Topics in the News?
What I would like you to do is to start applying what we are learning in class to real world matters. Some might ask, "What good is learning psychology if we can't apply it to real world matters?" So that is what we are going to do with this topical blog assignment.
What I would like you to do is to either go to NPR (http://www.npr.org/ ), the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ ) or any news site listed at the bottom of this page (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ listed in their news sources) and read, watch, or listen to something that is interesting to you and relates to what we have been learning in the class.
Please respond the blog by BRIEFLY telling us in essay format:
What your topic is and what the piece you chose was. Why you picked it (what made it interesting for you) and what did you expect to see. What did you find most interesting about the piece
Next discuss IN DETAIL how it relates to the class using terms, terminology, and concepts that we have learned so far in class. Include definitions.
Please make sure you use the terms, terminology and concepts you have learned so far in the class. It should be apparent from reading your post that you are a college student well underway in a course in psychology.
Make a list of key terms and concepts you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
The article I decided to read is called “Scientists Create A New Type Of Artificial Cornea”. It’s about researchers who have developed a way to replace damaged corneas with artificial corneas. The corneas are made of collagen and sculpted to be the same shape as a human collagen. While the research is relatively new, the trial done showed that 6 out of 10 patients had improved vision and 2 more had vision that remained the same. The artificial cornea only replaces the upper-layer cornea, which is why vision may not have been improved in all patients.
I thought this article was interesting because it seems amazing that you can replace your cornea. If I had eye problems involving my cornea, I would love to have the opportunity to replace it rather than have to either suffer from the issue or wear glasses and contacts forever. The cornea is a crucial part of our vision because it protects the eye. It also refracts light and determines how well you’re able to focus on objects. It’s somewhat of a window to the outside world. This is because the cornea is transparent, which allows light to pass through and produce an image. The cornea also has transparent sensory nerve endings, so if the cornea is scratched, the eye is forced closed and produces tears. A scratch to the cornea can be healed within 24 hours but extensive damage can drastically affect vision. Damage to the cornea can be caused by infections, disease, or injury. If the cornea is damaged, incoming light can’t be refracted correctly and vision is distorted.
Terms: cornea, vision, transparent
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/26/see-clearly-new-type-of-a_n_695455.html
Check out the history I found on cornea replacement, it is really awesome. The whole article is amazing...
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.me.28.020177.000321
HISTORY
There are several textbooks on corneal transplantation that contain detailed histories
(2-5); only a brief history is presented here. In 1789 de Quengsy suggested the
possibility of replacing opaque cornea with a transparent material to restore vision.
Erasmus Darwin in 1796 suggested cutting out a portion of the opaque cornea to
allow healing with formation of a "transparent scar." However, corneal transplantation
did not begin until the nineteenth century. Himly (1813) suggested that one
might replace opaque cornea in one animal with clear cornea from another. However,
it was his pupil, Frans Reisinger, in 1818, who finally went beyond "suggestions"
to initiate corneal-transplant experiments in animals. It was Reisinger who
suggested the name "keratoplasty," the procedure of corneal transplantation. Although
he worked only with animals, he suggested in 1824 that transparent animal
cornea might be used to replace opaque human cornea. Though Reisinger's work
stimulated great interest, his idea was considered by a prominent contemporary as
"one of the most audacious fantasies."
The first human transplant recorded was by Kissam in 1844 when he reported
an unsuccessful keratoplasty using the cornea of a pig as donor. Because of the
difficulties encountered with the keratoplasty procedure, von Walther recommended
replacing only the anterior layers of the cornea and subsequently lamellar transplants
attracted much attention. In 1877 von Hippel reported a lamellar keratoplasty
in man using dog cornea, but it was also unsuccessful. The lamellar technique
of von Hippel, best described in 1888, outlined the use of a trephine and some other
features of keratoplasty still used today.
