John Bramblitt and Cross-modal Plasticity

I’ve taken a great interest in neuroplasticity in the last couple years after first learning about it, so when I read about John Bramblitt’s story and more about cross-modal plasticity I was incredibly fascinated. Despite the fact that our brain organizes itself based on how much we utilize each region, the cortex dedicated to diminished senses do not become obsolete. After John Bramblitt became blind, he developed an enhanced sense of touch to guide him as he paints. As he uses his right hand to draw lines, he uses his left to determine where he placed that line and where the next will go. He can even make out different colors solely based on the viscosity of the paint! Brain imaging has shown that when blind individuals touch complex patterns, their visual cortex activates in systematic ways. This kind of compensatory activation also doesn't occur when induced in sighted individuals. 

https://sites.google.com/a/haverford.edu/the-psychology-of/invited-talks-seminars-conferences/losing-one-sense-improves-another?tmpl=%2Fsystem%2Fapp%2Ftemplates%2Fprint%2F&showPrintDialog=1

Post #3- Echolocation

 As I stated in some of my previous work, I am a aide in an autistic pre-school program and I work as an one-on-one aide to a blind boy. As a child who did not have any speech until recently, it was very important to use echolocation to help him navigate his first time out of his home, especially after 2020 and him only being 3 years old. Echolocation has opened my eyes to the importance of background noises. I have become so cautious to every single little thing that goes in around me because he needs to do the same exact thing to survive, essentially. I have had the luxury to take advantage of my sight and not need to rely on the location of certain objects or places just by the sound of that object or of my own voice on that object. This blind student has changed by entire world for the better and I literally "see" the world completely differently since he has been in it. I have learned the importance of sound and how we use it as humans. 

Post 2- Phantom Pain

 My grandfather was a bad diabetic while I was growing up. It started with one infection in his toe and turned into his one leg being amputated from the knee down causing him to be wheelchair bound for the rest of his life. However, one interesting factor of his bad infection was the complete honesty he had with his family on how he felt after the amputation of his lower leg. He spoke about pain, pain from ingrown toenails or stubbed toes on the leg that had no foot. This video explains the entire pathway from our brain to limb and how this phantom pain can cause more than just physical pain but mental or emotional pain too. 

Proxy Touch

 Vision is a crazy thing, can't you see that? Your eyes can really play tricks on you. After watching this video, it is eye-opening (pun intended) on how complex our vision really is. Vision is considered one of the most dominant senses, however it can also play tricks on your mind because it does take so much of your brain to process what we are looking at. This video shows the anatomony of the your eye and helps show how complex our vision is and how we should may not always trust what we think we see!

The Magic of Making Sound: Foley Artists in Hollywood

 The Magic of Making Sound

What we hear while watching movies may not be exactly what it seems. Foley artists use sound effects engineered in studios to add missing sounds to films. In many cases, they enhance or add sounds lost or not caught the first time around. This is especially important for outdoor scenes. As you can see in this video, many sounds that we hear during films are remade in a completely different way. The video shows us that horse hooves/trolling is remade with plungers filled with cloth and wrapped in duct tape. It is definitely not the more glamourous side of Hollywood. This manipulation of sound is an illusion that viewers are subject to. Our eyes are tricked into thinking we are hearing what we are seeing. This is not the case when Foley artists recreate the crunch of snow with sand and corn starch. This perception is fooling our auditory senses and connecting visual and auditory cues. Something as simple as watching movies incorporates multisensory perception. 

Multi Sensory Function

The chapter discusses two different types of multisensory functions. This means using more then one sensory at a time, so this means using sight, hearing, touch, or taste. 

One example with the moving room method. The moving room method used an observer and placed her in a small three walled room that constantly moved back and forth. Standing up on a force plate, the observer would observe the change in posture , being that the method would demonstrate your multi senses are being used to forcefully stand still.  

Monkey’s do not have high levels of audiovisuals that are used in heard calls and mouth configurations. For their audiovisual calls they use brain regions which are analogous to humans. So, they are using multisensory functions to (speech) communicate.

Link to :

Multisensory connections of monkey auditory cerebral cortex

 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19619628/

Smile its Good For You

 

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    Just from what I learned in a Stress and Anxiety course smiling can reduce stress which would help to influence your emotional state. This chapter discusses how smiling can boost your emotional state by the movement of muscles in your face. This involves you smiling which increase activity , and influence expressions which influence your emotions. The book uses the example if you watch a scary movie that would result in your being horrified and then see a scary face that would increase your emotional state and increase your reaction. A smiling face can increase your mood and be more likely to make positive decisions.

Post 1

  

It's interesting this book talks about Sommelier's and their phenomenal senses allude to their expertise in wine because I watched the movie "Uncorked" recently on Netflix and it shows the journey of becoming a Sommelier. The journey was very intense and this young man incountering trial an error. There's only about 167 of them in the world and the pass rate for their exams are very small at 3 percent. One of their exams is a blind test which means their tasting skills are very important. 

