Alex,
I did a brief search of the archives but came up empty.
I kind of cut my earlier post short. The reason that I think PR would work best in the dark is that it would activate your peripheral vision system more effectively. As I was saying before, the fovea is an area of densely packed cones. As you go out to the periphery, the ratio of rods to cones shifts towards favoring the rods. The rods are less sensitive to color, but they can detect miniscule amounts of light, such as a candle ten miles away. It can do this because there can be hundreds of rods for one nerve fibre, whereas there is only one cone per nerve fibre. This allows them to pick up and register tiny amounts of light. At night, have you ever seen something out of the corner of your eye moving in the bushes and then turn to look at it and have it go away? Chances are it's not a ghost, it's just that your cones are not well suited for low-light conditions. Another interesting thing is that rod vision has a completely different neural pathway than cone vision. I would suspect that rod vision is tied to the preconscious processor and the subconscious mind. The foveal and macular (cone) vision is most likely sent to the conscious mind. Interestingly, scientists still do not know where these two vision systems come together to form the final, complete visual image.
Anyways, I'm still curious if my theory is valid? Have any studies been done on PR in low light conditions? Also, could someone point me to any of the studies that have been done on PR, or even accelerate learning? I keep coming up empty on Infotrac and Lexis-Nexus. I might try Pub Med tomorrow.
Thanks,
Tyler
www.girevikmagazine.com
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