I'm wondering if Visual Reorientation Illusions (VRIs) that people experience, could somehow be related to the existence of a fourth, or even a higher number of spatial dimensions.
VRIs are 90 or 180 degree instant rotations of one's visual orientation. It's as if the whole universe is "turned around" instantly. You may have heard of someone getting lost because they got turned around in their orientation. The fact that the flips are always orthogonal makes me think it may have to do with a higher dimension.
Some people can mentally produce VRIs at will. Astronauts find that they can learn to produce VRIs about any axis, but here on Earth we're limited to flips about the vertical axis due to the perception of gravity. Other people only have VRIs happen to them, and because they cause disorientation, they are a nuisance. Others have never experienced a VRI.
There are several pages I've found that discuss the VRI for those who want to read more about them:
From section 7.2 at Representation of Spatial Orientation by the Intrinsic Dynamics of the Head Direction Cell Ensemble: A Theory , Kechen Zhang writes:
"We seldom notice the existence of our sense of direction until it goes wrong. Disorientation often occurs after people ride passively in a vehicle, unaware of a slow turn. An important property revealed by the disorientation experiences is that without the help of familiar landmarks, one can hardly reset the internal direction at will, despite one's conscious knowledge of the error based on other cues, e.g., the expected position of the sun. Another phenomenon is less frequent but more dramatic. In approaching a place with salient landmarks that was seen initially with an incorrect sense of direction, the currently correct sense of direction can suddenly flip back to the wrong orientation again when landmarks are recognized, in what can feel like a sudden vertiginous rotation of the whole world (Jonsson, 1993, and the references therein)."
From page 4 of Human Visual Orientation in Weightlessness , Charles M. Oman says:
"Actually, it is possible to have a VRI right here on Earth, as when you leave an underground subway station labyrinth, and upon seeing a familiar visual landmark, realize that e.g. you are facing east, not west. On Earth, gravity constrains our body orientation, and provides an omnipresent "down" cue, so we normally only experience VRIs about a vertical axis."
Ann Druffel's article: East is West and North is South, talks about VRIs as being subjective direction flips. Although she explains the experience of the flip quite well, her explanation of why they occur is different from my own. I find that they can happen anywhere, at anytime, and can be consciously produced.
Aale de Winkel made an interesting point in the "Flaw in Flatland" thread from this Tetraspace forum on Dec. 4, 2003 when he said: "I doubt very much that tetra-vision would be the same as x-ray-vision.
Tetronians will not be able to see within a trionian body, they see the lightrays reflecting of a body just in a direction more then we trionians do!"
When one experiences a VRI, you do see light from the same object coming from what you perceive as another orthogonal direction.
If the universe does actually have 4 spatial dimensions, then we would be 4d too. How we would see that space is something I've been interested in. There have been threads on this forum discussing what 2d Fred would see. I don't think a 2d being could actually see anything because it looks along an infinitely thin plane "edge on". A 1d line cannot be seen, so a 2d being would see zero dimensions, even though it could move in 2 dimensions.
Could our visual perceptions of our universe be limited as well? Think about how a 360 degree turn in 2d and in 3d brings one back to the original starting position. In 4d, wouldn't it be the same? If we did a 360 degree turn in 4d space, wouldn't we come back to the starting position? Wouldn't we only see a 3d boundary sphere around us if we were in a 4d hypersphere, or a 3d boundary cube around us in a 4d hypercube?
Another thing to think about is how we would see higher dimensional matter. When you look at a regular garden hose from a long distance away, you only see a long 2d rectangle (if it's straight). The dimension perpendicular to the long direction (the depth) is not really seen. But, an ant crawling on the hose, would easily see that curled up dimension. If we were able to see the smallest component of 4d matter, we'd only see a tiny dot, not the curled up higher dimensions. Add more of those tiny components together, and we still only see a bigger dot. As you continue to add more, you still only see a visual compilation of the 2d surface of it. Fill the space all around you with those components, and you end up seeing a sphere around you. Now, if you are made up of the same tiny 4d components, how would that change your ability to see the 4d space around you?
In a 4d hypercube, aren't there shared 2d planes? Could one see the same 2d plane of vision from a different 90 or 180 degree direction? This is where I think that the VRI might fit in.
Edit by iNVERTED: Fixed your links. Make sure to use BBCode next time.
Thanks iNVERTED
