The fact that human contact can be so important for development that the lack of it can cause irreversible psychological damage is absolutely mind-boggling to me.  We all remember the surrogate mother experiment in which two groups of infant monkeys were given a choice of surrogate mother between a terry cloth mother and a wire mother.  One group was provided food via the terry cloth mother, whereas the other group was provided its food via the wire mother.  In both groups, no matter which mother provided the food, when a frightening stimulus was presented in the cage, the infant monkeys ran to their terry cloth mothers and clung to them for comfort.  This was also the case when the infant monkeys were placed in new environments, and without the comfort of their terry cloth mothers the infant monkeys exhibit fearful behavior by crying, crouching down, or sucking their thumbs.  In a similar study, monkeys reared only with wire mothers were found to have troubles with milk digestion, most likely due to the psychological trauma and stress caused by the lack of touch comfort in their lives. 

As morally-wrong as Harry Harlow’s experiments were, they have been very important for the world of psychology and developmental studies in humans.  Today, so much more is known about the importance of touch in the lives of human infants and hospitals make sure to utilize methods of touch to help the development of premature/underweight babies.  Even more so, most parenting magazines and books now place great emphasis on the countless benefits touch can provide in the lives of infants and children.

Touch is vitally important to the health and well-being of a baby in its first few years.  Many scientists have called touch our first language, in that it is one of the first means with which we are able to communicate with the world and vice-versa.  Touch is the means by which an infant receives comfort and the specific touch between a mother and her child promotes emotional bonding between the two, one that was begun when the baby was as early as 20 weeks old and formed an attachment to a mother’s voice while still within the womb.  Many experiments have proven that babies that are touched more cry less than those who are not touched as much.  Thus, several experts believe that there is no such thing as spoiling infants by carrying them/touching them too much, and that the more contact between an infant and parent, the better for the infant, who will only feel more secure and comfortable, feelings which are very important for ideal development of children.  Recent research suggests that instead of letting infants cry, as many parents do, in order to allow babies to learn traits of independence, parents should instead hold them close as often as possible, and the children will naturally grow up to be more independent and confident.

Even beyond the world of babies, human touch is very important for the well-being of teenagers and adults as well.  Touch is way of emotional and mental healing, in the forms of a hug, kiss, or even a pat on the back.  Touch is the basis in which humans connect with other human beings, beyond simply hearing or seeing.  Even more so, a benign touch stimulus on the skin causes the brain to respond in a series of positive ways under the parasympathetic nervous response system, including lowering blood pressure, increasing digestion, slowing breathing, and generally making us feel more relaxed and at ease.  Many researchers believe that the overall adult human population is touch-deprived, which is why there are so many cases of depression and such a high use of medications such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil, when all we really need is LOVE (as in hugs, kisses, etc…)

Have you hugged someone today?

Sources: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow 

http://www.baby.com/view.aspx?pid=196&cid=544

http://www.healthline.com/blogs/teen_health/2006/12/importance-of-touch-and-teens.html

Gustave Caillebote, Paris Street: A Rainy Day, 1877

I just saw this painting in the Chicago Institute of Art two weeks ago and was really impressed by it.  Now I realize that it’s a perfect example of the types of cues artists can use to give their paintings depth perception.

The first and most obvious cue I see in this picture is relative size, which is the angular size of an object as compared with that of another.  Thus, the same objects in the foreground are painted with larger sizes than those in the background in order to recreate the mechanism of the eye in which distant objects create a smaller image on the retina as compared to objects in close distance.  Relative size seems to be one of the most important of the monocular cues of visual depth perception utilized by painters.  In the painting above, you can see the importance of this cue in creating the perception of the three people walking in the very front of the scene, drawn with a larger size, as compared to the perception of the people in the middle and the people in the far distance, drawn with smaller and smaller sizes.  The perceived normal size of the smaller people in the background despite their actual smaller height is due to the mechanism of size constancy (which works in a process similar to the mechanism of color constancy).

Another important visual cue of depth perception in this painting is linear perspective, in which the parallel lines that recede into the distance appear to get closer together or converge.  This cue is what gives the buildings in the painting above their depth and orientation.  The parallel lines of the different floors of the buildings converge to show the depth of the building as they recede into the distance.

