FINAL BLOG ENTRY

One of the most surprising things that I learned this semester in Perception was this concept of adaptation, particularly in the field of vision. We can fatigue certain types of cells which leads to the perception of something different. This leads to illusions, making us think we see more than what is really out there in the world. It’s another piece of evidence that confirms this statement: perception is not just objective.

We first learned about fatigue in vision when we talked about the tilt aftereffect. After fixating on slightly tilted lines, subsequent lines will seem to have a tilt in the other direction. This works if you are looking at vertical or horizontal lines. This illusion works because we have direction specific cells in our visual system. When a specific orientation is presented as a stimuli, the cells that have a preference for that orientation fire rapidly. This is the adaptation process. When we look at another set of lines, they now seem to have a tilt in the other direction. This is because we have fatigued the cells that preferred the first orientation. Now the ones that react strongly are the ones in the opposite direction.

Then we talked about the color after effect. When we look at green for a period of time, looking away causes us to see a red color. This works in reverse; it also works for blue and yellow (you see yellow after looking away from blue). The same concept works for this illusion. We have 2 chromatic channels as part of our visual system: the red-green channel and the blue-yellow channel. When you look at a red stimulus, the cells that prefer to red are being used and will soon be fatigued. Then, because the brain responds to less activity from cells that prefer red as green, we will perceive the color green.

Finally, we talked about the motion aftereffect. After seeing an image of something contracting or expanding, we will see something move in the opposite manner even if that image is static. We experienced this in class with the Buddha image. He seemed to be expanding despite the fact that it is a picture. From class, we learned that perception is mediated by comparisons between the neural responses to motion in opposite directions. So following exposure to one type of direction, we will perceive the opposite direction when we look away. Additionally, according to a study done by Jonathan Winawer, an aftereffect occurs for still photographs depicting motion. The article stated “Three experiments showed that viewing a series of static photographs with implied motion in a particular direction produced motion aftereffects in the opposite direction.” He concludes that the perception of implied motion uses the same direction specific cells that are used in real motion processing.

How cool is that? The fact that we can see things that are not really in reality is amazing. There really is more than meets the eye. When I said the concept of aftereffects was the most surprising thing I learned about this semester, I meant surprising in the sense that I have never thought about this before. I must have experienced these illusions before, but it has never crossed my mind to understand how or why it works. It’s mind boggling how complex our senses really are when it doesn’t take more than us opening our eyes for vision to work. Since it is so automatic, I think we really take our senses for granted.

Akinetopsia

This week, we talked about motion and how we perceive motion. We learned about a woman who had a deficiency in this perceiving ability. It baffled me. Once again, I can’t imagine living life this way. It’s as if she was using a flip book as she walked through life.

Any avid reader of my blog entries will notice that the most interesting topics to me are conditions where there is a deficiency in “normal” perception. I must qualify that statement; to normalize perception is useless because we know that there is a subjective component to perception. However, I mean to say that conditions that result in atypical sensations are very interesting to me.

But I digress. Let’s go back to talking about patient L.M. She suffered a stroke and lost her ability to perceive motion, a condition called akinetopsia. As we learned in class, motion is its own sensation and is not an extrapolation over time or space. Her other visual systems functioned normally. She could identify objects, see colors, etc. Things like crossing the street scared her, as it should. But relatively medial tasks like filling a cup with water or listening to someone talk were nearly impossible without some type of trouble. She could not see when the water level of a cup move so she did not know when to stop pouring. She would get freaked out by hearing someone talk without seeing their lips move.

Because the condition resulted from her stroke, it means that she had normal visual functioning before her stroke. This also means that she experienced something very different than what she was used to which could cause potential mental disturbance. I know if I suddenly developed this condition, I too would be very scared and freaked out by it. I do not even know how I could cope.

What is very unique about this situation is that all her other senses are intact. Like I mentioned before, her hearing was not disturbed so she could hear things that did not match up with what images she saw in her head. What I wonder is whether or not she could still sense biological motion. If she suffered a stroke and only certain areas of the brain were affected, was the superior temporal sulcus, the area associated with biological motion, affected as well? If not, maybe she could still perceive biological motion. These questions will be left unanswered as she was the only documented case with this condition and she is deceased.

Color blindness is a subject near and dear to my heart. No, I am not color blind and I proved that to myself in class! What I mean is that my oldest sister, Karen, has this condition yet fails to acknowledge it! It reinforces the idea that perception has a subjective spin on it. To her, she is right; that blue car is indeed green and everyone else is color blind. What a silly girl.

