P3D Re: Re Saturday Night special

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 08:32:13 -0600
>From: Peter Homer <P.J.Homer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: P3D Re Saturday Night special

>It may be possible to determine if people dream in stereo because there is
>already a device used to determine how people scan images presented to
>them. It uses light reflected from the eye and can even measure the
>response to the imagery by the degree of dillation of the pupil. I am not
>shure if this has been aplied stereoscopicaly but it could  be done either
>with stereo image pairs or real scenes. It is believed that dream images
>are scanned in the same way and that this is the reason for the rapid eye
>movement R.E.M during dreaming  and is used as the indication of when
>dreaming is taking place during sleep.

Good idea! I hadn't thought that the motion of the eyes while sleeping might
relate directly to dreaming of looking at something. (It might also be
possible to correlate which parts of the brain are active at any given point
in the dream.)

> There would be a few problems tracking the eyes of a sleeping person as
>they would normaly be closed and shining visible light into them is likely
>to wake them. Perhaps infra-red light could be used shining through the eye
>lids in the same way that it can be shone through the ear or a finger in
>order to measure the pulse. 

The cornea bulges out noticeably from the curvature of the rest of the
eye. Therefore if you look at yourself in the mirror with your eyes closed
and move your eyes around...
Well, if you look at someone else with their eyes closed and have them
move their eyes around, you can pretty much tell which way their eyes
are pointed. So for a dreaming subject, perhaps a low-light or infrared
camera, or ultrasonic sonar would be sufficient to get a pretty good
estimate of the pointing direction and motion of each eye.

John R


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