The link above is about autism but Ian Jordan is looking at many conditions. I was running a technical seminar this afternoon for the Society of Light and Lighting and asked him to come down. I was a guinea pig because of my balance problems. In particular, I can’t look up or I fall backwards. Ian was able to give me glasses with special blue filters and I could look up and not fall backwards at all. He had different coloured filters which could change the taste of different foods and even put one on the skin of my foot and the pins and needles reduced greatly.
He put a red lens on one side of my head and blue on the other and every time I leaned towards the red - no matter whether it was left, right, front & back - this was not on my eyes, just on my skin.
He is also using coloured lenses for pain management and it does actually work!!! I saw his work and was a bit sceptical until he did it on me. It was amazing.
Just watched the video. Very interesting and the guy is obviously passionate about helping autistic children. Will take a look at his web site later.
I read an interesting book a few years ago by Daniel Tammet ‘Born On a Blue Day’. He writes a very interesting story about his life, similar to that portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the Rain Man.
Sorry…wondered off on a tangent
The seminar you did sounds interesting. Like you, I can’t look up without risk of falling, so it would be fascinating to try these colour lens filters.
Hi Blossom - it was really strange. When he put the blue glasses on and I looked up, I felt myself start to fall back but then I stabilised.
It was mostly lighting people at the seminar and I knew that most of them would never have seen Ian’s work so obviously it would be interesting. Unfortunately I was on after him talking about LEDs but Ian is a hard man to follow.
Hi JBK, we often hear about what seem like too good to be true miracle cures, but as you have tried it for yourself, it certainly adds credence to the idea.
Any psychologist could tell you about the effect of colour on mood - but I doubt if many of them know of the work of Ian Jordan.
Looking at his website, I wish I lived in Scotland.
My original specialty was human vision and simulator displays, and how you could change the perceived distance of an object by changing its brightness (luminance, before JBK jumps on my head).
However, I once had to examine an undergraduate project that used a hearing test to identify dyslexia.
There is also the “Kelly” effect which suggests that hearing can be improved by wearing one’s glasses. (And, no, that one is not well known, either).
So, anyone who thinks the senses are separate should think again.
I have been known to say to people - I can’t make out what you are saying - I’ll put my glasses on. They laugh at em but I know it is true. And my name is Kelly
Yes, it is true for sure.
The logic is that by making it easier to see, less processing power (i.e. brain) is devoted to the visual system - and thus more is available to the aural system.
No, JBK, I know that you are a different Kelly. The one in question was a psychologist at the Army Personnel Research Establishment (subsequently part of the DRA and then DERA) at Farnborough. He reported the effect in a letter to the journal Nature in the early 1980s. I do not think he was ever a belly dancer (but he had the build for it when I worked under him).
Bach when cameras were usually loaded with black and white film (aka monochrome) it was accepted that a deep red filter on the lens would enhance the contrast and (for example) bring out the grain in wood. Those of us who were into target shooting started experimenting with similar filters in front of the shooter’s eye.
The deep red filter did enhance the contrast between the white target and the black circular aiming mark. However, the deep red tended to make the shooter using it very angry (not so good when you want to be very very still). I hit a customer for some coloured perspex in a verry light shade of pink (lighter than girlie pink) and started making elements for rifle front sights. This improved the contrast and had a calming effect. The silly thing is that the shooter looked through a hole in that front sight element, and actually saw a white circle around a black aiming mark. The effect was very much psychological - but it was down to the colour. I have heard since that some US prisons have tried painting the walls in pale pink to try calming the inmates.