Power in 1872 had suggested that one needed homoplastic tissue for donor
material, but his reason for this was related to matching of corneal thickness, not
to antigenic differences in species. Although many attempts at penetrating corneal
transplants were made, it was not until the twentieth century (1906) that a success
was reported. It was Zirm who reported a case performed the previous year, when
he had transplanted a cornea from an enucleated eye of an 11-year-old boy into a
man with corneal scarring from a lime burn. Following this report, interest in
penetrating keratoplasty was again stimulated and the foundations of modern corneal
transplantation were laid, especially in the 1920s and 1930s by Elschnig (6) in
Prague, and Filatov in Odessa (7). They showed that corneal transplants could be
performed with some chance of success. Slow progress was made prior to World War II with contributions from all parts of the world: Castroviejo (USA), TudorThomas
(Great Britain), Nizetic (Yugoslavia), Imre (Hungary), Franceschetti
(Switzerland), Arruga (Spain), Friede & Lohlein (Germany), and Vannas (Finland)
(2). However, the most rapid progress and greatest strides in keratoplasty followed
World War II. The introduction of antibiotics, steroids, better instrumentation, and
an understanding of the biology of the cornea and vitreous humor led to the great
increase in prognosis for clear keratoplasties recorded in the 1950s and 1960s.
The article that I decided to read for this assignment was "When sight can be tiring and painful". This article is about a binocular visual disorder, called binocular instability. Binocular instability is a disorder that causes your eyes to wander. Most of us experience some drifting of the eyes, but our visual system makes up for this by stabilizing what we see for us. However, if someone has binocular instability, they may have problems reading, concentrating on one image, and may see double at times. This can lead to frustration and severe headaches. According to the article, 15% of the population may have binocular instability, and that if more people were aware of the condition the number could rise. This is an issue that is hereditary, so if it is not caught early, it could be passed from generation to generation. Binocular instability could also be a contributing factor to our children's low literacy rates. Children do not know how reading is supposed to feel, so if they have binocular instability they may not know that something is wrong. They may see other children reading without a problem, become frustrated and give up. This is a problem that should be given more attention, and tested for in schools so we can hopefully improve our literacy rates and treat the problem. It is recommended by the article that if you think you may have this or your child may have this to get checked out right away. orthoptists are specifically trained to detect binocular instability, but since they are very few of them it may be hard to get an appointment. Binocular instability can be treated with eye exercises that help strengthen the muscles that keep the eye steady while looking at things.
I chose this particular article because I am very interested in the various problems that can occur in the visual system. I like learning about what causes the problems, and how they can be treated. I expected the article to be slightly more scientific than it was, but overall I still think it provided good information. I would have liked to read more about any possible studies that may have been done and any other treatments. The thing that I found the most interesting in this article was the stories that were told from the people who experience binocular instability. It was interesting to read about the disorder from their perspective and learn what it might be like to have binocular instability.
This article relates to what we have been learning in class in several different ways. The main way it relates is because it discusses binocular vision and the issues that can occur. As we have learned, binocular vision is the combination of seeing with both eyes. Each eye sees a separate image, and they are then combined to create one image, which is the image that we see in front of us. In most people, our eyes will experience several sacades per minute. These are quick eye movements from one side of the visual field to the other side. However, someone who has binocular instability will not be able to see correctly because they are experiencing too frequent sacades.
Terms: binocular vision, binocular instability, sacade
Binocular instability is a disorder that causes your eyes to wander. Most of us experience some drifting of the eyes, but our visual system makes up for this by stabilizing what we see for us. When I was a teaching major I spent most of my time in my level one doing reading assessments. During the reading assessments i would observe their rate of reading, how they blocked their words and or stumbling over words a lot. The teacher keeps a record of each child and when I looked over the statistics there was very little consistency. The ratings were done on a personal number scale and then you would add notes at the bottom. This sounds like I am rambling about nothing but I always found it interesting to think about why this was legit and or what it proved. So what type of test do the orthoptists do that are specifically trained to detect binocular instability?
heres the link for the article I read...I forgot to put it in my post.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7661998.stm
This article had to do with the dangers of driving and texting. I found this to be a relevant topic to our class. In one of my topical blogs I talked about selective attention, which i feel is very relevant to texting and driving. Selective attention is the focusing of one’s conscious awareness on a particular stimulus. This happens when people text and drive they often devote most of their attention to sending their message, and their driving suffers. When looking at this problem we must consider the two mechanisms that effect attention: cognitive and perceptual. The perceptual deals with the ability to perceive or ignore stimuli that are either task related or non task related. I think that in texting and driving we focus to much on the non task related, or choosing texting over driving. Cognitive refers to the processing of the stimuli, this process gets less efficient as we age. This idea leads me to think that the real problem with texting and driving is older individuals that text and drive. Their cognitive processing skills are not as good as they once were, so they are unable to do both activities at the same time. However, I still think that this is a problem for young people, because not all people can text and drive at the same time efficiently, only certain people can. I think that this is a topic that needs to be looked at closely by, law makers, parents, and people in general that use their phones a lot while driving.