Another really cool cue of depth perception utilized in the painting above is texture gradient, which shows that when surfaces with texture get farther away, their texture gets finer and appears smoother.  This cue is seen in the texture of the cobblestone road, which can be seen in more detail in the foreground of the painting but not in the background.

The use of shadows adds much depth perception to a painting, and this can be seen in the painting above.  The shadows of the men in the middle ground add to their perception in the middle of the portrait as compared to those in the foreground, whose shadows cannot be seen because the fall beyond the front of the portrait, and those in the background, whose shadows are so small they can barely be seen.  This is also the cue that emphasizes the position of the lamp post in the very center of the painting.

 Bruegel, Landscape With The Fall of Icarus, 1558

This painting has always been one of my favorites and seems to be a great example of how depth perception can have a symbolic importance.  In this painting, Bruegel intentionally places an ordinary scene in the foreground of the painting, with the more important scene showing the actual fall of Icarus in the far background, to show how as the famous boy drowned into the sea, life simply moved on without noticing. This painting utilizes many cues of depth perception, and an important one to be mentioned is aerial perceptive, which involves the scattering of natural light from the sky to add depth.  The intense hues of yellow near the background of the painting lessen in intensity as light moves to the foreground of the painting, mimicking the natural travel of light.  The slight blurring and blueing of the background also add to the impression of depth.

It’s funny how I’ve always noticed depth in paintings without really analyzing or thinking about exactly what creates such depth in something that exists on a flat sheet of canvas.  I wonder how much intense thought and planning it takes to create such amazing paintings with such awesome depth…

If you want to learn about more cues of depth perception and see more specific examples of paintings that show these cues visit this cool website.

Since we’ve been talking about colors and neurological conditions pertaining to color all week long, I thought this blog might be the appropriate place to talk about this weird problem with color confusion I’ve had for a while now.  I confuse the colors orange and green.

Now let me explain the details of what I mean by confuse.  I am not color blind, because I can see both of the colors (the color on top is ORANGE, and on bottom is GREEN).  But somehow, when it comes to naming the two colors, I get them confused. Of course when I sit here and consciously try to get the names right as I did just now in naming the orange and green colors above, I am usually right.  However, it has happened SO MANY TIMES, that when I am naming one of the two colors without thinking about what I am doing, I will mistakenly call something orange green, and vice-versa.

Let me just explain the public embarrassment my problem has caused me over the past years.  In the sixth grade, I asked the boy behind me if I could “borrow his green highlighter really quick” and he responded with a very confused look, sarcastically saying “you mean, my ORANGE highlighter…hahaa suuuure”.  Ever since then, I promised never to ask for a specifically colored “green” or “orange” highlighter, involving the risk of misnaming the color, but simply just a highlighter.  

I remember one time in high school my sister asked what I was going to wear to an event and I proceeded to describe my orange dress in very specific detail for the next ten minutes.  You can imagine my sister’s confusion when she later saw the pictures for the event and saw that my dress was actually green and not orange.  

There are so many other occasions in which I have subconsciously confused naming the colors orange and green that I began to simply avoid the colors altogether.  I won’t say things like “lets get dressed in green for st.patricks day!” or “ew I don’t like this orange jello” but instead I will simply say “lets get dressed up for st. patricks day!” and “ew I don’t like this jello” just so I don’t risk confusing naming the colors.  Another solution I have come to using is simply taking a really long time to make sure that I match the color of a pumpkin to the name orange, over and over again, before I comment of its color, to make sure I don’t risk the word green slipping out of my mouth.  Yet I cannot help but cringe when I see the colors paired together, and the picture you see above is like a nightmare to my eyes.

I swear I am not making up this up, nor am I exaggerating the extent of this condition.  Do understand that I know my colors, and I can see that a three-leaf clover is green and a “men at work” sign is orange.  Yet somehow, if I don’t take the time to slowly name those colors, I get their names confused.  I don’t know if this is a real neurological condition or just a form of childhood trauma or something else.  BUT with the WOONNDERRRSS of the Internet, I have found that I AM NOT ALONE!

Yes, upon writing this blog, today, I decided to look up orange-green confusion online and see if there was anyone out there who confused NAMING the colors.  To my disbelief, I actually found someone who posted about having this EXACT problem:

 Orange/Green confusion

---

I thought that I was the person that did this, but tonight I asked my brother if he ever got the colors orange and green mixed up. He immediately said “All the time!” Its not that I’m colorblind, its just that I mix the name of these colors up most of the time. So now, I have to ask, does anybody else mix up the names of these colors and why. Is it some genetic disorder or something?

