Inverting your Vision

This is true for the physical world, but you need to consider only the information your brain has access to. As I said, the information entering the brain from the retina is simply a topographic map of light entering the retina. The brain can't tell which way is "really" up or down from this. The reason being that there is no up or down in this sense. This is why I'm led to believe that it is not true that your brain inverts your vision.

Cortical maps are arranged into clusters in which several maps have parallel eccentricity representations, while the angular representations within a cluster alternate in visual field sign.

INVERTED OR TILTED PERCEPTION DISORDER
Summary. Aim. In the context of the increasing number of reported cases of patients presenting tilt or reversal of vision anomaly (here reviewed), we call the attention to the work of Justo Gonzalo (1910-1986), scarcely known in the contemporary literature. His work deals with that anomaly, and with tactile and auditory inversion, in relation to what he called central and paracentral syndromes, interpreted from the functional model he developed. Development. Gonzalo makes reference to 25 patients with chronic tilted vision, some of them with almost inverted perception in visual, tactile and auditory systems, under minimum stimulus. The central syndrome is caused by unilateral lesion in the parieto-occipital cortex, equidistant from the visual, tactile and auditory projection areas, and is characterized by bilateral multisensory involvement, and by dynamic effects following physiological laws of nervous excitability. Thus, as the illumination of an object was diminishing, it was perceived progressively tilted, reduced, and losing form and colors, following a physiological order; however the image was corrected by increasing the illumination, or by facilitation through other sensory stimulus. The central syndrome is compared with the reviewed cases. Conclusions. This syndrome involves a deficit of nervous excitability which would induce an integration deficit, tilted vision emerging as a more common affection than believed. The central syndrome reveals aspects of the cerebral dynamics, suggesting a functional continuity and unity of the cortex. This is reflected in the model that was proposed, based on functional gradations through the cortex and scaling laws of dynamic systems.

Inverted vision after frontal lobe disease.
Solms M, Kaplan-Solms K, Saling M, Miller P.
Source
Division of Neurosurgery, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Abstract
A case of bifrontal abscesses is reported. The patient claimed that he sometimes saw the world as if it were upside-down. A review of the literature reveals that, since 1805, 21 similar cases have been documented. The present case is unusual in that the neuropsychological status of the patient is investigated in some detail, and in that it seems to be the first report of inverted vision in a case of frontal lobe disease.

I googled and found there are cases of pathological inversion of vision:



http://www.neurologia.com/pdf/Web/4403/x030157en.pdf


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3064969

Indeed, I recall reading that Van Gogh reported to his doctor that he had an incident preceding a seizure during which one half of his visual field suddenly became inverted.

This suggests the brain does, indeed, automatically perform some inversion of the image that lands on the retina, and that they are reverted with respect to that image on the retina, a function that can be subtracted by disease. By "the brain" I could be referring to anything in and of the brain. Something is acting like a lens, a lens that can fail.

Sounds very interesting. I'll try to read these later on. At the moment, I'm still convinced that topographic maps (and hence our perception), are only oriented relative to each other through the pattern of connections between them. It is perfectly possible for my visual perception to be disoriented with respect to my proprioceptic of auditory perception, but I don't believe it can be oriented relative to my retina or the world itself.

"The question in all this is how we are conscious of any given perception. Does consciousness of what image is falling on your retina take place at the cortical retinal map? No one knows."

The evidence is that early topographic maps are not sufficient for consciousness. The topographic organisation of other regions becomes harder and harder to establish towards the frontal cortex.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17395576

Empirical evidence to date suggests that no single brain area is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness. Instead, necessary and sufficient conditions appear to involve both activation of a distributed representation of the visual scene in primary visual cortex and ventral visual areas, plus parietal and frontal activity.

Electrical stimulation of the parietal cortex (which is further down the processing stream than the primary visual cortex) causes the experience of phosphenes. This seems to be evidence that conscious experience does not take place in the topographic map of the primary visual cortex.

I believe that consciousness arises from the integrated activity of various brain structures. This integration can be achieved through thalamocortical loops, phase synchronisation between brain structures etc. In fact the only fundamental scientific theory of consciousness that is genuinely considered at the moment is based on this kind of integration (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/5/42/).

