't say they did. Or they were afraid people would think they were nuts.

      Later i blacked out my dorm room & reproduced the effect. And learned it's really hard to produce absolute darkness. Tinfoil is *full* of tiny holes! And black paint is not as opaque as it seems.

  • Not that hard (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    One finding: Eating ravioli in the dark is hard.

    He should try being blind.

  • Wait for the results. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Seor Jojoba ( 519752 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @02:52PM (#50446191) Homepage
    Why is it a story that someone has a hypothesis? Do the tests, publish your findings.

    • Testing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @02:58PM (#50446255) Homepage Journal

      I think that it's that he's willing to use himself as a test subject before inflicting it on others, fairly rare today.

      Not that I suggest a heart surgeon do a transplant on himself or that a doctor inject himself with insulin if he's not diabetic...

      But living in complete darkness for ~5 days can have unexpected developments/difficulties, it's probably best to NOT inflict that on kids until you know what to look for.

      • Re:Testing (Score:5, Informative)

        by doconnor ( 134648 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @03:19PM (#50446421) Homepage

        Barry Marshall, who discovered ulcers where caused by a bacterial infection, tested it by drink a petri dish of the bacteria and got gastritis and then cured himself with antibiotics.

        Got the Nobel prize.

        • Re:Testing (Score:5, Informative)

          by Electricity Likes Me ( 1098643 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @03:36PM (#50446513)

          There's a long history of doctors and scientists in medicine testing their ideas on themselves.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            There's a long history of doctors and scientists in medicine testing their ideas on themselves.

            Yes, although it is the fastest way to get a qualitative result it is usually frowned upon... best wait until you have some meaningful result tested in a controlled way before you go talking to the press about how you were running human experiments on yourself.

        • Nowadays he'd get complaints for using antibiotics irresponsibly. You're going to create super-ulcers, Barry!

        • I think what you meant to say was that he had it verified by his strictest opposition, he already knew it would work as he had done other tests. What he did was submit to the acid test under conditions that were indisputable.

      • Eh, I'd live in the dark for 5 days if I were still bringing in paychecks during that time.

      • I think that it's that he's willing to use himself as a test subject before inflicting it on others, fairly rare today.

        While that is fairly uncommon today, that's not the case here. Isolation experiments have been carried out in various forms for a long period of time. Some have used volunteers (e.g. the ones I describe above), some have involved literal torture, but the field is definitely not short of prior experimentation. The precise question which this researcher wants to answer may not have been addre

    • From reading the article it sounds like some got a hold of his recruitment email and decided it sounded interesting enough to write up an article, which might even help him recruit more individuals for the actual study.

      At least it's more interesting than most of the crap that gets posted online today such as top ten lists of celebrities who have pets that look like other celebrities or whatever Bennet Haselton is doing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Well he *is* going to test the hypothesis. But he has to test the *procedure* as well on a smaller scale before he uses it on his research subjects.

      People underestimate how much of science is like this. Advancing science isn't just a matter of creating more theoretical knowledge; a lot of the time it's about advancing know-how.

  • Where are his grad students? (Score:5, Funny)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @02:58PM (#50446253)

    >> Eating ravioli in the dark is hard.

    Isn't this what grad students were invented for?

  • Why not just go to any maximum security prison and pull any of the number of guys they have locked up in "the hole" and check it out? They're in there far longer than 5 days. Heck at gitmo not only are they in pitch black for 24/7 for weeks but they get deafening rock music blared at them the whole time too.

  • Not a good idea (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @02:59PM (#50446265)

    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

  • Overkill (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @03:00PM (#50446273)

    Why not just glue them a mask on their face?
    Way cheaper.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )
      Probably because the incentive to cheat would be too great.

    • I like this suggestion, a whole mask covering the face and head with no light leaks and only holes for the mouth and nose, now where can I find one of those...?

    • Most people probably haven't experienced total darkness. I experienced it while working late at a campsite (astronomy camp). I had to walk from the lab to my cabin on a moonless night with thick fog, no lights. You literally cannot see your hand in front of your face. You can't even tell if your eyes are open or closed. It was one of those epiphany moments where you're experiencing something completely new for the first time in your life. I remember thinking, wow, so this is what it's like to be blind

      • Most people probably haven't experienced total darkness. I experienced it while working late at a campsite (astronomy camp).