Terms
Selective Attention
Perceptual
Cognitive
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/25/texting-while-driving-psa_n_268482.html
We have talked about the importance of the retina in terms of vision in this course quite frequently. The retina is where seeing essentially begins. It is a light sensitive membrane in the back of the eye. The image is sent from the lens to the brain by way of the optic nerve and light energy is transduced to neural energy in the brain. It is easy to understand how a non-functional retina would be detrimental to the visual process. In fact, approximately 10 million people in the United Staes are blind do to retinal problems. There people have to give up all hopes of seeing again right? The article I read suggests that this may not be the case. The first bionic retina was approved in Europe and experts speculate that the FDA might be soon to follow in approval of the procedure. The device is a tiny video camera that is mounted onto glasses which transmits images to the back of the eye. Although the first recipient only sees boundries and borders thus far, scientists hope to improve the technology even further. The device will not be helpful to individuals that are born blind but for people like the subject of the article with retinis pigmentosa this is a huge advancement. Retinis pigmentosa is a degeneration of the retina which affects night and peripheral vision especially. We learned this is a hereditary disease so I was not surprised to hear that the daughter of the subject in the article is already showing signs of the disorder as well. I found this article to be very interesting because it just goes to show the importance of studying and understanding how the visual system works. The more science improves its understand of how the visual process works the more technology can follow suit and individuals who have lost hope can be granted hope through the application of this knowledge.
Terms:
Retina, Retinis pigmentosa, Lens, Opticnerve
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/02/earlyshow/health/main20038184.shtml
I chose to write about the current environmental disaster in Japan and the Sensation and Perception I felt while watching and reading about this event. One of the main reasons I picked this was just imagining the overwhelming myriad of senses you would be subjected to during and after this event had occurred. Who could imagine the exhaustion that would apply to a person’s psyche while they watched the largest earthquake ever recorded? It is amazing to think that something that happens that far away from us would affect us so profoundly. When I started to read this article, half way through I told myself that I wanted to read the whole article before I looked at the pictures and watched the videos. This would allow me to grasp an understanding on my sensations allowing me to make sense of what I see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.
After I read this article, I expected to see flooding, fires, and chaos, but what sensations would these realizations invoke? As I looked at the pictures, I could imagine the smell of the fire, the sulfur and burning surroundings, the screaming of terror in the population as they go through the aftershocks and the discoveries, and the hopelessness as the Tsunami washes against the shore. Which of these senses would be the most profound? Which realization would I remember the most from these articles and videos? Would it be the screaming as the chaos takes over the general atmosphere or the visual of the fires as they destroy the homes of the population? How would my perceptions compare to the person’s sitting next to me? We’re reading the same information but how are his schemas affecting the sensations?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Although, Huffington post website is known for having libel tendenceys when reporting.I enjoy reading their articles. It is easy to see how the articles can be one-sided likt he content within FOX and CNN.
While NPR is suppose to break these ties and be neutral of political agendas,recently it has
gotten a lot of heat that maybe this is not the case.
Statements of NPR empolyee declaring their political views have been leaked. Such issues have
caused many sentators to call for the withdraw of public funding for NPR. Overall people seem very concerned with how news will
affect their vission or view of reality.
We talked about in class how heutristics affect how we precieve things/events(sensory input). Heuristics explain things like
why we perceive a house or an object even if it is mostly blocked, or why that women in the legal believed that the boy was responsble for the crime
even though she did not know forsure because of her mindset. In a courtcase, we as a people seem very ready and willing to believe what other tell us about an event. It is very interesting to me how shocked we seem to heard that our visional system can lie to us. Even if eye-witness believe they are telling the truth about an event, it might be far from reality.
