Inspirational Scott Adams news

[sidney]

I saw this news mentioned on slashdot today and had to pass it on.

Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, contracted a rare disease 18 months ago called Spasmodic Dysphonia that causes a portion of the speech center of the brain to malfunction, losing him the ability to speak. As is often the case with brain disorders the symptoms have strange specificity. He could not talk to individuals or on the telephone or whenever someone else was speaking within earshot, but was able to sing and to give speeches on stage before a crowd.

There has never been a recorded case of someone with Spasmodic Dysphonia recovering their speech -- until now. Scott Adams' blog entry about it (http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/10/good_news_day.html) is a wonderfully inspirational story.

[Lindsey]

There has never been a recorded case of someone with Spasmodic Dysphonia recovering their speech -- until now. Scott Adams' blog entry about it (http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/10/good_news_day.html) is a wonderfully inspirational story.
That is indeed an inspirational story! I suspect that Scott Adams's sense of humor was just as important in getting him through it all as patience, determination, and applying his intelligence to working through the problem.

It reminds me a little of a story by Oliver Sacks this summer in the New Yorker (June 19 issue), which recounted the experience of a woman named Susan Barry (herself a professor of neuroscience) who had been stereo-blind until age 48, the result of having been born with strabismus (crossed eyes), a condition eventually corrected with surgery, but only after several surgeries that were not completed until she was seven years old. It was universally accepted that if strabismus was not corrected by the age of two, the binocular brain cells don't develop, and it is impossible to develop stereoscopic vision.

But with therapy, and her own determined effort, Barry managed to do just that. And it turns out she is not unique.

Apparently other people have spent their lives with visual deficits expected to last forever and, through various therapies suggested by their eye doctors, they say they have gotten back some of the sense they had lost.

<snip>

What is especially fascinating about all these stories is they suggest that brains are more "plastic" -- more changeable and repairable in adulthood -- than many scientists and doctors had thought.
The New Yorker piece doesn't appear to be available online, but there's an audio piece by NPR's Robert Krulwich about her story at http://news.wnpr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5507789

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Wow. That is absolutely fantastic. Thanks for posting the link, Sidney...

[Lindsey]

I had forgotten until I did a little Googling earlier that this is the same malady that Diane Rehm suffers from, though she may have a slightly different form of it, and she continues to do her radio talk show. Her voice has a bit of a "wobble" to it, which makes her sound much older than she really is, and she undergoes periodic treatments for it (the botox injections Scott Adams mentioned, perhaps?). But her show is fantastically successful, and that wobble in her voice has become a familiar "signature".

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

I had forgotten until I did a little Googling earlier that this is the same malady that Diane Rehm suffers fromAnd I'd never heard of it before!

[davidh]

having been born with strabismus (crossed eyes)

My roommate, John Klawitter (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/102-3044036-4956909?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=%22john+klawitter%22&Go.x=10&Go.y=10&Go=Go), at DLI/ALS in Monterey, CA in 1963 used to work for a cartography company. He had trained himself to be able to look at pairs of aerial photographs so that he could see the topography in relief. He had a couple photographs with him in the barracks and let me try to do it. I succeeded partially in doing it, but only cross-eyed. The effect was that the mountains became valleys. Nevertheless it was a special experience. Perhaps sort of like riding a bicycle for the first time. It also reminds me of the first time I picked up a scientific journal in German in the physics library at CU and discovered that I could understand an abstract without needing a dictionary.

IIRC, he said that he also used this particular ability for another purpose, to look women in the eyes. For such an application, I'm sure that his technique would have been much more effective than mine :(

DH

[Dan in Saint Louis]

He had trained himself to be able to look at pairs of aerial photographs so that he could see the topography in relief.
That technique has been extended:
http://www.eyetricks.com/eye_magic.htm

[Lindsey]

My roommate, John Klawitter (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/102-3044036-4956909?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=%22john+klawitter%22&Go.x=10&Go.y=10&Go=Go), at DLI/ALS in Monterey, CA in 1963 used to work for a cartography company. He had trained himself to be able to look at pairs of aerial photographs so that he could see the topography in relief.
That's pretty cool -- a little like training yourself to look at pairs of stereo photographs without the stereoscope and seeing them in 3D, I guess.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

That technique has been extended:
http://www.eyetricks.com/eye_magic.htm
Wicked! Appropriate image for Halloween, too.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Wicked! Appropriate image for Halloween, too.Waaah! I really don't see anything but a bunch of blobs! (Maybe I should get my glasses checked...)

[Lindsey]

Waaah! I really don't see anything but a bunch of blobs! (Maybe I should get my glasses checked...)
Maybe it's because I've been horribly nearsighted most of my life. ;-) But what I find usually works for me is to focus behind the plane of the picture. The details of the picture itself will "swim" slightly, and then suddenly they'll "pop" into focus (without my having changed where my eyes are actually focused) with a 3D image that hovers outside the plane of the actual printed (or in this case, displayed) image.

Some pictures I have to look at a long time before they "pop" -- this one did it fairly quickly, but that may just have been lucky circumstance. (Sometimes it can help to take something like a post card and put it on edge through the center of the picture to force each of your eyes to see slightly different things.)

Some years ago, though, someone gave me a mug with one of those sorts of images on it, and I could never make anything of it; I think maybe it was because it was on a curved surface.

--Lindsey

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Waaah! I really don't see anything but a bunch of blobs! (Maybe I should get my glasses checked...)
Don't try to focus on the image. Imagine yourself viewing a distant object, that helps your eyes focus at "infinity". About that time the 3D effect should emerge.

[Judy G. Russell]

I think the directions ("stare intently at the image") did me in. Allowing my eyes to basically "cross" gave me a hint, but it sure doesn't "pop" for me.

[Judy G. Russell]

Don't try to focus on the image. Imagine yourself viewing a distant object, that helps your eyes focus at "infinity". About that time the 3D effect should emerge.Hmmm... the directions say "stare intently at the image" and that's what I did. So I went ahead and let my eyes "cross" and I can kind of see a skull, but not much of one. Funny, because I usually see the image in these sorts of things quickly.

[Lindsey]

Hmmm... the directions say "stare intently at the image" and that's what I did. So I went ahead and let my eyes "cross" and I can kind of see a skull, but not much of one. Funny, because I usually see the image in these sorts of things quickly.
Call it a pop-art skull. ;) But if it looks 3D, you've got it.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Call it a pop-art skull. ;) But if it looks 3D, you've got it.I've got it? Aieeee! I didn't know it was contagious!

[Lindsey]

I've got it? Aieeee! I didn't know it was contagious!
It does have sort of a broken-out-in-a-rash quality to it, doesn't it?

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

It does have sort of a broken-out-in-a-rash quality to it, doesn't it?That pretty well describes what it looks like if you follow the stare-at-the-image directions!