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Visual Reorientation Illusions (VRIs)


Hugh

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Oh and yeah I will bring the person who has VRIs a lot to the movies and we will try it there, hopefully soon and I will report back here If anything happens :)

Ok now with the shutting up :P (Until someone else posts)

Edited by Cyber_
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Hi Cyber, it sounds like you've had some success, but not fully yet... Keep trying!

I posted a better image of the mirror VRI flip a couple of posts back, you need two mirrors, a wall one and a hand held one, and look at the intersection of the two... see the image for a clearer idea of how to do it.

The movie theater VRI, especially the 180 degree one, is the easiest for most people to learn how to do it.

Just relax and during the movie, just think about being in a previous theater that you have been in that faces the opposite direction...

It will happen!

Usually it happens to people during the movie, and when they go to leave, they find that their world has been turned around on them!

Lots of fun! :)

Wishing you success!

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Here's another thing you can do to help you get a better understanding of the four different available viewpoints.

Think about as many different movies that you can remember ever seeing in a movie theater, and for each movie memory, point with your extended arm towards the direction that you were looking at the screen, from where you are right now.

Do this for as many different movies as you can.

Hopefully, you will come up with four different orientations overall, that you have been in over the course of your life.

Now, practice from where you are right now, turning the chair you are sitting in, to each of those four different directions, and for each direction, remember each scene that you can, from all of the movies that you have seen in that orientation.

The more that you can fully imagine yourself being in each of the different directions, as you actually face them, and vividly remember watching each movie from each direction, the easier it will be for you to do this while you're actually at the theater, trying to do a VRI.

The stronger you can develop your sense of direction, the easier it will be to realize when it gets turned around.

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One question though:

When you do the flip do you close your eyes or keep them open?

Normally I keep my eyes open when I consciously do a VRI.

There have been many times though, when a VRI occurs, and it is when my eyes have been closed.

Sometimes when I wake up, I find that I'm in a different orientation world around me, but then my brain automatically flips it back to my normal orientation within a few seconds. Same thing in the shower when I close my eyes and shampoo my hair and turn around to rinse it out, when I open my eyes I am in a new orientation, but again, within a few seconds my brain flips things "back to normal".

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happens to me in bed a lot, can also induce one if the room is dark enough. As a child I found it rather amusing, laying in bed and making the room flip without moving.

I used to snap out of them by touching the wall behind me, but after a bit of practice I could work touch into the experience.

Glad to see others experience this and its not just me having a freak-out.

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happens to me in bed a lot, can also induce one if the room is dark enough. As a child I found it rather amusing, laying in bed and making the room flip without moving.

Hi existo, always great to hear of another person who has experienced this phenomenon!

I've had a lot of fun doing VRIs as well over the years just by thinking and making it happen... have you been able to achieve the flip in places other than your bedroom when you were a child?

I find it easiest in a movie theater, probably because like you said, the darkness helps in making the flip happen.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Nice I think I got it to work. It was when I wasn't really thinking about it. I went to the bathroom not at my house.

v

hal y

v

<<<<<< Hallway x >>>>>>>>v

So the door to the bathrooms were on the words "halway x" and basically I walked outside expecting to be walking on hallway Y. I got so turned around until I noticed where I was. Finally got to experience it, really cool too. Now I know how it feels and I am going to try to do it more when i go to the movies.

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Great to hear Cyber! I'm looking forward to hearing if you're able to experience it in a movie theater setting.

Now that you've experienced it first hand, it should be easier to recognize it when it happens again.

Try the 180 degree VRI to the opposite theater, it's the easiest to do for most.

I hope you're able to do the other two 90 degree flips too, and eventually see all four of the possible viewpoints!

It's so cool to visit them all! :)

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  • 4 months later...

I had read about how scientists had praised the movie Interstellar for being accurate, to the best of our current knowledge.

If you haven't seen it yet, and plan to, the following points contain some spoiler info from it, just thought I'd warn you... :)

What was most interesting for me, was the scene from inside the Tesseract.

Murph's room has been made accessible to Cooper, with time as a fourth spatial dimension (called the 5th dimension in the film.)

Cooper gets to float around from behind his daughter's bookshelf, and do things with the books to send messages back to his daughter, at any time of his choosing, based on what room's viewpoint he goes to.

The layout of the Tesseract, with each room's time appearing as an accessible 3D cube viewpoint, is one that is familiar to those who commonly experience VRIs.

When he is floating around in there, and there are all of these other orthogonal viewpoints available for his choosing, it's like being able to choose which "turned around" viewpoint you want to see of wherever you are here on Earth, and choosing to see your surroundings from that direction, using a VRI to do so.

When I think of all of the viewpoints available using VRIs to look around, it's like being inside the Tesseract in the movie, and just like being in the tesseract depicted by the avatar I use. :)

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  • 5 months later...

I've created a public Facebook group about Visual Reorientation Illusios (VRIs), the phenomenon where you feel that you get turned around in your directional bearings. Many people experience them while coming up from a subway, or coming out of a movie theater. Their whole world viewpoint suddenly "flips back to normal" and they get their bearings back, and say "Oh, now I know where I am!" Have a look around and enjoy! https://www.facebook.com/groups/1641368339467014/

Edited by Hugh
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  • 3 months later...
 

The Hypercube of Monkeys shows a monkey in each of the cubes of a 4D cube.

http://blogs.scienti...ube-of-monkeys/

hypercube_monkeys.jpg

It looks like what I feel are the various orientations of cube viewpoints accessible with VRIs.

Each monkey is shifted 90 degrees from the others, and that's what happens to your world viewpoint as you shift from one viewpoint to another.

