A man who started seeing the world backwards after being shot in the head | Hacker News Reader

A man who started seeing the world backwards after being shot in the head

english.elpais.com

51 pointsbelter20 comments

After reading the article I still don't understand what the world looked like to him. What does it mean by backwards here?

From another article: in addition to seeing everything multiplied by three, the man also perceived colors “unstuck” from objects.

Most unusual of all, though, Patient M saw everything as though it had been inverted. Highlighting the case in his book, Cerebral Dynamics, Rodríguez-Leal revealed how the war veteran “found his abnormalities strange when, for example, he saw men working upside down on a scaffold.”

upside down makes sense but I can’t imagine what backwards would look like.

That’s probably what it is. The Spanish original uses “al revés,” one meaning of which is upside down:

  El paciente M: el hombre que empezó a ver el mundo al revés tras un tiro en la cabeza en la Guerra Civil

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2023-05-10/el-paciente-m-el-hombr...

So we should imagine in its place the word reversed, maybe, as a better translation.

"intense concentric reduction of the visual field in both eyes, accompanied by triple vision of a single object, flat color vision (colors appear as detached from objects), central color-blindness, loss of ability to notice movement, inverted vision, and a disorder that allowed him to read letters and numbers, both in normal and inverted position, stating that in both cases the position is identical".

Right? What a disappointing article. Was more just a little bit about the doctor, a little bit about the war, a little bit about spains history of neuroscience, and just the word “backwards”. The anecdote about him looking at his watch was laughably unhelpful! Would’ve been the perfect example to describe what he saw!

I assumed it meant "reversed left-to-right." This sentence seems to confirm it: "His auditory and tactile perception were also inverted, so that sounds and touches appeared in his mind on the opposite side."

I have no idea what "M looked at his wristwatch from any direction to check the time" is supposed to mean, but it seems to be a red herring.

> M looked at his wristwatch from any direction to check the time

In my understanding the meaning is « M can check the time from any direction ». As you and me of course, but usually our spacial memory retrieve the time from the needles orientation (no digit watch in WW2) so we use to always check the time in the same position (12 upward). As M can’t rely on the position of what he see, he probably just « read » the watch numbers all the times (no pun).

Exactly. I can imagine upside down but wtf does backwards mean.

Mirrored image, I guess? (Not backwards as in time, but rather front is in back and back is in front). Very strange choice of adjective.

I thought that if you wear upside-down goggles, the brain adapts and this becomes the new normal. Would the same apply to him?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upside_down_goggles

A quick Google search implies that these haven’t been proper experiments. It seems as if the brain doesn’t necessarily learn to flip the image, but rather learns to somewhat process the stuff upside-down. A bit like learning to play video games with the controller after using only mouse and keyboard.

The real test as to whether the brain learns to flip the image would be if the goggle-user could read upside-down text after using the goggles for a few weeks, without having read text during that time.

The worst feeling is playing a game without the correct[0] vertical look setting.

[0] inverted.

just experienced that yesterday after years of not having used a gamepad with analog sticks; why is inverted not the default for analog sticks? Yet with my mouse I prefer non-inverted.. the brain is weird.

Depends on what type of game. If the mouse is controlling the player's head in first person, then I expect non-inverted. If the mouse is controlling the cockpit of some flying type of vehicle in first person, then I expect inverted.

Yes, terribly written. Eveything but a detailed description of "backwards".

What's interesting in this context is that (some?) healthy brains can adjust to an upside-down view of the world: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/12/improbable...

https://archive.org/details/manwithshattered00luri The man with a shattered world : the history of a brain wound by Lurii͡a, A. R. (Aleksandr Romanovich), 1902-1977

real WW2 story about a man who lost left side of vision in his eyes, written by neurophysiologist

Reminds me about a cultural difference in time perception between some parts of Africa and The West. In Western cultures, the future is ahead of you. In Africa, the future is sneaking up behind you.

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