---

Last edited by Bob_the_mighty : 04-09-2007 at 06:21 PM.

View Poll Results: do you confuse the colors orangeand green?
yes		4	3.54%
no		109	96.46%
Voters: 113

http://babieswithglasses.org/

I remember a specific incident in the seventh grade when my old drama teacher brought her baby boy to school for the first time.  Baby James was almost a year old, and the as most babies are, the most adorable baby ever.  However, the first thing I noticed about the baby was that he wore eyeglasses, which I thought was really odd at the time because I couldn’t understand why or how a doctor would diagnose an 10 month baby with eye problems when the baby couldn’t even talk.

I now understand the importance of good vision in children for development, not only of the visual system itself, but also of the higher cortical structures involved with vision.  If problems in the visual system aren’t addressed early in childhood, they can lead to more severe damage in the visual system that can much harder to fix later in life.  While looking more into this topic online, doctors emphasized again and again the importance of taking children to an ophthalmologist as well as a pediatrician very early and keeping up with their visual screenings.  Vision problems in children are very often overlooked and can cause children to do poorly in school and even develop other problems such as headaches.  A statistic I found online said that 1 out of 4 children have a visual need!

So back to my topic of Baby James, I was very interested to learn how a doctor might diagnose eye problems in non-verbal children, and I found this AWESOME site that breaks it all down pretty well.  It explains how pediatric ophthalmologists can measure the visual acuity of such children with the use of toys, pictures, or a Teller acuity tester, which “helps us check your child’s eyesight even if your child can’t talk. This test involves using striped cards behind a puppet stage to determine if your child sees finer and finer stripes.”  The most common visual condition diagnosed in children seems to be Strabismus, which is the generic term for any misalignment of the two eyes, including esotropia, exotropia, hypertropia, and hypotropia.  Sometimes these conditions can be treated by eyeglasses, but other times, eye muscle surgery may be necessary to realign the eyes.

Another important condition the website addresses is amblyopia, which is the abnormal development of the area of the brain responsible for vision, resulting in one or both eyes seeing poorly. There are many reasons for amblyopia and the condition affects 2% of the general population, causing more loss of vision in young people than all eye diseases and trauma combined.  The site again emphasizes the importance of early detection and treatment, especially in the case of amblyopia, which it describes very well with the analogy of a camera:

“Amblyopia develops in childhood, when the connections between the eyes and the brain are developing. The brain must learn how to put together information sent from two eyes and make one picture. If the image from one eye is clear and the other blurry, or if the eyes are misaligned and send two different pictures, the brain will ignore the picture sent from one eye. Amblyopia results when the brain consistently ignores the information from the one eye. The appearance of the affected eye may be perfectly normal, yet its vision will be abnormal. Using the analogy of the eye as a camera and the brain as the photo-processing machinery, the problem causing amblyopia is not that the camera (eye) is defective, but that the photo processor (brain) is not properly developing the ‘film’ it receives….It is often necessary to patch the good eye so that the partially sighted eye is used. This is called occlusion therapy or patching therapy. This is an attempt to stimulate that part of the brain that has been suppressed or ‘turned off’ by a blurred image.”

(National Geographic’s famous 1985 cover of the “Afghan girl”)

During my weekend websurfing, I came across a really intriguing study that links a person’s personality to the pattern of his or her iris! Yes, the paper actually proposes that the “crypts, pigment dots, and contraction furrows” of the iris can indicate aspects of personality, due to the idea that there are certain genes that influence both eye and brain development. Thus, a certain gene that codes for a specific personality trait such as truthfulness, might be encoded within the iris with a characteristic pattern. The published study declares that out of the 428 irises studied, the researchers determined certain patterns in the iris that showed “warm-heartedness and trust, or neuroticism and impulsivenesss” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6375381.stm).