I always knew my sister was a special gal. She is part of the 0.05% of females in the U.S. population who have some type of color deficiency. Only she has yet to admit it. Being the good sister that I am, I have decided to diagnose her. Of course this is only a very rudimentary evaluation. As I have mentioned before, she has a problem distinguishing between greens and blues. It seems likely that she has tritanomly, the rarest form of cone deficiency. Tritanomly means there is malfunctioning in the S cones which equals difficulty in distinguishing between blue and green.

Because color perception involves the actual wavelength that an object reflects AND the ratio of activity in our cones, people with deficiencies in the proper functioning of any of the cone types will have some type of color perception that is vastly different from people with normal functioning cones. In my sister’s case, if a certain object reflects the color green, the ratio of activity in her cones would indicate the color blue.

We can determine the objective color of an object by measuring the wavelength that it reflects. With experiments, we can determine whether or not a person perceives this color. Through matching tests where subjects turn a knob to match the color perfectly and through tests like the Ishihara, we can determine whether or not someone has deficiencies in their cones.

It’s not that my sister cannot completely see color. It’s not like she only sees gray when she looks at the color green. She only perceives it differently than people with normal functioning cones. In a website about tritanopias, the author mentions the fact that most people with this condition fail to even acknowledge it’s existence compared to the deuteranopias and protanopias. Because a big part of driving depends on differentiating between a red stop and a green go, when one has difficulties discerning these two colors, it’s very noticeable. But my sister can go through her entire life believing that the car is blue despite the rest of the family telling her it’s green.

It is very difficult to determine if someone else is perceiving the world in the same way as us. That is the reason why some people do not even know they have color blindness until they learn about the condition. There are numerous tests that one can take to determine color blindness, so we have these tools to help us in the quest. We can simulate how our cones are supposed to work, but we will never really know if something as subjective as color perception is the same in other people.

I hope no one will disagree with the fact that the human brain is complex. Every second, millions of processes are taking place. Some we are aware of and some we give no thought to.  If we did not have organization or partitioning of responsibilities, I’m afraid our heads would blow up! All jokes aside, the brain needs to be organized in a way that allows it to operate at maximum efficiency. The reason why I think the cortex has so many areas devoted to processing different types of visual information is for efficiency and because of evolution.

Our cortex is structured so that different inputs from the visual world get sent to different parts of it. Visual illusions are processed separately from simple visual information. This partitioning of responsibilities allows the brain to classify information from the visual world. I believe this allows it to be more efficient and faster in processing. A graduate student from MIT, Bhavin Sheth, calls the visual system an orchestra, “where clusters of cells in different parts of the brain cooperate to process different components of visual information such as vertical or horizontal orientation, color, size, shape, movement, and distinctions between overlapping objects.”

I also believe that our cortex gives such great areas to visual processing because of evolution. It is very important to our survival to be able to have “hunters’ eyes.” In order to be the fittest, we must be the strongest and that happens by being the hunter. Since our visual system has allowed us to evolve the way we have, it means that the cortex is structured to enable us to be the best adapted in our environment.

Even though we have areas devoted to processing different types of visual information, it does not negate the fact that many of the areas are used in an overlapping manner. In 1996, MIT researchers discovered that areas used in processing simple visual information were also used in processing complex information like optical illusions. Research done on animals showed that an area of the brain previously thought to process only simple information was active when shown an optical illusion. This debunked the previous notion that the areas of the cortex worked in a hierarchy; instead it was believed that they work cooperatively.

As complex as the brain may be, we are slowly finding out more and more about it. Let’s just say it’s a fascinating time to be in neurology as well as Perception…

Prosopagnosia

The most interesting topics to me from Perception are those concerning malfunctions of senses. For example, I was fascinated by prosopagnosia, the condition where a patient can see and describe another person’s face but cannot identify whose face it is, even if the person was very familiar to them. Even an intimate partner’s face is unrecognizable to the patient.

Prosopagnosia is usually accompanied by damage to the brain in the regions of the temporal lobe. Interestingly enough, this area houses the fusiform gyrus which many psychologists have pinpointed as the face recognition area. However, subsequent research has shown that this is not only a face recognition area, but a quasi-expertise area. That is, when bird experts are shown pictures of birds, this area becomes activated as well. With novice people are trained to become experts in object recognition of an novel object, this area becomes increasingly activated as the participants get more practice. People who are experts in certain object recognition but have this impairment have been reported to lose their ability.

