4 ms·

Visualization 'demonic' face distortions in a case of prosopometamorphopsia

60 points by wglb 3y ago

hmmmcurious1 3y ago
Isn't this normal? Its how I see everyone from upper management
- coldtea 3y ago
  In that case it's not a distortion.
onthecanposting 3y ago
There is a pretty good explanation of this in the documentary movie 'They Live'. Turns out they're just aliens most of us can't see.
- BjoernKW 3y ago
  > There is a pretty good explanation of this in the documentary movie 'They Live'. Featuring renowned journalist Roddy Piper, no less.
- tempodox 3y ago
  I knew it, we are all surrounded by disguised demons.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  They looks like the people/creatures from There Are Monsters.
Daub 3y ago
It's interesting how the distortions are confined to the narrow triangle that is the face. The remainder of the head is undistorted. From my experience with portrait painting I can say that the quality of our responce to this region is many times more acute than any other part of the body. My vision is very poor, but even with my diminished vision I can tell if a student at the back of a lecture hall is looking at me or over my shoulder. Not a neurologist, but I’m going to guess that this is because the face is processed by a dedicated perceptual apparatus.
- kzrdude 3y ago
  As an aspect of that, the perception we get of a face is very much a "cooked" or processed representation of and not an exact picture of the face as it is. The thatcher effect and other similar effects are evidence of that.
  - Daub 3y ago
    So… does this imply that our perception is template-driven?
    - etrautmann 3y ago
      Perception is highly influenced by top down information as the brain models what it expects to see. It’s complex, but attention learned representations of the world have an enormous influence on perception.
      - pixl97 3y ago
        Perception Deception: Nova https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4 Your Brain - Who's in control: Nova https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6VOOd73MA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6VOOd73MA Both of these videos are great resources on how much of what you experience of reality is made up or filled in by your brain at any given moment. I believe it's the Perception Deception episode that shows us how little of our vision is actual HD quality and that an external observer doing eye tracking on you can present a different reality to you than a 3rd party looking at the same object you are (on a screen at least, little bit harder in the real world).
        jamiek88 3y ago
        Which leads to foveated rendering which is nearly perfect on my Apple Vision Pro but if you quickly move your eyes up and down and side to side eventually the sensors lag and you see the blurriness. It’s a very clever use of our vision processing that you only need to render in full 4K what our very narrow foveated view can see. As long as your eye tracking and lag is lower than around 12ms ish.
cainxinth 3y ago
Makes you wonder how many fantasy creations from fiction originated not from the author’s imagination but from their actual sensory experiences.
- 0xcafefood 3y ago
  This is famously true for Lewis Carroll.
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    Not so famously, I'm afraid, I'd love to hear more. I did put in a honest effort: 35, fairly well read, and I spent some time Googling. Can't find anything other than a syndrome called "Alice in Wonderland syndrome" where sizes are perceived incorrectly in e.g. epileptics before a seizure.
    - _nalply 3y ago
      When I was younger I had some episodes where I started to perceive distortions in distance and size. I perceived big things like houses suddenly as very little, like toys, and I felt I could grab then in my hand. Or I perceived little things suddenly as very large and far away. A toy soldier for example could grow to be the size of Statue of Liberty as if watched from the Battery Park. I found these distortions very fascinating. I didn't have episodes for more than twenty years. Last week however my older son told me about it and I told him, me too!
      - rrr_oh_man 3y ago
        Same here. It’s common in children.
        GolfPopper 3y ago
        Huh. I had this as a child as well. Stopped well before I turned twenty. I can still vividly remember a doorknob seeming immense and then a tiny knob in the middle of a vast stretch of door. Thank you for sharing!
pixl97 3y ago
>"We've heard from multiple people with PMO that they have been diagnosed by psychiatrists as having schizophrenia and put on anti-psychotics, when their condition is a problem with the visual system," says senior author Brad Duchaine, a professor of psychological and brain sciences and principal investigator of the Social Perception Lab at Dartmouth. I wonder how many people have been driven to actual insanity by this?
- agumonkey 3y ago
  This is exactly why I refused to keep listening to psychiatrists. The ratio of diagnosis precision vs treatment risks is insanely bad.
Biganon 3y ago
Oh boy, I hope the lizard-people-conspiracy idiots do not read this article...
guns 3y ago
Reminds me of “Flashed face distortion effect”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashed_face_distortion_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashed_face_distortion_effe... https://youtu.be/VT9i99D_9gI?si=QHhzR00tib3ZuX-5 https://youtu.be/VT9i99D_9gI?si=QHhzR00tib3ZuX-5
barfbagginus 3y ago
Can anyone find any explanation for how the researcher might have controlled for deception in this kind of study? The linked article mentions that they did control for delusional beliefs about the identities of the faces the individual was perceiving - this helps reject the hypothesis that this is part of a larger psychiatric issue. But the journal link does not discuss how the researcher rejects the hypothesis that the individual could be fabricating the experience. It could also be the case that the researcher helped fabricate the results to produce work - a risk created in part by the unending pressure of publish/perish. Obviously it would be very unfair to assume that either patient or researcher are deceptive here, given that it's far more likely that both patient and researcher simply want to help people with this condition. I do not want to call the researcher into question, and much less do I want to invalidate the patient's experience. But I'm curious about how we should approach this with healthy skepticism in the age of the replicability crisis - what specific signals do you use to confirm the likely veracity of the researcher and subject, given the very subjective and unblinded nature of the case study, and lack of discussion on how we discard the deceptive hypothesis? Did you find details that I'm missing? And if you assign a percentage to your confidence in this result, what percentage is it, and why?
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  I'd assume someone suffering from this condition has spent time and money on doctors to address it, suggesting that they're being earnest about their experiences and perceptions versus someone taking a researcher for a ride. I'd also assume that they were referred by a doctor who is both familiar with the patient and with research into the condition.
- verisimi 3y ago
  Exactly. It's impossible to validate that this is really the illusion that the patient is seeing (which is highly unlikely to me) versus the possibility that the patient is making all this up (highly likely). I also wonder, how the patient was able to confirm the face was deformed correctly if they genuinely have this condition. If they are looking at an already deformed image, that image will be further deformed, no? The deformation 'filter' will be applied to the image too...
iammjm 3y ago
I did experience something very similar under the influence of psilocybin. I think it's a relatively common occurrence. It is very trippy experience and it makes social interactions, obviously, somewhat problematic
sebtron 3y ago
I wonder how do people with PMO actually know they have this condition? If they always see faces "distorted", how do they know other people see them differently? Maybe when they feel the inconsistency when touching their face? Or they do not see distortions when they see only parts of a face and the rest is hidden?
agumonkey 3y ago
Wow, strange, I suffered from similar symptoms years ago, and still remains of it at times and only found out about this term last week. (After years of searching in the void). I wish I could find people working on topics similar to this (there are other forms of distortion and facial processing areas that can be altered by brain conditions).

