VIDEO SUMMARY

THE SENSES

SIGHT:

  1. Robot: Artificial Intelligence laboratory at M.I.T. (Rodney Brooks)
  2. Ramachandran
    1. Body and brain communicate through nerves
    2. No central controller in brain
    3. Early life experience is important as brain doubles in first year
    4. At least 1/3 of the brain is devoted to vision in some way (takes the most power)
    5. Howard Schatz - Photographer
      1. Action on a trampoline
      2. Underwater images
  3. The eyes follow movement
  4. Light receptor cells (seeing and light sensitive cells): In the visual cortex
    1. Cones for resolution and color (red, blue, green)
    2. Rods for night vision
  5. No one knows how we end up with complete vision (Dr. Oliver Sacks, "The man who mistook his wife for a hat.")
  6. Colorblind: 3 cones (red, blue, green)
  7. Acrum Myopia: one vision
  8. The memory of color: can be lost due to damage to visual cortex
  9. Paintings by Magritte and Escher
  10. Vase and hollow face image: we see convex even if it isn't
  11. Perception is always an opinion and is subjective: Ramachandran
  12. Primary colors different in light and paint?

 

SOUND:
  1. Stomp
  2. 16,000 audio receptors and 125,000 photoreceptors per eye
  3. Begin to loose hearing cilia at birth
  4. Hearing can be very selective as in café example
  5. Ear shape acts as a wave guide
  6. Ears can detect a delay difference of 1/6 millionth of a second, different for each ear
  7. The brain has evolved to respond to sounds and rhythm (heart beat)

 

TASTE:
  1. Fungiform Papillae: red spots and taste buds inside (sweet, salty, bitter, sour)
  2. Taste is regulatory. We must consume salt, sugar, but avoid bitter because it's toxic
  3. Genetics determine the number of taste buds
  4. Super tasters can taste bitter in minute amounts, can't take picante

 

SMELL:
  1. Retro nasal olfaction.
  2. Wine tasting. Smell/Taste (detect molecules in liquid)
  3. Olfactory bulb
  4. We recognize 10,000 distinct odors
  5. We have no vocabulary for smells (smells like...)
  6. Industry - artificial tastes and odors ( 400 compounds for orange)
  7. Humans have the dullest sense of smell in the animal kingdom
  8. Limbic system processes odor, memory and sex drive prior to central processing
  9. Scent for sex appeal
  10. (a) Vanilla [attracts men to women because it reminds them of their mother] (b) Leather [attracts women because it reminds them of their father]

 

TOUCH:
  1. Skin offers protection from the sun, bacteria, keeps water in and the environment out
  2. We possess receptors for: heat, cold, pain, light pressure, deep pressure and proprioception
  3. Touch therapy for premature babies in Miami. Fifteen minutes / three times a day / 47% faster growth / greater weight / improved I.Q. / releases insulin
  4. The touch homunculus / One half of brain given over to visual / Phantom pain (missing limb; 6 sensors respond to touch [termperature, pressure, pain])
  5. Visual cortex becomes tactile in blind
  6. Senses are not isolated!