Face blindness not just skin deep
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Imagine an entire day of seeing faces -- friends, co-workers, even family -- but not being able to retain those images in your mind. For 48-year-old Kiki Latimer, each time she sees someone is often like the first time. She has face blindness.
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NEW YORK  - A new approach that permits   wider visual perception in patients with severely restricted   peripheral field allows quicker and more accurate ability to   detect objects outside their field of vision, suggest results   of a pilot study.
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New technologies can find faces or products without text tags by creating 3-D models and digital signatures. By Elizabeth Svoboda.
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The brain uses three steps to identify faces. By transforming the features of Margaret Thatcher into those of Marilyn Monroe, researchers have revealed hints about how our brains put a name to a face.
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Blind mice regained some ability to see after getting transplants of cells taken from the eyes of other mice, strengthening the prospect that it may someday be possible to restore vision in some people who have lost most or all of their eyesight, scientists reported yesterday.
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Scientists at Bangor University believe a blind man possesses a "sixth sense" that allows him to recognise sad faces.
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Prototypes People suffering from loss of peripheral vision may soon be able to replace the canes they use to sweep the sidewalk for obstacles with eyeglasses that show them what lies beyond the limits of their vision. The glasses may also lead to technologies that enable the legally blind to return to driving their cars.
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Until recently, the needs of visually impaired users wasn't a top priority for search engines. That's changed, but there are still issues that need to be resolved, according to people with vision challenges.
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If you are short sighted and spend nine hours or more each day in front of your computer screen you are significantly increasing your chances of developing glaucoma - an eye disease which can eventually make you blind.
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Imaging the brain during social interaction reveals a deficit that may be tied to a sense of self.
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An electronic &quot;artificial eye&quot;, developed for people with impaired vision, has been shown to reliably identify pedestrian crossings, determine when it is safe to walk across and even measure the width of a road.
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Heavy computer users who stare at a computer monitor for several hours a day might be at an increased risk of developing glaucoma, a disease that can cause blindness, according to the findings of a Japanese study published in the Journal of Epidemiology
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An "electronic eye" that can be fitted  to a pair of glasses could help the blind cross roads more  safely, scientists said on Friday.
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Coming face-to-face with someone who looks scared triggers an automatic response in the brain that tells you to be afraid too, US researchers suggest.
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Japanese scientists have built an electronic eye they say could help blind people get around safely.
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(InfoWorld) - Playing high-action video games for a few hours each day can improve your vision, according to researchers in the U.S. But an eye expert in the U.K. called their findings into question. The researchers from the University of Rochester in New York found that people who play video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month can improve certain aspects of their vision by about 20 percent. Playing the games changes the pathways in the brain responsible for visual processing, as the brain adapts to the additional pressure that playing such games puts on the visual system, they said. The researchers found a group of students who played little or no video games -- which was a challenge in itself -- and gave them a test that measured how well they could discern the orientation of a letter "T" within a crowd of other, distracting symbols. They then divided the students into two groups. One group was told to play the shoot-em-up game "Unreal Tournament" for an hour each day for a month, while a control group played "Tetris," a less visually complex game. After about a month, the students playing the action game could determine the orientation of the "T" much more easily than before, while the Tetris players showed no improvement, the researchers said. The T test measures visual acuity, or the clarity of a person's vision, according to the researchers, who are Daphne Bavelier, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and graduate student Shawn Green. That means playing video games should improve your ability to identify letters on a standard eye-test, they said. An optometry expert in the U.K. disagreed, however. The American researchers are confusing visual acuity with visual search, which is what the T test really measures, according to Maggie Woodhouse, a senior lecturer in the School of Optometry and Vision Sciences at Cardiff University. "The test they're using is not for visual acuity," she said after being told of the research. "They've trained their students to make rapid eye movements and to scan large areas to find objects of interest. ... That is visual search." There may indeed be a benefit from playing high-action video games, she said, but it will be in the ability to locate objects in a large or crowded area. That means it could help you pick out a friend's face at a football game, or play a fast-moving sport like ice hockey. The improvement may not last for very long, however, and Woodhouse seemed to consider the overall impact of video games a negative one. Playing for too long can cause eye strain, she said. She also said playing video games "gives you brain damage," although that seemed to be her subjective view rather than a scientific one. The researchers at Rochester University could not immediately be reached for comment. They said the results of their test suggest that people with visual defects could improve their visual acuity with special software that mimics the need to identify objects quickly in an action game. The research is due to appear in next week's Psychological Science journal.
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Life & style: Rebecca Atkinson is going blind. An experimental therapy could offer her the chance to see again - but would she take it?