I went online to find blogs of people with prosopagnosia so I could put a face to this condition. I found this blog written by a Swedish woman named Cecilia Burman. She is a 30 year old with this condition. However, like many others, she did not recognize this disorder until she read about it on the Internet. It was a pivotal moment in her life and has actually helped explain many of the troubling things in her life.

Before searching for these blogs, I had wondered whether these people could ever have any sort of romantic relationships.  It must be awfully hard to find a boyfriend if you can’t pick him out of a crowd. Also, imagine waking up next to someone you did not recognize. Must been pretty problematic. However, Cecilia is happily married to a man who understands this condition. Besides that, she can recognize his voice and, using contextual clues, she can identify the man that wakes up beside her in bed as her husband. But one can see how this condition can become dangerous. Imagine if someone took advantage of the situation and pretended to be Cecelia’s husband. She could go days without noticing if she were to base her decision on looks alone.  However, like most conditions, the patients learn to adapt and she learns to recognize people through other means besides looks.

Someone else on a different blog described having the condition as having to discriminate between an elbow and a stone for people. I couldn’t possibly imagine living my life without the ability to distinguish between my friends and strangers. Even as I walk the paths at Vanderbilt, I get super excited when I see a familiar face. It actually brightens up my day, especially if I haven’t seen this person in a long time. Such is a pleasure that prosopagnosia patients will not have anymore.

Cortical Magnification

     Gordon Holmes, a famous neurologist, observed that the cortical map of our visual world was greatly disproportionate. He noted that the amount of cortical tissue alloted to the central portion of the field was far greater than the amount given to the periphery. The term cortical magnification means was given to this phenomenon. It means that a large portion of the cortex is given to the fovea. The greatest amount of space in the visual cortex is given to the central region which is the reason for our acuity in vision.

Is cortical magnification a good thing? I would assume so because otherwise evolution would not have led us to this point! Jokes aside, cortical magnification is useful for humans because it allows us to save room in the brain for what is most important to us. Obviously the ability to see clear details of what is right in front of us is important to our survival. That is not to say that things on the periphery are unimportant. However, if we were to allot equal amounts of the cortex to our entire eye, we would be increasing our visual acuity, but we would need bigger brains to house these extra areas. It becomes a question of whether or not we want bigger heads to carry around or if we want the most important details magnified in our cortex.

We have seen in the study of touch that a disproportionate amount of cortex is allotted to different areas of our body that have more sensitivity and sensation in them. For example, our lips have a greater representation in the cortex. My opinion is that we were built a certain way for a certain reason. The allocation of brain space is this way because otherwise we would not function like we do. And obviously the way we function is pretty successful considering the fact that we have come a long way in history.

“The eye is at once the master and slave of vision.”

This week’s lecture about receptive fields and the cells of the eye made me understand the profoundness of the quote above. The eye is a master of vision because without the eye, there is no vision. The eye is a slave to vision because the eye does not choose how it sees; it is simply a slave to the anatomical make up of the eye. From class, we learned that the cells and photoreceptors of the eye have a lot to do with how we see things. Starting with the photoreceptors, we primarily have two types: cones and rods. Cones and rods are shaped differently so that their sensitivities to light vary. Rods are more sensitive to light so they are responsible for our ability to see in dimly lit situations. Also, where they are located on the eye is important to what we see as well. Cones are located more around the fovea which is in the center of the eye. The rods are more located in the periphery of the eye. The receptive fields of the ganglion cells are smaller in the center of the eye. The smaller the receptive field, the more acuity in vision. This is why things in the periphery are more blurry than what we stare at, which is what the center of the eye sees. For these reasons, how the eye is structured is how we see things.

When we first read the quote, I interpreted it differently than we did in class. I thought about the eye being a slave to vision because there is no way you can unsee something once you see it. For example, I am terrified of scary movies. Once, I watched a movie where you actually see someone killing another person. This image is forever burned in my memory. I can not “unsee” this image no matter how much I try. This is why I thought the eye is a slave to vision. We are at the mercy of what we see because we cannot unsee it. Then I thought maybe the eye was a slave to vision because of all the illusions that we fall for. We cannot control how we see certain things.

After the lecture, I began to wonder about the eye and vision in the same way that people wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg? Do we see things because of the way our eyes evolved, or did our eyes evolve this way so that we can see things this way? It is one of those things that we can never fully come to an agreement on.

