henry copeland:
- well.blogs.nytimes.com
Focusing the Brain on Better Vision - NYTimes.com
as people aged, the random firing of neurons in the brain’s visual system increased, creating a kind of internal noise. At the same time, the aging brain struggles harder with external visual noise, such as snowflakes in a blizzard that obscure words on a road sign. The latest study’s exercises were designed to train adults to filter such external visual noise so they could better discern edges of contrast. “It’s possible that the brain might simultaneously have been trained to reduce internalized noise,” Dr. Andersen said. Researchers are increasingly focused on perceptual learning, the brain’s ability to discriminate among stimuli — training the ear, for example, to distinguish between Shostakovich and Bartok, or the palate to discern a cabernet sauvignon from a pinot noir. There is also much research on the aging brain. But until now, few scientists have thought to examine the possibilities for improving perceptual learning in older adults.- well.blogs.nytimes.com