A Cat Born Without Eyes

We probably don't think about it often, but humans are not the only ones that may have trouble in perceiving the world as it is. This cat was born without eyes but it was able to adapt through the use of its whiskers and ears. The cat was able to detect changes in the air through its whiskers, similar to how humans were described to do in Rosenblum's book about our five senses. The video shows how the cat was able to adapt to the point where the owners would occasionally forget that their cat is blind and it would difficult to remember as their cat is able to play, move, and jump around without any difficulty. The cat is even able to go up and down the stairs without any problem now, due to the owners having taught it the distance between each step by tapping. It's amazing how an animal is able to adapt so well without sight.

Do You See What I See?

     When I was young I was always confused when someone said they were nearsighted or farsighted.  If someone could see something far away then why not see something under their nose?  Chapter 3 helped me to understand just how amazing the human eye is and all that I take for granted as I go through the day and cover so many activities. 

     Previously there was not a surgery to correct vision for someone that was not able to see in the distance.  For those that wished to rid themselves of  glasses the only alternative was contact lenses and that required some maintenance and sometimes could be bothersome in the eye.  The first contacts were glass and they posed a risk in the eye, if it were to break and scratch the cornea. 
     My friend Debbie can certainly attest to this,  because I managed to break her contact and  she was rushed to the hospital.  College years and summer shore houses involved skill at  playing "quarters" and shooting bottle caps and other games that our parents would not have approved.  It was one of those moments that I  will never forget because of the memory of seeing something happen  and feeling absolutely terrible when it did happen.  I placed the bottle cap on my fingers and gave it a snap that would surely send it across the room like a minature frisbee!  It went across the room and directly into Debbie's eye and shattered the glass contact lense.  OUCH!  Her eye would heal,  after a few weeks of treatment and wearing a patch and I would never shoot a bottle cap for  as long as I lived. 
      When doctors started performing the popular LASIK surgery, I remember the hype about such a wonderful break through!  I had several friends get this surgery done as soon as they could and they were thrilled with the results!  The acronym stands for  laser assisted in situ keratomileusis. Refractive Myopia and Axial Myopia are the causes for nearsightedness.  Axial is when the eyeball is too long and the Refractive is when the cornea or the eye lense bends the light coming in too much causing the object to be blurred.  The surgery involves cutting a small flap in the cornea with a laser and then sculpting the cornea so that light comes in parallel  instead of a different angle.  The flap is folded back into place and vision has been repaired!  WOW! 
     Hyperopia is the name for farsightedness and a person can see objects in the distance but due to an eyball that is too short can not see objects that are close.  When the eye focuses,  the focus point for the parallel rays of light is behind the retina and not in front of the retina.  Because so much accomadating is going on to look at nearby objects a person is straining their eyes and eventually with age may experience much strain and headaches from this constant accomodation.  A student that can read the blackboard will have much more difficulty trying to read the book on their desk.
     It is amazing to think of how our brain works and the job that is individualized to each and every organ and tissue in our body and the electrical currents and networks that fire up the neurons and receptors to send and recieve messages to do the most simplist  task.  When these neurons or networks fail then a person would realize just how much our body does simply because of the inconvenience of having that capapbility hindered in any way. 
     In the following video Dr. John Kim gives and excellent explantation and shows exactly what is happening and how vision is corrected.

http://youtu.be/ns_iBIfobXs

Final Project Post

Perception is a very interesting class. This must be the case: perceiving the world around us is something that is done by everyone all the time. The colors we see, things we feel, music we hear, and food we taste and smell are all essentially the results of chemical input into certain brain areas. I think that it is fascinating that people generally think that "they" are in control of everything that happens in their lives; studying perception shows, very clearly too, that this is not the case.

For example, take the spinning room experiment done by Lee and Aronson in 1974. This showed that both toddlers and adults alike will lose their balance and sway or even fall if they are in a room in which the walls physically move back and forth. This demonstrates the notion that senses do not work in isolation; each sense provides information to the others. This is also clearly seen when tasting food. If a good tasting food (or a good smelling odor) is labelled as a foul tasting food (or odor) the person who reads the label is more likely to give the food or smell bad remarks. Likewise, labeling a bad odor as a good odor will make it smell "better". I also found this interesting, because scent is the strongest sense attached to memory, yet it seems to be the most variable, the one most likely to be interpreted by other stimuli or sensory information.

My favorite part of the course was learning about how we see and hear.  There are so many beautiful colors and sounds in the world, but humans can only perceive a fraction of them! The eye, which, as I said earlier, we like to believe never fails us (why do people like to say "I'd have to see it to believe it?") is actually fooled quite easily. Black squares laid out across a white background - a Hermann grid - fools the eye into seeing gray in between the black squares. Eyes adapt to changes in light and dark,  and during this time, colors we thought we a certain shade at one time will change shades as our eyes adapt to our surroundings. I found this clip on Ted.com a while ago, and I thought it was very enjoyable and shows just exactly how easily our eyes can get fooled.



I discussed hearing in an earlier post, but as a recap, I think that the concept of auditory stream segregation is very cool. It is a way to play a melody with alternating high and low to notes to fool the listeners into believing they are hearing two separate melodies.

I think that if people learn more about how their brains' interpret the world around them, which likely is not the way they see things, people will stop and take time to really appreciate what they are perceiving. For example, when sitting in front of a classical painting, one should take the time to realize all the nuances both regarding the painting and the way the eyes perceive the painting. Just as our senses interact with one another, we too should appreciate the greater extension of this notion, that everything that happens has an affect on something else.