Dressmakers have needle-sharp 3D vision: study

Los Angeles : Haute couture can be credited for enhancing more than just catwalks and red carpets, as a new study suggests that the 3D or "stereoscopic" vision of dressmakers is as sharp as their needles.

Stereoscopic vision is the brain's ability to decode the flat 2D optical information received by both eyes to give us the depth of perception needed to thread a needle, catch a ball, park a car and generally navigate a 3D world.

Using computerised perceptual tasks, researchers from University of California (UC), Berkeley in the US and the University of Geneva in Switzerland, tested the stereoscopic vision of dressmakers and other professionals, and found dressmakers to be the most eagle-eyed.

The results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, show dressmakers to be 80 per cent more accurate than non- dressmakers at calculating the distance between themselves and the objects they were looking at, and 43 per cent better at estimating the distance between objects.