Cortical magnification, magnified.

Rereading my last post, I kind of got cortical magnification–for lack of a better word–wrong.  It’s odd, because I’ve actually had a good amount of exposure to cortical magnification.  It’s pretty much the phrase to describe the disproportionately huge amount of cortical space devoted to a very small percentage of our visual field.

The training of our eyes upon a fovea is fairly important for us to distinguish details and such, but as I understand it, different people train their eyes to different degrees.  For example, I understand that people who play copious amounts of video games tend to have slightly larger visual foveas, but even less cortical space dedicated to the further periphery, i.e. the space beyond a TV screen.  Similarly, basketball players and boxers and quarterbacks have far more cortical space devoted to the periphery, given that their sports often require them to react to visual cues without acknowledging them with their eyes (telegraphing in boxing).  There are several other examples of the plasticity of the visual system, which I will likely investigate, but only AFTER I have fully prepared for tomorrow’s test.

Blog #10: rather risque musings

When we talk about the visual system and the visual cortex, we consider cortical magnification.  Cortical magnification is a pretty big deal in most perception studies.  In my neurobiology of behavior class, we discussed cortical magnification for several animals with cortically-enhanced areas, like the hands of mole rats (who live in the dark), or the auditory fovea in bats (or humans, really), etc.  In class this week, we discussed cortical magnification in terms of facial recognition, and focus upon the eye region.

My honest curiosity is whether attraction can be measured in terms of cortical magnification.  Would we have extreme cortical magnification of, say, Angelina Jolie’s lips?  At the risk of sounding chauvinistic, if someone is dressed in a revealing manner, it can take quite a mustering of will to maintain eye contact.  I presume the same can be said of girls to guys and guys to other guys, and girls to other girls, with differing sexual orientation.  If we could measure the visual field’s cortical magnification, would we see a large percentage of cells dedicated to the periphery?

In a less crass (although still slightly uncouth) manner of speaking, suppose you find yourself in conversation with someone who has some enormous growth on their face, like a third ear on their forehead.  I think that if I saw someone like that, and then saw a visual representation of my cortical magnification, it would be about 99% third ear.

Blog #9: Blinded by the Light

This week, we discussed vision and light and the way our physical eye responds to light.  At one point, there was the maxim, “What you see is what you can see.”  First, this makes me think about vision, and the limits upon it, and the enhancements we have made through technology, and the enhancements we can find in nature.  We are limited only to the visible light spectrum, which is probably a good thing (as most sensory adaptations are).  But it is then conceivable that we might be able to perceive both UV light and IR light–and we can, with the help of technology, such as IR goggles, which bring those waves into the visible spectrum somehow.

But if you keep going, suppose we could see radio waves and TV waves.  It’s a reminder of exactly how much random energy is flying around our heads at all times–radio, cell phones, wireless, TV, Bluetooth, UV, IR, etc.  Certain animals are highly tuned to motion–that’s another type of information that could be integrated.  I imagine that our minds would find some way to distinguish between these energies, but I wonder just how useful it would be to see things that we don’t really directly interact with.  It would probably make certain types of espionage much more difficult.  It would also just be generally overwhelming, were all these integrated into vision.

Blog #8: Vision

Earlier in class we talked about how visual cues can influence the things we hear. Clearly, vision is our dominant sense. Our other senses are arguably subservient to vision. If we smell something good, we go looking for the source. If we hear something break, we look to see what it was. If we taste something gross in an otherwise delicious food, we spit it out and look at it (unless we’re on a date). If someone on our left taps us on our right shoulder, we look, prompting a “made you look!” and a bit of self-congratulation.

I found a perfect example of our eyes influencing our ears. It’s hilarious:

carmina.ytmnd.com

Anyway, as we begin to study the eye, I’m interested to pick up new nuances of the workings of the organs that bring us our most vivid interpretation of our environment. I was far-sighted when I was little; my eyes couldn’t see things that were close to me. But then, in about fifth grade, the optometrist told me that “my eyes were better.” I don’t really know anyone else whose eyes just healed themselves. I hope to get some insight as to how the eyes grow and change themselves.