        Speaking as a person who has been a student on astronomy camps, a photographer back in the days when you loaded your own film into the cassettes in the dark, and a caver : you didn't experience total darkness then.

        For a start, it would have taken your eyes 20 minutes to a half hour to achieve dull "dark adaptation" to reach full sensitivity to light.

    • If you can sell an HD virtual reality system that simulates being in the dark you may be able to make a tidy profit.

  • Blindfold Anyone? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why not use a blindfold for 5 days?

    Are these people stupid or just trying to make everything more difficult than it seems?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      TFA states that their hypothesis called for as close to "no photons" as possible. They brought in photo-sensitive paper to ensure at the end of the test their was no light whatsoever present in the room. Previous experiments with lab rats showed increased plasticity in the visual cortex after being immersed in complete darkness for a period of several days. A simple blindfold wouldn't be able to meet those conditions.

      • How do you check the photosensitive paper?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by narcc ( 412956 )

          Do a quick search for the term "photograph". That should explain it all.

        • Put it in fixing solution before turning on the lights. If it comes out white, there was no light. This is with photographic film negative. Not sure if there is any real difference.

        • It's effectively like a simple Polaroid photo sheet. If it comes out black, not exposed to light. If it comes out white, exposed.

        • Take photosensitive paper off of wall.
          Place into light-proof envelope.
          Open small hatch in wall, which leads to drop box.
          Place envelope into drop box.
          Close hatch.
          Alert the people outside the experimental room that they can now open their hatch, and retrieve the envelope.
          They then take the envelope to a photographic darkroom and proceed as normal.

          • You're assuming that your "light-proof envelope" is a light-proof envelope, and that your darkroom is completely dark. The envelope is hard to check, but I've never been in a darkroom that was completely dark (though I've never been in a commercial darkroom ; only ones built by amateurs). After an hour or two, you can see the light seeping around the door frames, the key hole cover, etc. A dark room doesn't need to be completely dark, just dark enough to not significantly affect your film or papers. Of cour
            • They've somehow managed to do this processing for decades, so I'm sure they have some method.
              • Oh they have. I was first loading film into cassettes in the mid-70s and was still using the same darkroom in the mid-90s. The human eye is considerably more sensitive than still photographic film of those eras, so a darkroom that was perfectly good for working with 400 or even 800 ASA film (27-30 DIN) could have sufficient light leaks that you'd be able to tell where the door was, and frequently where the door lock's striker plate was because that would have a brighter leak around it.

                You wouldn't leave yo

    • Re:Blindfold Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Etcetera ( 14711 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @03:23PM (#50446453) Homepage

      Why not use a blindfold for 5 days?

      Are these people stupid or just trying to make everything more difficult than it seems?

      A) Some light is likely to get in, and they would need to be in a mostly-dark room regardless to account for slip-ups. Even then, they wanted to get 100% darkness, not 99.5% darkness (by timeslice)
      B) Ever worn a sleep mask or eye pillow? Your eye does different things when it's covered or has pressure on it (and a lot of pressure would need to be applied here, most likely). Having your eye "free" to look around (but having no source of light in the room) is likely to be physiologically different than wearing a dark blindfold.

    • Re:Blindfold Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by slew ( 2918 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @05:43PM (#50447311)

      FWIW The most common treatment today for lazy eye (Amblyopia) is to simply patch (i.e., think pirate patch) your good eye and hope your brain will stop relying on your good eye and start learning how to see again through eye that the brain was ignoring (suppressing). So it is basically a type of blindfold for one eye.

      For children with lazy eye, the patch is generally worn for a few hours a day for 6 months to a year. The older you are, the less well patching works (presumably because your brain is less plastic in these regards).

      However, new research suggests that there might be a way to retrain your brain (without resorting to trying to "reboot" your brain) by a form of vision therapy that attempts to reinvigorate the part of your brain that uses both eyes to see, by forcing it to exercise.

      One researcher has been experimenting with having people play a special version of tetris [news-medical.net] where each eye gets part of the information and the brain has to integrate both views to successfully play the game. Initially each eye would get a version that would be easy to fuse (depending on the problem that caused the lazy eye, such as out-of-alignment/direction), as the treatment progressed, the versions would progress toward the normal viewing. Seems like they got reasonably good initial results which were better than patching

      Maybe not every problem needs to be solved by rebooting the system.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        For children with lazy eye, the patch is generally worn for a few hours a day for 6 months to a year. The older you are, the less well patching works (presumably because your brain is less plastic in these regards).

