The Vision Revolution: How the Latest Research Overturns Everything We Thought We Knew About Human Vision [Hardcover]

Mark Changizi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 2009

Primates evolved binocular vision (both eyes facing forward) so that they can see in three dimensions, critical as they jumped from branch to branch. Higher primates developed color vision to better hunt out ripe fruit. Optical illusions succeed because they exploit the limitations of our visual processing. Wrong!

All of these beliefs are false, as groundbreaking research by evolutionary scientist and neurobiologist Mark Changizi now reveals. Changizi's research centers on the "why" of human vision. Why do we have binocular vision? Why do we see in color the way we do? Why do optical illusions work? And why are we able to absorb information by reading―a very new invention from an evolutionary perspective―more readily than by hearing, which we've evolved to do over hundreds of thousands of years?

The Vision Revolution answers these questions, and proves, with the detailed results of Changizi's fieldwork, that the answers are very different than traditionally believed. A radically new perspective of human vision is now emerging. The Vision Revolution is upon us.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Scientist Changizi (The Brain from 25,000 Feet) kicks off this engaging romp through vision science with a list of the human eye's superpowers: "telepathy, X-ray vision, future-seeing and spirit-reading"; a "theoretical neuroscientist" trained in cognition and biology, he's not kidding. To expose these amazing abilities, and explain the whys of vision (the hows just "make my eyes glaze over"), he poses four challenging questions: "Why do we see in color? Why do our eyes face forward? Why do we see illusions? Why are letters shaped the way they are?" In his answers, Changizi challenges common notions regarding sight. Human color perception, for instance, is based around subtle changes in skin tone which correlate to blood flow, indicating emotions silently--allowing us, in essence, to read the minds of others. Binocular vision, it turns out, is not required for depth perception: in videos game, we "acrobatically navigate realistic virtual worlds as a cyclops." "Future-seeing capabilities" evolved in order to account for a one-tenth-of-a-second lag in perception. A friendly tone, colorful everyday examples and many helpful figures will draw readers--science buffs or not--down the rabbit hole of cognitive theory and keep them there, dazzled. 7 color images, 75 b&w illustrations. (June) --Publishers Weekly online, May 11, 2009

...the novel ideas that Mr. Changizi outlines in "The Vision Revolution"--together with the evidence he does present--may have a big effect on our understanding of the human brain. Their implication is that the environments we evolved in shaped the design of our visual system according to a set of deep principles. Our challenge now is to see them clearly. --The Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2009

Throughout the book, Changizi peppers his explanations with quick, fascinating visual exercises that help to drive his points home...Changizi's theories are appealing and logical, and he backs them with good circumstantial evidence.... One thing is certain: The Vision Revolution will make you wonder the next time you notice someone blush, catch a ball or finish reading a magazine page. --Scientific American MIND, July 2009

Readers, however, need not be well versed in academic debates to enjoy Changizi's lucid explanations. Filled with optical illusions and simple experiments for the reader to perform, this book may be the most fun you'll have learning about human cognition and evolution. --Jennifer Curry, Barnes & Noble Review, July 2009

"the book does present some novel hypotheses--supported by evidence, much of it from Changizi's research.... The writing style is clear and captivating; the illustrations are nicely done and helpful." --Choice Magazine, November 2009

From the Inside Flap

A radically new perspective on human vision is emerging. Groundbreaking research by evolutionary scientist and neurobiologist Mark Changizi is driving a revolution in our understanding of human vision. In asking why we see the way we do, Changizi overturns existing beliefs and provides new answers to age-old questions. Why do our eyes face forward? While binocular vision was helpful to our primate ancestors, its importance for 3-D vision is exaggerated. Squirrels jump from branch to branch just fine with sideways-facing eyes and many athletes, including Hockey Hall of Famer Frank McGee, play with only one eye. HINT: We evolved in a highly leafy environment. Why do we see in color, when most other mammals do not? It's not because it helped our ancestors find ripe fruit. Our color vision has evolved to be extremely sensitive to specific sets of color changes. HINT: Primates with color vision, like us, are the only ones who have areas of bare skin. Why do we see optical illusions? It's not the result of glitches in our visual system. Optical illusions can be traced back to the same specific property of vision. HINT: We are able to catch a ball coming at us much more effectively than we should given the speed at which our brains process visual input. Why do we absorb information so readily by reading? It's not because we've evolved to read; evolutionarily, reading and writing are recent developments. HINT: Language is designed to exploit skills we've refined over tens of millions of years. In The Vision Revolution, Changizi details the conclusions of his innovative fieldwork and their mind-blowing implications for our understanding not just of human vision, but of the way we interact with the world in which we live. You'll never see seeing the same way again.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: BenBella Books; 1 edition (June 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933771666
• ISBN-13: 978-1933771663
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.8 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #447,367 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #84 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Diseases & Physical Ailments > Eye Problems

More About the Author

MARK CHANGIZI is a theoretical neurobiologist aiming to grasp the ultimate foundations underlying why we think, feel and see as we do. His research focuses on "why" questions, and he has made important discoveries such as on why we see in color, why we see illusions, why we have forward-facing eyes, why the brain is structured as it is, why animals have as many limbs and fingers as they do, why the dictionary is organized as it is, why fingers get pruney when wet, and how we acquired writing, language and music.

He attended the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and then went on to the University of Virginia for a degree in physics and mathematics, and to the University of Maryland for a PhD in math. In 2002 he won a prestigious Sloan-Swartz Fellowship in Theoretical Neurobiology at Caltech, and in 2007 he became an assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 2010 he took the post of Director of Human Cognition at a new research institute called 2ai Labs.

