SPA SP19 Radio Lab Reflection- Where Am I PDF

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Homework- Reflection...

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Hannah Whitten

1 RadioLab Reflection- Where Am I?

When I think about where I am, I think about spatial coordinates- I’m in Oklahoma, in Edmond, in class, etc. or I think about where I am in the concept of my life-span- high school, teenage years, college, adulthood, etc. However, when you think about the question oriented toward the idea of the self, you can think about being inside a body, inside a certain space that your body maintains around what you perceive to be yourself. This episode of RadioLab, with Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, focuses on the connections between or brains and our bodies. This episode talked about proprioception (that connection between mind and body), Phantom limb syndrome, and about what happens when our brain loses connection to our body and creates its own interpretation of the situation to alleviate the confusion. William James was a psychologist who was interested in how the brain processes fear responses; he thought of fear as the brain’s response to physical reactions (i.e. Increased heart rate and adrenaline spikes). Everyone thought he was wrong because by this explanation, paraplegics wouldn’t experience fear. However, neurologist Antonio Dimaggio stated that research suggests people who have become paralyzed, after being able-bodied, experience less emotion. The brain reacts based on the sensory information that it receives from the body. If your leg was being eaten by a wolf and you could feel, it you would be petrified and in pain, but if you were paralyzed, it might not be as scary because your brain is no longer connected to it. Proprioception is the connection/communication between mind and body, it allows us to plan our movements and react to physical stimuli. Just like any other connection, proprioception can be disconnected temporarily or permanently. An example of permanent separation between the body and the mind is below neck paralysis. Temporary disconnection can be caused by bodily trauma or pressure on the nervous system.

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Amputees can sometimes experience pain where their lost limbs used to be, this is called Phantom limb pain. Learned paralysis is when the mind accepts that the arm isn’t there anymore and stops trying to send signals to it, but the pain signals can still be sent to the brain. V.S. Ramachandran used a mirror and a cardboard box, placed in front of one of his amputee patients, to trick his mind into thinking that there was still another arm to control. Through continued practicing and tricking his mind with the mirror, his patient experienced much less pain. The brain is a powerful and strange muscle. Ian Waterman is a man who experienced a rare case of deafferentation, which led to him losing control of his body. It took years of dissecting basic movements in order to relearn how to move his body. He can move now, but must always look at his limbs in order to move them, and concentrate solely on his movements. Pilots that fly high-speed/altitude planes used to die at high rates during routine training runs, so Dr. Jim Wintery decided to create a centrifuge which would recreate the conditions of flying a plane at high speeds, to measure why this was occurring and what the pilots were experiencing. At high speeds, the blood in the pilots’ body would pool in their feet and abdomen, unable to return to the brain because of the pressure. This lack of blood flow causes progressive vision impairment; first, they experience grey-out, which is a loss of peripheral vision, then they experience tunnel vision, black-out, and then loss of consciousness. After the pilot would lose consciousness, the centrifuge would stop, and the pilots were measured in their ability to regain consciousness, flip off a beeping button, and recount what they experienced. “Dreamlets”- a dream created by the mind to explain the bodies condition because of the loss of bodily signals, were a common side-effect. Dr. Wintery studied these effects widely, and even tested himself in the centrifuge; after his last time in the machine, he experienced an out of body experience (OBE) where he was watching behind and above his body

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as it was walking down the hall. It’s almost as if the mind was still behind the body, unable to communicate or catch-up with it, so it depicted this hallucination to the visual cortex. When we preform basic movements like drinking from a cup, brushing our hair, or grabbing a book, we don’t consciously think about it; We take for granted our ability to freely and easily move about. To hear about Ian Waterman and his daily struggle to keep his body in sync with his mind, I felt so privileged. I can afford to be distracted by an attractive figure, or the smell of blossoming flowers, or listen to music, and still have control over my body’s movements while doing so. It provides a realization about one’s own ability, and at the same time allows us to be inspired by that kind of dedication to regain control of what was stripped of you. I always associated OBEs with near-death experiences or drug use, but never imagined that it could happen to a pilot sitting in a cockpit. I love roller coasters, planes, and anything that can go fast, but something that can place so much pressure on your body that you fall unconscious, experiences delusions, and have OBEs, is terrifying. It’s even worse to think that pilots in the Air Force, could experience these symptoms and die because they cannot regain consciousness in time to save their own lives. I’m an adrenaline junkie, but subjecting yourself to that possibility is a death-wish. I had heard of Phantom limb pain before, but had never thought about how unusual it is. The brain can be so confused it continues to believe there is an arm that is in pain, but accepts that there is no arm there, so therefore it cannot control the arm- that’s insane. You must wonder, since there is no definitive source, where the pain comes from, and why the brain cannot control that which doesn’t exist. It’s awful that amputees must struggle with this reoccurring, debilitating pain that continues to remind them of what they lost. To go through life, knowing that there isn’t an arm there, but still feeling a constant spasming pain where it used to be, must be hellish.

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Jad and Robert staged an example of a concept during this episode that I found very interesting; women take longer to calm down after a conflict because their bodies take longer to slow down. Our heart rate continues to be high even if we already know an argument or fight is over. At first when I was listening to this I thought “yeah, sure, whatever”, but then I quickly realized that I do that all the time. My body remains hot and my heart continues to race well-after a fight has ended. I always thought it was just because I was unwilling to let things go easily, but it would make a lot of sense, since most of the time, I don’t feel angry after a fight, I just don’t feel like I can stop. After listening to this episode, especially the stories of the pilot study, I realized just how important proprioception is. Everyone in psychology loves to think that the brain is everything, but without connection to the body, it’s a wash of delusions and confusion. The body, and the way it communicates, is just as important to the self as our brains are. Without that connection, our brain is a mess; if we were never able to hug someone, see anything, walk around, feel pain or pleasure, we would be entirely different. It made me appreciate my abilities and my body much more. For too many years, I have done nothing but complain or feel disdain towards my body, but you never know how important something is to you until you are faced with the idea of losing it forever....