Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 02 May 2008 09:32:41 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> 
>>> rewiring of our eyes
>> You can rewrite your eyes if you want. :-P
> 
> Oh, good, my wife will be pleased to hear this....
> 
> (She's got ocular albinism, which means the rods and cones aren't fully 
> developed, she lacks pigment in her iris, and the wiring to her brain is 
> different than everyone else's - 

I always found it fascinating how two seemingly unrelated things as how 
the eyes connect to the left and right brain and pigmentation defects go 
hand in hand. But that is as a scientist with an interest in 
development. For the person involved it is probably slightly less 
fascinating.

> what this means is that she has very 
> poor depth perception and the combination of the wiring problem and the 
> lack of pigment in her iris results in high contrast changes (usually 
> dark->light) will literally blind her for anywhere from 10 seconds to 2 
> minutes.

I think that is mainly the lack of pigment, that makes light enter the 
eye via other paths than the lens and not being able to regulate the 
amount of light. So she has to rely on slower chemical processes to 
adjust the rods and cones to the level of light.

> Which makes driving at night a real pa in the ass for her.

So, just like me, you are the one that drives home after parties?

> Not to mention the nystagmus 
Wikitime
> - though for many this is a problem, my wife 
> actually has managed to harness this somehow and as a result reads very 
> fast.  But she wonders how other people actually see words on the page 
> because she knows she's not reading the text linearly.

Less serious a problem, but I always wondered how the world would look 
if it was out of focus. Whatever trick I used I was never able to not 
focus. Well, time solved this one. Now to find out how the world looks 
if you have a dominant eye. Possibly like walking with one eye closed, 
but I guess it may be subtly different.

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