The idea does seem shocking at first, but when related to the idea that certain disorders causing brain disabilities such as Down Syndrome are associated with distinctive facial features, the possibility of personality traits being encoded in the iris doesn’t seem so radical. The study does include the fact that the retina is an extension of the central nervous system, as we discussed in class, so genes encoding for our brains and eye are definitely related. This is the argument used by people who favor encoding iris information of passports for profiling purposes, kind of like the security clearance systems used in government restricted entry sites that we have all seen shown in movies about he CIA/FBI. Anyways, the idea of an iris database seems like a pretty cool idea to me, but I don’t know about the idea that the pattern of my iris explaining aspects of my personality…that sounds waay too much like a modern version of Gall’s phrenology (And we know how “scientific” that idea was)

The study did not claim any relation to the field of iridology, which seems to be pretty shady but is VERY interesting to read about. So if you’re interested, hit up this baller link for more information about what markings in your iris might show about problems in your body from kidney and gall bladder disease to high blood pressure .

           Hallucinogens are drugs that cause profound distortions in a user’s perceptions of reality. Users often see images, hear sounds, and feel sensations that seem real but do not actually exist.  Hallucinogens initiate their effects by disrupting the interaction of nerve cells and the neurotransmitter serotonin. Some common hallucinogens are LSD, PMA, 2 C-B, peyote, and certain varieties of mushrooms.

            I have always been fascinated by the descriptions of visual experiences these substances seem to be able to cause, and its sad how little research has been performed in recent decades to understand the exact pathways these drugs use in the brain and how they manage to alter visual systems to produce such extraordinary effects.  For example the drug 2 C-B commonly causes open-eye visual patterning, color shift, and wavering or moving vision are for many people and more likely at higher doses. Thus the drug produces intense visual effects, such as moving objects leaving trails behind them, surfaces covered with geometric patterns that may appear to be moving or breathing, and colors that seem to appear from nowhere. 

Psilocybin mushrooms’ sensory experiences are highly documented, and many users report “enhancement and contrasting of worldly colors, strange light phenomena such as auras around lights sources, surfaces that seem to ripple, shimmer, or breathe, and other such visual hallucinations.  At higher doses mushrooms can elicit a variety of intensified and distinct perceptual changes: complex open and closed eye visuals of form constants or images, objects that warp, morph, or change solid colors, a sense of melting into the environment, trails behind moving objects” (Wikipedia.com). Another interesting effect users speak of is the ability of mushrooms to cause their senses to overlap, a phenomena called color synesthesia, in which a person might see specific colors in response to certain auditory sounds.  The use of most psychedelic substances causes normal everyday actions to be intensely stimulating to the visual system, such as when the surface of wood can seem to flow like a river.

      Interestingly, it has often been described that psychedelic experiences free the mind from the everyday restraints put on it by our limited systems of  perception.  Thus, as Timothy Leary seems to believe, hallucinogenic substances are the key to unlocking ourselves from being slaves of our visual system….I wonder what Roger Carpenter would have to say about that.

             Since I suffer from myopia and am a daily contact wearer, I figured that I should use this opportunity to do so some extra research on contacts and their effects on the eye.  Upon doing research, I learned that I am a damaging my eyes every day due to several reasons! First of all, I don’t take my contacts out for weeks at a time.  Shocking, I know, but its a horrible habit I formed once I got to college and its hard to break, especially since I wear O2 optics, which can be worn for a maximum of a week.  Despite O2 optics extra breathability, however, it is suggested that you give your eyes a rest by removing your contacts lenses and letting your eyeballs get the oxygen they need.  If you don’t, like me, you risk HORRIBLE consequences, including causing the cells in your eye to expand due to oxygen starvation and infringe on your iris, eventually leading to blindness!!! WOAH. Okay I’m seriously going to being to change this habit ASAP.        

            Secondly, I wear lots of black eyeliner, on top of and inside of my eyelids, about every single day.  I found that wearing makeup inside of your eye is highly dangerous, especially the application part, because you can accidentally damage your cornea and make it susceptible to infection, a risk that is increased due to the usual presence of bacteria on makeup! WHAT? I was quite upset at learning this because I don’t want to even more damage my eyes, beyond what the contacts might have caused in the past few years.  However, the sad part of this whole thing is that despite knowing about the potential damage eyeliner can cause, I cannot change my ways on this one.  But I can make sure not to ever sleep in eyeliner! Yes, thats what might help save my eyes, along with beginning to take my contacts out at night.  I should see an opthamologist soon…

 Here’s a really good website on ways YOU can help protect your eyes. Check it out party people.