        I had lazy eye when I was a child and the treatment was eye exercises using different cards with shapes, focal exercises (a string with focus markers on them held out from the face) and a pen that you move around and maintain focus on. I got some awesome headaches doing it however I didn't need glasses for 40 odd years.

        Recently it has made a re-appearance and I was dismayed to find that I was just prescribed glasses, which help, but even for the few weeks I've had them I've noticed that it just makes the g

      • A relative's son was also diagnosed with "lazy eye" and got the eye patch and exercises. However, he also was a bit lazy doing those. The solution was to provide him with an air rifle fitted with a collimator sight [wikipedia.org] (requires both eyes looking at the same spot to aim) - of course together with strict safety/responsibility training. Seems to have done the trick. As a side effect, the pre-teen lad has gradually been introduced to "real" fire arms, and is now one of the best shots at his dad's shooting club eve
  • Doesn't sound like a fun process to go through by yourself, could be interesting, in a large enough space, with other participants.

    Otherwise, lots of books on tape. And whatever sort of setup they use when teaching braille, might as well come out with a new skill.

  • Number 2 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @03:05PM (#50446309)

    How can you tell if you are done wiping?

  • Sounds like scrotonauts lol

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Decades ago one of my sisters had a lazy eye. She had to wear an eye patch on the good eye for a while, that's all. Simple solution that doesn't interfere much with their daily lives.

      • Decades ago one of my sisters had a lazy eye. She had to wear an eye patch on the good eye for a while, that's all. Simple solution that doesn't interfere much with their daily lives.

        Fixes a decent percentage of the population, sure, but what about those for which the eyepatch fails?

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          Fixes a decent percentage of the population, sure, but what about those for which the eyepatch fails?

          Get an eyepatch with a better elastic. There's no excuse for an eyepatch to fail.

          • I blame it on all those low-cost H1B pirates, they're undermining the integrity of the eye-patch industry.

      • Four decades ago my infant daughter was diagnosed with lazy eye so we put a patch on her good eye. She constantly tried to pull it off so after a few days I took it off of her. A few years latter it was determined she had optic nerve damage from a birth defect and had no sight in that eye. We were blinding her with that patch.

  • Clearly we need a well funded study, followed by publication in a prestigious journal to substantiate finding about the difficulty of eating ravioli in the dark...

    • ravioli, marinara, blender, and drink it from a glass. should work for steak, potatoes, and gravy too.

  • One finding: Eating ravioli in the dark is hard.

    Not so hard if you're naked and in the bathtub, which is how I like to eat my ravioli.

    That way, I don't get sugo stains on my clothes.

  • Yeah, there are some papers showing this return of plasticity in the visual cortex of cats after light deprivation (or, to make it sound more evil, maybe it was kittens?).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thogard ( 43403 )

      Do cats see IR like rats and snakes can? If so, how do you make it dark when they are glowing in the IR range.

    • It was kittens. They'd have their eyes stitched up before the age at which they'd normally open. Several different excuses given.

  • I have this, and while they don't know the cause, it seems that there's an issue with the fine-motor balance in the musculature around the eye. Could be genetic, could be damage.

    Why would sitting in the dark recondition those muscles? It's not a brain-processing issue (which, who knows, maybe is reset by isolation and lack of input - seems bs to me), it's a muscle issue. After my 47 years of imbalanced muscle behavior, I find it rather hard to believe that sitting in the dark's going to reset that.

    • Why would sitting in the dark recondition those muscles?

      Those muscles are under nervous control. It may be subconscious or unconscious control, but it's control nonetheless.

      the theory is about re-setting the control system, not the muscles.

  • If this works, and Thom Yorke gets cured, all them RH hipsters are gonna miss that semi-closed stare he gives out on concerts. Bummer.

  • Many associate Sensory deprivation [wikipedia.org] with torture but short-term sessions have been described as relaxing and conducive to meditation. Sessions of up to 24 hrs for therapeutic purposes are referred to as Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST) [nih.gov] There is a substantial amount of research in treating addictive behaviors with REST is reviewed with smoking, overeating, alcohol consumption, and drug misuse. There are two types: Flotation REST [wikipedia.org] and Chamber REST [wikipedia.org]In chamber REST, subjects lie on a bed i

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