 Sommelier's are wine stewards' that are trained precisely in the knowledge of all things wine, and usually work in fine dining restaurants. Scientist believe their brains work on very high levels of activation in the right olfactory and memory parts of the brain. They also have a lower chance of getting alzheimers. The left hemisphere of the brain that processes analytical data is increased in activity which allows them to have a intellectual experience when tatsting the wine. 

The Science of Falling in "Love"

 Pheromones are chemical signals that are released to attract the opposite sex to mate for sexual reproduction. Unlike hormones, they act as messengers go potential mates. They were first discovered in insects. They can be found in glands in our armpits, genital regions, and navels which secretes a clear liquid. What you might think is love, might actually be some pheromones! Click on the video below to learn a little bit more about them and how they play a role in a persons life!

https://time.com/3707071/pheromones-love-life/

Echolocation

 Echolocation uses sound waves and echoes to find out where objects are in a space. Echolocation is used for humans and for animals to, specifically bats and dolphins. Humans use echolocation by clicks. If someone is blind, they can tap their walking stick, make noises with their mouth or even stomp there feet. It helps blind people get around and be able to do daily tasks the same as people with their eyesight. Below is a video that explains how they can use echolocation to help them everyday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHYCs8xtzUI

Symmetry

 Blog post 3

Symmetry 

    The topic of symmetry was fascinating since I only knew that we find people who are more symmetrical as more attractiveness. Symmetry is the equivalence a person has comparing the sides of their body and face. All people are different on their two sides of the body, but it is the extent of it that determines how symmetrical one is. Low body symmetry is when a person is less symmetrical on the two sides of their body and that the differences are more drastic. Where high body symmetry is the opposite and is when someone is more symmetric and similar on both sides of their body. It has been known that low body symmetry plays a part in animals’ genetics and health, but recently they have found that it also can play a role in human’s health. People with low symmetry are a sign of predicted worse genetic, physical, and mental health. This is usually due to genetics; therefore, we tend to prefer those who are more symmetric for the health of our offspring. Since we all have our unique smell, people are more attracted to the smell of high symmetry. 

         I found this to be remarkably interesting since no one is perfectly symmetrical so the idea that the more symmetrical you are the better is crazy since most of the time we do not notice it immediately. I was also surprised to learn that body symmetry is an indication of a person’s health. Unconsciously we must know this since when females are in their fertile phase, they find the smell of high body symmetry men to be more attractive. Symmetry is interesting since we not only notice it visually but also through smell.  

A video I found gave a good explanation about body symmetry and attractiveness:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJhSOGDuPLE 

 

Reference 

Rosenblum, L. D. (2011). See what I'm saying: the extraordinary powers of our five senses. W.W. Norton. 

Echolocation

Blog post 2 

Echolocation 

As I first started reading, See What I’m Saying, I was immediately compelled by Daniel Kish, Brian Bushway, and Megan O’Rourke riding their bikes. Riding a bike is something that would not be considered compelling, but they were blind and riding bikes better than I could. This shows my naiveness to the subject. These bike riders would use echolocation to determine their location and navigate through it. They would make a clicking noise and would use the time delay between the chick and the sound reflected to determine how far a silent object was. Therefore, the father an object was the longer it would take to be reflected. Daniel Kish would train other visually impair to “achieve freedom” through echolocation.  

         Previously I thought echolocation was only done by bats and now learning that humans echolocate as well is very eye-opening to what our perception can do. Echolocation is something that we all do, and we do not necessarily need to produce sound to do it. Echolocation allows visually impaired people to sense their surroundings and can be beneficial. I found Kish to be very inspiring and fascinating and caused me to be excited to read more about perception.

  

After learning about Daniel Kish, I wanted to know more about him.  

I found a ted talk of him explaining how he echolocates: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0aihGWB8U 

Similarly I also found a video of Kish performing echolocation while riding a bike like read in the book, See What I’m Saying: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xATIyq3uZM4 

 

 

Reference 

Rosenblum, L. D. (2011). See what I'm saying: the extraordinary powers of our five senses. W.W. Norton. 

Post 3 synesthesia

Synesthesia is something that is pretty interesting. The ability to have the brain give you a different response to a stimulus that should not have happend is cool on its own even better when you look into it. https://elemental.medium.com/seeing-sounds-what-its-like-to-live-with-synesthesia-fcec02831a1 there are a lot of interviews with people who have this. This is just one article on it. A quick YouTube search will throw more. https://synesthesia.com/#/Task/0/0/gateway-synesthesia-test-synaesthesia-test-quick-version/1011 and this is a test to take to see if you have synesthesia.

The brain having multiple responses means that you have the ability to taste or hear a color. Something that a regular person can not. That then asks the question does blue sound the same to everyone? I'm not sure if anyone has looked into that but the idea is cool.

post 2 sommelier

https://youtu.be/5PeKcWCC-tw Watch this first then come back to read. So one of the things that was talked about was people who are able to taste the difference in wines and that's there whole job. Though the video above has research that says it's not really possible or a thing. They tested it buy saying one wine was expensive and the other not and making the illusion that it was super extensive. In doing this they tricked them into thinking that one was better. But in fact they were both the same. In a way it's like how the author of the book eat in a pitch black restaurant and the food tasted different.