I might be missing something but I thought the point of the research was whether this inversion mapping if it exists could be remapped in short order (days) by the brain.

Massive ethical problems aside, someone needs to put the inverting glasses on some toddlers and infants and see what happens.

I agree with all this. No piece of cortex is sufficient for consciousness. I wasn't suggesting that. I was suggesting that consciousness might happen at the cortex, just as the television image happens at the screen, despite the fact a TV screen by itself is not sufficient for a TV image.

The reason I suggested that was in reaction to Sacks report about physical distortion of the cortex (as by a hematoma) causing a corresponding distortion of the perceived image. It was an incidental remark and I didn't intend to get off the subject of image inversion with it.

The point of my post was:
"At any rate, we can, by pathological mechanisms, become conscious of a visual field that is inverted, or otherwise grossly distorted, with respect to what we're used to."

Your point, that no one has explained what it might mean for the image to be inverted, is a good one. I can't explain what it would mean, here, nor pinpoint a necessity for it. All I can offer is the fact it does seem to undergo an inversion, an inversion that can be subtracted by pathological means.

My point is that the image is inverted with respect to other internal maps rather than the external world. We have retinotopic and spatiotopic maps; vestibular, somatosensory and auditory cues etc. We seem to build up several internal representations of space which are integrated in a way which we do not understand. It seems to me that any pathological mechanisms causing an inverted or distorted sense of vision are due to the interaction between these various representations of space rather than due to the relationship between the internal representation and the external world.

There's no objective up or down. People at the North Pole feel just as normal as people at the South Pole, despite the fact they're in 180 degree conflict about Up and Down. There is objective centripetal acceleration toward the center of the earth, but that direction is specific to exactly where you are on the earth, and different in all locations.

The problem created by inverting glasses is that they selectively take one sense and put it at odds with the other senses, as the Opening Poster suspected.

My point is that the image is inverted with respect to other internal maps rather than the external world. We have retinotopic and spatiotopic maps; vestibular, somatosensory and auditory cues etc. We seem to build up several internal representations of space which are integrated in a way which we do not understand. It seems to me that any pathological mechanisms causing an inverted or distorted sense of vision are due to the interaction between these various representations of space rather than due to the relationship between the internal representation and the external world.

According to Gonzalo [51], the disorder in the visual direction function is not an autonomous syndrome, but it is connected with the rest of visual functions, and could be present in cases with cerebral lesions in different locations, provided there exists some involvement of visual functions. According to the ‘cerebral gradients’, the densities of the specific functions are extended in gradation through the cortex, so that there would not be a particular localization for such a disorder. In this respect, this author stressed his observations of different degrees of tilted vision in cases with lesions on the left or right parieto-occipital region, on the occipital pole, and also far from the occipital area (e.g., a very anterior parieto-temporal region), showing that the anomaly occur not only in central syndrome but also in the high diversity of the so-called paracentral syndromes. In fact, the cases of tilted or inverted vision reported in the literature are associated to a variety of cerebral lesions.

When there is a lesion in the rather unspecific ‘central’ region, the main consequence is a deficit of nervous excitability which would lead to a deficit of integration through the cortex, determined by the lesion magnitude (neural mass lost). This deficit gives place, according to the experiences achieved, to the dissociation or decomposition of normal perception into its components or qualities, in such a way that the most complex qualities, with greatest nervous excitability (and integration) demand, become lost or ‘delayed’ in greater degree than the most simple ones (with lower excitability demand). Sensations usually considered as elementary are then seen to be decomposed into several functions, one of them being the direction function.

In the cases studied, it was remarkable that a strong muscular contraction was very efficient at improving the perception, reducing the functional disgregation significantly. This type of muscular ‘reinforcement’ straightened the tilted vision almost instantly, and simultaneously cleared the vision and dilated the visual field (about five times in case M). Figure 7 shows the perceived inclination of a vertical upright test arrow versus muscular contraction in case M [51]. Other types of reinforcement are, binocular summation, in which one eye reinforces the other, as well as tactile and acoustic stimuli, although their effects are far less dramatic than that obtained with strong muscular contraction.