For me, this is another clue that possibly relates VRIs to our experience of the higher dimensional space that we, and the universe may be comprised of. :)

Edited by Hugh
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There is an article about visualizing the fourth dimension here:

http://nautil.us/iss...ourth-dimension

In it, there is a diagram that shows what it is like to glimpse the fourth dimension with this explanation:

"You can, however, get a glimpse of the fourth dimension through an optical illusion called the Necker cube (labeled A in the figure below). There are two ways to interpret this shape: as a box oriented slightly left and down, or as its mirror image. If you stare at the Necker cube long enough, it appears to flip back and forth in what mathematician Rudy Rucker calls a “twinkling rearrangement.” Eventually, the twinkling may appear as one continuous motion. But, as Rucker points out in his book Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension, “this motion can only be continuous if it is a rotation in 4-D space.” That’s because a rotation in three dimensions can’t produce a mirror image. “So perhaps we can actually produce a 4-D phenomenon in our minds!

I added in a 3D slice of a 4D human into the diagram, showing how one might perceive the rotation if one were inside the Necker Cube itself.

VRI_FLIP.jpg

The "twinkling rearrangement" that Rudy Rucker talks about is exactly the type of real-world experience that people have when a VRI occurs.

Note that from outside the box the image has turned into its mirror image, but from the perspective of inside, everything has just rotated around to a new direction.

This is another reason why I feel that VRIs are related to the existence of a higher dimension.

Edited by Hugh
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Hugh,

Thanks for the interesting topic. This is the first I've heard of VRIs. I wonder if there is a 'spectrum' of VRI experience, with people like you at one end and people like me at the other end? I have about zero directional abilites. For example, if I go for a walk in an unfamiliar city I have to use a map app on my smartphone, and I constantly turn around and visually memorize landmarks to help me find the way back to my hotel. (I once got lost while taking a walk in Hong Kong, which was a very unsettling experience.)

Some years ago there was an IQ test on television pitting a group of Scientists against a group of Blondes, a group of Bodybuilders, etc. The television audience could answer and keep their own scores (there were 50 questions). I was sailing along with Mensa-level scores (Lol) until the Spatial Awareness category, where I drove into a mud bog. I didn't even understand the questions, much less the diagrams. I was completely befuddled.

I'm not sure if this relates in any way to VRIs, but my sister is a Social Worker who works with autistic children. One of her clients was an autistic boy who could piece together upside-down jigsaw puzzles, with the picture face-down and the blank side up. He remembered the shapes of the pieces and put them in place without using the picture as a guide.

In your opinion, are Spatial Awareness and Visual Awareness maybe controlled by the same areas of the brain?

Edited by simplybill
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Hi simplybill. That train going either way depending on your willpower is interesting isn't it? :)

That's just like what happens with VRIs with me is that one can see one's surroundings from any direction that one wants to, just by willing it and flipping it around by thought. This happens quite easily for me in any movie theater.

I wonder if there is a 'spectrum' of VRI experience, with people like you at one end and people like me at the other end? I have about zero directional abilites. For example, if I go for a walk in an unfamiliar city I have to use a map app on my smartphone, and I constantly turn around and visually memorize landmarks to help me find the way back to my hotel.

For me, there is usually a strong spatial awareness about which direction I'm facing within my overall map of wherever I am.

Sometimes though, things do get "turned around" with a VRI... Have you checked out my Toronto VRI flip video?

Some years ago there was an IQ test on television pitting a group of Scientists against a group of Blondes, a group of Bodybuilders, etc. The television audience could answer and keep their own scores (there were 50 questions). I was sailing along with Mensa-level scores (Lol) until the Spatial Awareness category, where I drove into a mud bog. I didn't even understand the questions, much less the diagrams. I was completely befuddled.

The tests I've tried involving spatial awareness have come out with some good scores for the ability to flip things around etc...

In your opinion, are Spatial Awareness and Visual Awareness maybe controlled by the same areas of the brain?

Although they might be controlled by different areas, they're both connected up in the brain to form an overall picture of one's mental map of their environment.

VRIs might be linked to the firing of head direction, grid, and place cells within the brain.

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Just watched the video - very interesting! I added the YouTube channel to my favorites so I can watch more of the videos later.

I found a couple of Wikipedia articles that describe some of my experiences: Topographical Disorientation and Visuospatial Dysgnosia. The link to the article about 'focal and diffuse brain injury' was interesting: I've had at least four episodes of head trauma that caused unconciousness, and I'm thinking there's a connection. Hmm....

Are you familiar with Dr. Oliver Sacks? He lived his whole life with Prosopagnosia, or "face blindness". He wasn't able to recognize people until they spoke and he recognized their voices.

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I'm happy you enjoyed the video! There are 2 others that I've made about VRIs. One is how they are experienced in a movie theater, which is the easiest place that I've found to do cognitive VRIs. The other video is a bit comical, as my daughter and I used SpongeBob characters to show how VRIs are experienced. Enjoy! :)

I'm sorry to hear about your head trauma and loss of conciousness. I've read that can cause loss of sense of direction and also interfere with one's ability to make mental spatial maps.

There is another forum about Developmental Topographical Disorientation (DTD) and on there people have discussed all kinds of spatial orientation issues, including non-map making ability and even VRIs. There are also many articles about navigational issues as well. You can check out the site at gettinglost.ca

I had read about Dr. Oliver Sacks, who the movie Awakenings was based on. Face blindness must be so strange to have. For me, faces are easy to remember, it's the name that sometimes evades me. :)

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  • 2 years later...

I’ve had them my whole life. I need to learn driving routes each way and even mentally update myself with life events. Lol. But I always know my North South East and West no matter what because of landmarks 

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