Over the summer, a familiar event graced the televisions of people globally: the Olympics. Every four years, athletes who dedicated their time and strength to represent their countries compete in various sporting events to earn pride and honor for their countries through medals. Though Olympians are considered physically perfect, many of them have unique variations to their senses and builds that could be either beneficial or detrimental to their athletic performances. However, the human brain is adept at compensating for senses and mechanisms that may not be up to the average – such can be seen in the Olympians with conditions that impair their vision (Davis). Many Olympians have impaired vision, whether it be astigmatism, nearsightedness, farsightedness, a combination of those conditions, or other conditions like strabismus and coloboma (the conditions that Stephen Nodoroscik, USA’s men’s pommel horse specialist, had) (Davis). While many may consider clear vision vital to athletic performance, many Olympians would disagree. For them, the neuroplasticity of their brains compensates for vision impairment by strengthening and drawing from other senses like proprioception, touch, auditory, and vestibular senses (Davis). The brain is able to fill in any gaps that the Olympians confront in their training or sporting events given enough information from the other senses – with, without, or with impaired vision (Davis).
The existence of vision-impaired Olympians creates an interesting conversation with the research done by Dr. Nick Baker, who studies how the visual system perceives and represents shapes. In his multiple-experiment research study “Constant Curvature Segments as Building Blocks of 2D Shape Representation,” Dr. Baker and his fellow researchers sought to elucidate whether or not constant curvature segments were more recognizable over other types of curvature segments (mathematical curvatures, etc.), as Dr. Baker’s research is based on finding if constant curvature segments are the building blocks of image outline recognition or not (e.g. the shape outline of a ball, chair, car, amorphous random shape, etc.) (Baker et al.). In this specific paper, Dr. Baker and his colleagues found that constant curvature segments were easily recognizable over other types of curvatures, supporting the idea that constant curvature segments could be the basis of how the human visual system recognizes outlines of images (Baker et al.).
As vision gets blurrier depending on the severity of the eye condition, the need to rely on shapes and outlines along with other senses becomes stronger. In a way, the vision-impaired Olympians, depending on their vision conditions, are living examples of the brain’s reliance on constant curvatures to help in the perception of their surroundings. One athlete, Becky Sauerbrunn of the US soccer team, reported that she could recognize a person by their running gait (Davis). If not for the constant curvatures that outline a person’s running gait, it is possible to assume that Sauerbrunn would’ve struggled more to recognize that person. Additionally, it would be an interesting avenue of research to see whether or not the visualization that these vision-impaired Olympians use in their training (Davis) utilizes constant curvatures – if the brain regions that activate when exposed to constant curvatures are the same regions that activate in a vision-impaired olympian’s brain during a visualization session. While Dr. Baker’s research may not completely apply to how vision-impaired Olympians engage in their athletic performances, it is interesting to outline possible connections between this scientific research and a real-world application.
Baker, Nicholas, et al. “Constant curvature segments as building blocks of 2D shape
representation.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 150, no. 8, Aug.
2021, pp. 1556–1580, https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001007.
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