Okay so the topic of mondegreens is VERY close to my heart, because I have been always been quite infamous in my family for horribly misunderstanding song lyrics.  This is something I would rarely ever admit to anyone, but since it directly relates to the topic of this blog I figured eh out with the skeletons.  So my problem became obvious at a young age, when the only music my sister and I used to listen to were from random indian movies.  I remember sometimes we would gaily belt out these songs together, and it was in these instances that my sister noticed that I was horribly ruining the hindi song lyrics with my misunderstandings of what my ten year old brain thought was being said.  To hide my embarrassment, I would always defend my mondegreens, arguing that it was actually my sister who heard the wrong lyrics; yet this was never the case, because my sister was always three years older and wiser. 

            So my ability to produce embarrassing mondegreens continued as I got older and broadened my genres of music, and reached its worst when I found a liking for hip-hop music, which is quite infamous for its hard to understand fast-paced lyrics.  My most interesting and common form of mondregeens involves me being completely convinced my name, Neelam, is said in a few rap songs.  Now of course I am smart enough to know that my name isn’t really spoken in the actual lyrics, something that lyrcs.com can prove to anyone wondering about possible mondegreens.  Yet, it’s still fun to mispronounce these short phrases in these songs and pretend like the lyrics are indeed saying my name in the song. I have shared these songs with my sister, who has indeed confirmed that as stupid as my habit of mondegreens is, the songs do seem like they are saying my name.  The first of these is Superstar pt. zero by my fellow Canadian K-OS: at around the 14th second, someone yells the phrase “GET UP!” in the background of the song, but he says it really fast and weird, and the phrase could easily sound as if he were saying NEELUUM!  I know, its farfetched and slightly stupid, but the mondegreen just makes me happy. 

            And now, to the MOST FAMOUS modegreen that has existed in my nineteen years of life thus far, yes you may be able guess the song I am about to speak of, if you were cool enough in middle school to listen to it: I’m Blue by Eiffel 65.  Now I don’t know if the band adjusted its lyrics so that EVERYONE heard this mondegreen, but the song provoked several arguements in my fifth grade class over what the lyrics acutally said.  I’m blue da be dee da ba die…or if I were green I would die? WHY?! Why did they have to make these lyrics so prone to being misunderstood? I guess maybe that’s what added to the popularity of the song.  But seriously, it was quite was frustrating to have been on team “if i were green i would die” only to find out that I was again wrong in my lyrics ability and that the “da ba dee da ba die” kids were actually right.  Da ba dee da ba die doesn’t even mean anything!

   In conclusion, I would like to comfort myself with the face that my beloved wikipedia.com states that mondegreens are a common occurance for children, and that many adults often have their own collection!

“Blindness cuts me off from things; deafness cuts me off from people.”

    After reading this quote, I decided to look up deafness on the Internet and try to find something interesting to discuss.  Of course, I had to go no further than the first google hit on deafness, from Wikipedia.com (yeaa).

            I learned about the concept of “deaf culture”, which composes of “people who consider deafness to be a difference in human experience, rather than a disability”.  The members of these communities relate on the experience of deafness, attending special deaf schools, learning and using sign language, etc.  It is not surprising that something like this has come into existence for deaf people, so that they can overcome the fact that their lack of hearing might cut them off from people, as Helen Keller stated, by being part of a community that understands what it’s like to live life without sound.  Many people in this deaf community believe that deafness is a “declaration of their personal identity, rather than an indicator of their hearing ability”.  It is interesting that the loss of normal auditory function can cause such a difference in a person’s life that their entire identity rests on their deafness; it makes sense, however, that deaf people associate with other deaf people in their community, who can relate to their identity. 

            Upon further research I learned about deaf themed artwork, which focuses on art with sign language and other deafness themes, and deaf theatre, with actual theatre shows on themes of deafness which feature sign language interpreters on stage.  I also learned that sign language is different in each country (it seems obvious now, but still it’s something I never realized) and that there are even sign language dialects, for say a New York dialect as compared to a Texan one.  With the rise of the Internet, there are so many ways in which deaf people can communicate with each other without being hindered by their deafness.  Maybe if Helen Keller was a child of the late 20^th century, and lived in this day and age where most people communicate with actual speech, through text messaging, facebook, emails, chatrooms, and blogs, she might not have felt so cut off from other humans due to her deafness.

 oh and here’s an example of some deaf artwork showing abstract sign language: