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Experiments that excluded the thermal hypothesis of cutaneous vision

Experiments have been carried out by different researchers at different institutes that have ruled out the thermal (infrared) hypothesis of skin "vision".

Kozhevnikov M.M. The problem of skin-optical sensitivity.

"Problems of skin-optical sensitivity". Scientific notes, collection 33, Sverdlovsk Pedagogical Institute, 1965.

"Along with others, the thermal hypothesis was put forward to explain the skin-optical sensitivity of Rosa Kuleshova. It was assumed that rays, selectively reflected from colored surfaces, have a thermal effect on the receiving hand, excite temperature receptors, which is a signal for the perception of color tones.

A number of researchers have carried out a special test of this thermal hypothesis. N.I. Sudakov [9], heating frosted glass to varying degrees, on which different colors were projected with an epidiascope, did not find any changes in the skin color perception of the subjects".

Ya.R. Fishelev and S.N. Dobronravov [9] passed color rays through a thick layer of water that absorbed heat rays, and also did not find any disturbances in the skin color perception of the subjects.

On the basis of these experiments, the authors came to the conclusion that temperature sensations do not play a significant role in the perception of flowers by hands and cannot be recognized as the main mechanism of skin-optical reception. Obviously, this conclusion is correct. The thermal hypothesis does not reflect the essence of skin-optical sensitivity.

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Goldberg I.M. The phenomenon of Rosa Kuleshova.

"Problems of skin-optical sensitivity". Scientific notes, collection 33, Sverdlovsk Pedagogical Institute, 1965.

Wanting to exclude the effect of heat rays, we passed a white ray through a triangular prism. Then this beam was passed through a heat-absorbing lens with water, reflected in a mirror and directed at a canvas screen. On the back of the canvas, Rosa Kuleshova used her fingers to define the color tones of the rainbow. She determined the color and appearance of the moving curve on the oscilloscope screen. It was also noted that in a dark room, when the light is turned off, Rose can still read black letters and read the blue-violet tones of the spectrum for some time. Some of the results of these studies were published by A.S. Novomeisky in the article "Second Sight" (newspaper "Tagil Worker", December 16, 1962).

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A little later, Rosa Kuleshova underwent another cycle of research - this time in Moscow. The research program was compiled by the staff of the Institute for Information Transmission Problems D.G. Mirzoy, D.B. Epiphany and prof. F.V. Bassin from the Institute of Neurology of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR. The survey was attended by representatives of the Institute of Biophysics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The results of the study of Moscow scientists were published in the newspapers Izvestia No. 11, 1963, Krasnaya Zvezda, 3 February 1963, and others.

The new data in the published articles was the discovery of the possibility, without the participation of sight, to distinguish whether the light was lit or extinguished in the room, to determine with the fingers, but the color of the paper squares (white and black) on which Rose stood. The data obtained by the staff of the Institute of Biophysics of the USSR Academy of Sciences were reported in the Izvestia newspaper in an article entitled "Vision at the fingertips." Let us dwell on the experiments described in the article.

The researchers projected the image onto a frosted glass screen, and Rosa could clearly distinguish between light and dark places on it. Excluding heat rays (by placing a filter that absorbs infrared rays in the path of the image), and, conversely, leaving only the thermal, and not the visible picture of the image, the researchers concluded that the main importance is not thermal radiation, but the perception of light by the skin of the fingers, and how writes the author of the article, "there was only sight - sight at the fingertips." Two multicolored beams were directed at Rose's fingers. Rose was always color-conscious. Further physicists found that 10 light-sensitive elements per 1 mm² of the surface of Rose's fingers, according to the author of the article, are of the type of cones with three types of light receivers: blue, red and green, and that Rose's perception is similar to visual perception. Later, instead of these elements, the role of the light-sensitive pigment in Rose's fingers was pointed out.

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Smirnov M.S., Bongard M.M. On the skin "vision" of R. Kuleshova.

USSR Academy of Sciences. "Biophysics", volume X, issue 1, M., 1965.

To infrared (thermal) radiation with a wavelength of 0.8 - 1.5 microns. and with a power 103 times greater than the above-threshold for fingers in the middle of the visible spectrum (0.5 - 0.6 microns), Kuleshova is completely insensitive: this shows that she perceives light not due to its thermal action.

Nyuberg N.D. Vision in the fingers. "Nature", 1963, No. 5.

Article by the head of the laboratory of vision of the Institute of Biophysics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

The role of thermoreceptors

The tricolor of "sight" by Rosa Kuleshova's fingers shows that ordinary thermoreceptors cannot be its cause. This is confirmed by the lack of response to long wavelength radiation. The heating caused by the light of the powers employed was negligible, but in the study of the exceptional case, it was necessary to check this unlikely possibility more carefully. Therefore, such an experiment was also carried out.

The grid used in the resolution experiments was projected onto frosted glass sequentially with the following three light sources: ordinary light from an incandescent lamp, which produced visible and infrared light; the same source with a heat filter that absorbed infrared rays and, finally, with a filter that absorbed visible light, but transmitted infrared. The smallest grating resolved in the first case was also resolved in the second, while in infrared light Rosa could not determine the direction of the rows, even with the largest grid. In the last experiment, in order to compensate for the visible light energy absorbed by the filter, the incandescence of the lamp was raised even with some excess. These experiments prove that skin thermoreceptors do not play a significant role.

A fragment from the book of the founders and the first dean of the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University A.N. Leontiev "Problems of the development of the psyche", 1959.

The first question here, too, was the question of the possible role of heat. The value we obtained on well-calibrated instruments (we used two different calorimeters) - 0.006Q was, of course, many times less than the value of the thermal sensitivity threshold. It remained to find out whether this threshold did not change in our subjects in the course of the experiments themselves. For this purpose, we measured the threshold of thermal sensitivity to infrared rays of the subjects at the very end of the series. The values ​​obtained in these measurements turned out, as expected, much higher (ten times) than the one with which we dealt in our experiments (0.06 - 0.04Q). Thus, the possibility of the subjects reacting directly to heat rays was excluded.

It was possible, however, to admit the existence of an indirect thermal effect of radiation arising from the conversion of the energy of visible rays.

In order to clarify this issue, special measurements were carried out.

We assumed that if heating really takes place here, then it cannot fail to capture also that area of ​​the skin that is directly adjacent to the irradiated area. Therefore, in order to capture the thermal effect of irradiation, it was sufficient to systematically register during the experiments the temperature of the skin area closest to the irradiated area, for which a specially made thermocouple was mounted in the installation, one of the elements of which was pressed by a spring to the edge of the surface of the subject's palm, which was exposed to visible rays. ... Since the scale of a mirror galvanometer, stretched by 300 mm, was covered by a temperature drop of about 1, 2 ° C, then, considering the scale division of 0.5 mm as a reference unit, we could catch changes with an accuracy of about 0 °, 005C.

The measurements were carried out at various intensities (in Q) of irradiation. Since significant fluctuations in skin temperature occur in the course of the experiment, the average values ​​obtained at the end of half-minute intervals attributable to light exposure and intervals without exposure were compared. The data of these measurements showed that: 1) at an irradiation intensity> 0.10 - <0.16Q, a slight, but regular increase in skin temperature occurs during exposure; 2) at an irradiation intensity> 0.006 and <0.10Q, the thermal reaction, apparently, is absent; 3) at an irradiation intensity of 0.006Q (adopted in our experiments), the absence of a thermal reaction of the skin is undoubtedly.

Thus, the influence of the thermal reaction of the skin was completely excluded.

This can be asserted with particular confidence as a result of comparing the data obtained with the data on the general fluctuations in skin temperature during the experiment, which we obtained by systematically measuring the temperature with a skin electrothermometer before the start of the experiment, in the middle of the experiment, and at the end of it. The measurements were made at two points: in the middle of the palm, on the irradiated area, and on the area adjacent to it.

The data of these measurements show that: 1) very significant (up to 1 ° C) fluctuations in the temperature of the skin of the subject's hand are observed during the experiment; 2) the largest values ​​fall at the beginning of the experiment, the smallest - at the middle and end of the experiment, and 3) no significant differences in the dynamics of the value on the irradiated area and on the skin area adjacent to it were noted.

These data indicate, therefore, that the observed fluctuations in the temperature of the subject's skin do not depend on the effect of light, or, in any case, the effect of this effect is completely overlapped by the influence of other factors; first of all, the decrease in skin temperature is apparently affected by the fact that the subject's hand remains motionless and tightly pressed to the table surface throughout the experiment.

A classic example of ignoring scientific facts

Head of the Department of Medical Psychology at Kazan State Medical University, psychiatrist V.D. Mendeleevich:

"For clinical psychology, two phenomena from the field of parapsychology are essential: "skin vision" and extrasensory healing. Under "skin vision" is understood a new unconventional type and method of photoreception in the recognition of pathological conditions and diseases of a person. The psychic is convinced that he is able to diagnose deviations in the functioning of the internal organs of another person on the basis of the so-called. "Cutaneous vision", perceiving the shape, color and temperature of the damaged organ. Studies carried out with psychics have proven that they have, in fact, through training and other methods, the threshold of skin sensitivity is increased and there are no supernatural abilities whatsoever".

(Mendeleevich V.D. Clinical and medical psychology).

It should be added that the researchers of skin vision A.S. Novomeisky and V.M. Matveev in his book published in 1990 adhere to the thermal hypothesis of skin "vision".

The experiments that refuted the thermal hypothesis are forgotten. The relationship between skin vision and the third eye area has not been explained in any way.