60 points by wglb 3y ago

hmmmcurious1 3y ago

Isn't this normal? Its how I see everyone from upper management

coldtea 3y ago
In that case it's not a distortion.

onthecanposting 3y ago

There is a pretty good explanation of this in the documentary movie 'They Live'. Turns out they're just aliens most of us can't see.

BjoernKW 3y ago
> There is a pretty good explanation of this in the documentary movie 'They Live'. Featuring renowned journalist Roddy Piper, no less.
tempodox 3y ago
I knew it, we are all surrounded by disguised demons.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
heavyset_go 3y ago
They looks like the people/creatures from There Are Monsters.

Daub 3y ago

It's interesting how the distortions are confined to the narrow triangle that is the face. The remainder of the head is undistorted. From my experience with portrait painting I can say that the quality of our responce to this region is many times more acute than any other part of the body. My vision is very poor, but even with my diminished vision I can tell if a student at the back of a lecture hall is looking at me or over my shoulder. Not a neurologist, but I’m going to guess that this is because the face is processed by a dedicated perceptual apparatus.

kzrdude 3y ago
As an aspect of that, the perception we get of a face is very much a "cooked" or processed representation of and not an exact picture of the face as it is. The thatcher effect and other similar effects are evidence of that.
- Daub 3y ago
  So… does this imply that our perception is template-driven?
  - etrautmann 3y ago
    Perception is highly influenced by top down information as the brain models what it expects to see. It’s complex, but attention learned representations of the world have an enormous influence on perception.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Perception Deception: Nova https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4 Your Brain - Who's in control: Nova https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6VOOd73MA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6VOOd73MA Both of these videos are great resources on how much of what you experience of reality is made up or filled in by your brain at any given moment. I believe it's the Perception Deception episode that shows us how little of our vision is actual HD quality and that an external observer doing eye tracking on you can present a different reality to you than a 3rd party looking at the same object you are (on a screen at least, little bit harder in the real world).
      - jamiek88 3y ago
        Which leads to foveated rendering which is nearly perfect on my Apple Vision Pro but if you quickly move your eyes up and down and side to side eventually the sensors lag and you see the blurriness. It’s a very clever use of our vision processing that you only need to render in full 4K what our very narrow foveated view can see. As long as your eye tracking and lag is lower than around 12ms ish.

cainxinth 3y ago

Makes you wonder how many fantasy creations from fiction originated not from the author’s imagination but from their actual sensory experiences.