Dilated Pupils

According to legend, Italian women used to put a drop of the juice from the berry of the belladonna plant directly into their eyes to make their pupils larger. When we first discussed this in class, I made a mental note to research on this fascinating plant. What I found was pretty shocking: apparently, the belladonna plant is poisonous! In fact, it is one of the most toxic plants found in the Western Hemisphere.  However, it seems that the belladonna plant has medicinal purposes as well! If one founds himself with opium poisoning, the belladonna plant is used as an antidote. Also, optometrists extract atropine from the plant and use it to dilate patients’ pupils to examine their retinas. Also, in one crazy website I found, someone reported using the belladonna plant as a hallucinogenic drug! He did not recommend it though because “the places belladonna takes you, you were not meant to go.”

This week’s lecture discussed the variations in pupil size that supposedly lead to attraction in the opposite sex.  Dilated pupils make someone appear more sexually aroused. Therefore if women had dilated pupils, they would be indirectly advertising their interest in the opposite sex. Thus, it would make them more appealing and desirable. BBW Magazine writes that if a woman wants to know if her partner is attracted to her, all she needs to look at is the size of his pupils. They also mention looking for watery eyes. Another physiological reaction to attraction, eyes will water to clean themselves so they can get a better picture of their heart’s desire. Clearly our eyes hold a lot of power when it comes to our romantic relationships.

Ironic

Who knew that misinterpreting lyrics had a technical name? I should note the irony of talking about mondegreens. My sisters and I live miles away from each other and as a means of communication, we have an email chain where we share our thoughts, opinions, and memories of each other at least twice a day. The current topic? The butchering of song lyrics by my oldest sister, Karen which has led to an embarrassing incident for my other sisters and me. When we were younger, my sisters and I pretty much followed my oldest sister in whatever she did. We wore her hand-me-downs, we watched the shows she watched, and we listened to the same songs she did. So when she sang the lyrics, we would sing along with her. What we did not know was that she is a member of the Mondegreen club. Her most offensive one to date is her rendition of Alanis Morsette’s “Ironic.” She believed that the first line of the chorus of that song went something like this: “It’s like ra-eah, are you ready for me?” We came to realize the actual lyrics one fateful day in an embarrassing fashion. My next door neighbor had a patio on which we would perform songs like we were famous singers, belting out the songs like it was our farewell concert. We decided to sing “Ironic” the way we understood it when her father came to the backyard and summoned his daughter. He said in a concerned voice, “Stella, it’s rain on your wedding day.” He had pulled her aside, but we knew he was talking to all of us. Imagine our embarrassment as this 40 year-old man tells his daughter that we taught her the incorrect lyrics to a mainstream pop song.

I guess when we were younger, we never really listened to songs for lyrical content. Had we done that, the correct lyrics would have made more sense. The song was about ironic situations and certainly “rain on your wedding day” is more ironic than screeching “Ra-eah, are you ready for me?” We didn’t know it then, but contextual clues could have helped us figure out the right lyrics. I know now to make sure that the lyrics I think I’m hearing match the overall message of the song to avoid creating mondegreens! Here’s a piece of advice for everyone. Don’t just use your ears to listen; include higher levels of processing in your lyrical quest!

This week’s blog entry also reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend recently about singing incorrect lyrics. She claims that since she first learned it a certain way, it’s harder for her to sing the correct lyrics even after learning them. Her argument suggested a primacy effect. I disagreed. In my own experience, it’s harder not to hear the correct lyrics after knowing them. Chris Daughtery, one of  my favorite singers, tends to slur his words. When his most popular hit, “Over You,” came out, there was one elusive lyric that my friends and I could not figure out. When we looked up the lyrics online, it was hard not to hear it. I can’t even remember what I thought it said before finding out the truth. It’s like the visual illusions we were shown in class; we can never not see the dalmation anymore!

Hearing

I love talking. I could not imagine life without being able to hear things. However, I do not believe that not being able to hear cuts you off from people. There are numerous communication techniques to convey messages between people. Sign language, body language, and facial expressions. Sometimes because of face leaks, it is hard not to see what a person truly wants to say. Also, body language can tell you so much more than words sometimes. Although you lose the ability to hear inflections in tones and sarcasm, these things can still be conveyed through facial expressions. Even more so, now with blogs, emails, letters, etc, people who cannot hear can still communicate with other people. Like with any loss, the ability to do so is made harder, but it’s not impossible. Deaf-blogs.com shows that there can be a community between deaf people as well as to the rest of the world.