He has more than three dozen scientific journal articles, some of which have been covered in news venues such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and WIRED. He has written three books, THE BRAIN FROM 25,000 FEET (Kluwer 2003), THE VISION REVOLUTION (Benbella 2009) and HARNESSED: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella 2011). He is working on his fourth non-fiction book, this one on emotions and facial expressions, called FORCE OF EMOTIONS. He is simultaneously working on his first novel, called HUMAN 3.0.

[Photo credit: Rensselaer / Mark McCarty.]

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding scientific yet understandable book about human vision July 4, 2009

By Charles Ashbacher HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

If you were to do nothing more than glance at the chapter names, you would consider this book to be a collection of occult dung powder. Old, stale, and reworked so often that it is dried up. The chapter titles are:

*) Color telepathy
*) X-ray vision
*) Future-seeing
*) Spirit-reading

However, that first impression would be a significantly wrong impression, Changizi has written such a fascinating and scientifically sound book that it remains interesting, even when you disagree with his conclusions.
The chapter "Color telepathy" describes how humans are often able to "read" a person's thoughts and diagnose the state of their health by interpreting slight changes in skin color due to the level of oxygenation in the blood. In this area, his reasoning is sound and Changizi points out that colorblind doctors have been demonstrated to be at a significant disadvantage when attempting to visually diagnose a patient. Where his reasoning breaks down is when he argues that Homo sapiens evolutionarily acquired color vision so that they could use changes in skin color to learn what other people were thinking. In my opinion, this position is untenable.
In general, predators try to blend into the environment as much as possible so that they can get as close as possible before they move in for the kill. Having an acute sense of color vision would allow the relatively defenseless human to spot the stalking predator much earlier than if they were colorblind. Although Changizi's position has some merit, the value of color vision in spotting predators is a much stronger argument for it being evolutionarily selected.
The chapter "X-ray vision" has nothing like the powers of Superman to see through solid objects, the point is quite different. In this context x-ray vision is a consequence of having two eyes with some distance of separation between them, allowing for the brain to receive two offset images. A consequence is that if a sufficiently slim object obstructs your view, while one eye may not be able to see a segment of the visual field, the other eye can, allowing you to "see through" the object. Changizi also convincingly argues why humans and other creatures evolutionarily kept both eyes pointing forward, gaining stereovision when looking forward while losing some ability to see behind them.
Chapter 3, "Future-seeing" is not ESP-style precognition but the processing similar to what we do when we catch a ball. As we prepare for the catch, our minds generate a prediction where the ball will be when it arrives, in other words we must compute the future position of the object. Several years ago, I read a book about baseball where it was stated that when a baseball is pitched at 90 miles per hour, it is physically impossible for the human eye to follow the trajectory for the last several feet. To hit the ball the batter must compute the best estimate as to where the ball will be when it crosses home plate.
In chapter four, "Spirit-reading", the author describes the role of written language, how it was developed and how it is used by the dead or otherwise distant to communicate detailed information to others. Once again, Changizi's analysis is sound; his description of minimal strokes and more complex ideograms as methods of communication was easy to follow and convincing.
It is clear that Changizi is an expert on the concept of how humans use vision to understand their literal place in the world and cope with the dynamic nature of their environment. As optical illusions demonstrate, human vision is a very complex apparatus and in this book Changizi clarifies a great deal in language that is accessible to everyone.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Perspectives on the Eye-Brain System August 23, 2010

By G. Poirier

Format:Paperback

How many people take the time to ponder how we humans, and our animal confreres, perceive the world through vision? It seems that theoretical neurobiologists do. Why do we see in colour? Why are our eyes in front of our heads while some animals have theirs on the sides? Why are we tricked into seeing optical illusions in certain pictures? These are some of the questions which the author tries to answer in this fascinating book. His views are certainly new compared to what many of us may have been taught in school. Yet, once the author has presented his arguments and his evidence, one must admit that, in each case, he has a point. Each of the book's four chapters begins with the basics of its subject matter and progresses from there. Arguments are eventually presented as well as supporting data. Finally, detailed theoretical views are formulated which, for me anyway, required more head-scratching.

The writing style is certainly quite authoritative, friendly, generally clear and even rather lively. Regarding accessibility, as noted above, I found the chapters quite readable but becoming progressively more complex near the ends. Overall, I learned quite a bit from this book. I was also quite surprised at much of the information presented. I think that this book can be of much value to anyone with an interest in how the eye-brain system works and why it works the way it does.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Exploring, interpreting eye-brain synergy December 28, 2009

By Atul V

Format:Hardcover

Human brain has picked, in terms of senses, vision to be its favorite - if you consider the number of neurons connected. Perhaps it is the complexity of image processing that requires such tight coupling or perhaps the evolutionary trends on this lane determined that vision could be the deciding factor in spotting opportunities and danger, getting killed or staying alive. Or perhaps both evolutionary and computational needs converge at the eye-brain integration.

I wish the font of the book (printed edition) was better and was more evenly spaced -which would have made for a better reading experience. Also, the author would have reached a lot more mainstream audience by making the style more conversational - as he does in some sections later in the book (see "My Supercomputer Is Running Slowly" in the "Future-Seeing" chapter) but not early enough. Such changes would have catapulted this book to the "Freakanomics - Outliers" level. These, though, are relatively minor points when you think about the expanse of topics presented in this book and great care given to the color pictures, photographs, charts and other artifacts.

This book is both interesting and educational and provides an optimistic note in the realm of vision research, especially for anyone frustrated with funding cutbacks in such research areas. There are many practical applications that can be drawn from this book and the work highlighted and recommend this book highly.