0xcafefood 3y ago
This is famously true for Lewis Carroll.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  Not so famously, I'm afraid, I'd love to hear more. I did put in a honest effort: 35, fairly well read, and I spent some time Googling. Can't find anything other than a syndrome called "Alice in Wonderland syndrome" where sizes are perceived incorrectly in e.g. epileptics before a seizure.
  - _nalply 3y ago
    When I was younger I had some episodes where I started to perceive distortions in distance and size. I perceived big things like houses suddenly as very little, like toys, and I felt I could grab then in my hand. Or I perceived little things suddenly as very large and far away. A toy soldier for example could grow to be the size of Statue of Liberty as if watched from the Battery Park. I found these distortions very fascinating. I didn't have episodes for more than twenty years. Last week however my older son told me about it and I told him, me too!
    - rrr_oh_man 3y ago
      Same here. It’s common in children.
      - GolfPopper 3y ago
        Huh. I had this as a child as well. Stopped well before I turned twenty. I can still vividly remember a doorknob seeming immense and then a tiny knob in the middle of a vast stretch of door. Thank you for sharing!

pixl97 3y ago

>"We've heard from multiple people with PMO that they have been diagnosed by psychiatrists as having schizophrenia and put on anti-psychotics, when their condition is a problem with the visual system," says senior author Brad Duchaine, a professor of psychological and brain sciences and principal investigator of the Social Perception Lab at Dartmouth. I wonder how many people have been driven to actual insanity by this?

agumonkey 3y ago
This is exactly why I refused to keep listening to psychiatrists. The ratio of diagnosis precision vs treatment risks is insanely bad.

Biganon 3y ago

Oh boy, I hope the lizard-people-conspiracy idiots do not read this article...

guns 3y ago

Reminds me of “Flashed face distortion effect”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashed_face_distortion_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashed_face_distortion_effe... https://youtu.be/VT9i99D_9gI?si=QHhzR00tib3ZuX-5 https://youtu.be/VT9i99D_9gI?si=QHhzR00tib3ZuX-5

barfbagginus 3y ago

Can anyone find any explanation for how the researcher might have controlled for deception in this kind of study? The linked article mentions that they did control for delusional beliefs about the identities of the faces the individual was perceiving - this helps reject the hypothesis that this is part of a larger psychiatric issue. But the journal link does not discuss how the researcher rejects the hypothesis that the individual could be fabricating the experience. It could also be the case that the researcher helped fabricate the results to produce work - a risk created in part by the unending pressure of publish/perish. Obviously it would be very unfair to assume that either patient or researcher are deceptive here, given that it's far more likely that both patient and researcher simply want to help people with this condition. I do not want to call the researcher into question, and much less do I want to invalidate the patient's experience. But I'm curious about how we should approach this with healthy skepticism in the age of the replicability crisis - what specific signals do you use to confirm the likely veracity of the researcher and subject, given the very subjective and unblinded nature of the case study, and lack of discussion on how we discard the deceptive hypothesis? Did you find details that I'm missing? And if you assign a percentage to your confidence in this result, what percentage is it, and why?

heavyset_go 3y ago
I'd assume someone suffering from this condition has spent time and money on doctors to address it, suggesting that they're being earnest about their experiences and perceptions versus someone taking a researcher for a ride. I'd also assume that they were referred by a doctor who is both familiar with the patient and with research into the condition.
verisimi 3y ago
Exactly. It's impossible to validate that this is really the illusion that the patient is seeing (which is highly unlikely to me) versus the possibility that the patient is making all this up (highly likely). I also wonder, how the patient was able to confirm the face was deformed correctly if they genuinely have this condition. If they are looking at an already deformed image, that image will be further deformed, no? The deformation 'filter' will be applied to the image too...

iammjm 3y ago

I did experience something very similar under the influence of psilocybin. I think it's a relatively common occurrence. It is very trippy experience and it makes social interactions, obviously, somewhat problematic

sebtron 3y ago

I wonder how do people with PMO actually know they have this condition? If they always see faces "distorted", how do they know other people see them differently? Maybe when they feel the inconsistency when touching their face? Or they do not see distortions when they see only parts of a face and the rest is hidden?

agumonkey 3y ago

Wow, strange, I suffered from similar symptoms years ago, and still remains of it at times and only found out about this term last week. (After years of searching in the void). I wish I could find people working on topics similar to this (there are other forms of distortion and facial processing areas that can be altered by brain conditions).