There are many photographs and videos of the destrustion in Japan. Within these photos there is a lot of normal things to think about like the many depth cues. However, I started to think about our we perspective these images, far from our reality.
Deborah Schoeberlien wrote an interesing article on our perception of the photos. She said that even with all the
photos and videos of japan, it is hard for most people to understand, relate to, perseptive these events.
I think we relate greatly on the media to tell us how to perceive reality. Huffington Post along with its reporting included articles like "the GOP Budget
Plan Would CUt Tsunami Relief and Prepardness" pushing along the libel perseceptive to the Earthquake.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-schoeberlein/japan-tsunami-_b_834512.html
Attention is a vital aspect of perception because we cannot process all of the input from our senses. The term attention refers to a large set of selective mechanisms that enable us to focus on some stimuli at the expense of others. Although my topic will focus on visual attention, attentional mechanisms exist in all sensory domains. I wanted to touch on the art work of George Tooker. I find this artist art very interesting because it makes you think. You want to spend hours or days going back and taking note of the new things that are brought to your attention. I expect that everyone will enjoy his work because it is intriguing. These pieces of art work are all about attention and your visual perception. In vision, it is possible to direct attention to one location or one object. If something happens at an attended location, we will be faster to respond to it. It can be useful to refer to the “spotlight” of attention, though deployments of attention differ in important ways from movements of a spotlight. In visual search tasks, observers typically look for a target item among a number of distractor items, like some of George Tooker’s art. If the target is defined by a salient basic feature, such as its color or orientation, search is very efficient and the number of distractors has little influence on the reaction time. Tooker chose his luminous colors and light to show how people should act towards one another as well as when they don’t. If no basic feature information can guide the deployment of attention, then search is inefficient, as if each item needed to be examined one after the other. Search can be of intermediate efficiency if some feature information is available. George Tooker’s art was not meant to catch attention immediately but for it to vary over time. Attention does vary over time as well as space. In the attentional-blink paradigm, observers search for two items in a rapid stream of stimuli that appear at fixation. Attention to the first target makes it hard to find the second if the second appears within 200 to 500 milliseconds of the first. When two identical items appear in the stream of stimuli, a different phenomenon, repetition blindness, makes it hard to detect the second instance. George Tooker wanted people to notice his art in a new way every time they had the time to pass by. You will almost always notice something knew about something you may think you know top to bottom.
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/02/135040094/the-art-of-anxiety-painter-george-tooker-dies-at-90
TERMS: Attention, Perception, Attentional mechanisms, Attended location, Spotlight, visual search tasks, attentional-blink paradigm, repetition blindness
Macular degeneration is a condition in which vision loss occurs in the center of the visual field (the macula). The condition occurs mostly in adults older than 50 and is a major cause of vision complications for aging adults. There are two forms, dry and wet. In the dry form debris from dead cells, called drusen, in the eye accumulate between the retina and the choroid which supplies blood to all three layers of the eye. If enough accumulation occurs the retina can be detached. In the wet form blood vessels from behind the choroid begin to grow and put pressure onto the retina and choroid connection, also leading to detachment of the retina. This form is more severe and is treated with drugs and by surgically cauterizing the invading blood vessels.
Two medications used for the wet form of macular degeneration were tested head to head. Lucentis, costing approximately 2000 dollars per prescription, showed vision improvements after 1 year manifesting in the ability to accurately read 8.5 more letters on a standard letter chart. Avantis, roughly 50 dollars a prescription, improved vision by about 8 letters on a letter chart. The government sponsored this study and are using the results to say that these two drugs cause virtually the same result and the price disparity should be explained thoroughly. The drug company that makes both drugs believes that Lucentis, the more expensive medication, is more effective and has less chance of serious side effects. The company that markets the drugs said something like Lucentis was designed to treat conditions in the retina, Avantis was not. Researchers concluded that not enough participants were studied to draw conclusions about safety and side effects of the drugs but that they did not appear to be significantly different between the drugs. This is interesting to me, it's a battle of the business of the medical world. We all like to believe that our doctor went into med school and became a doctor because he had the pure intention of helping people. The problem is even if that is true the system created by drug companies and insurance companies taints even the most pure intentions. These private institutions have found their way into the very core of medicine and are now affecting the way new doctors are trained in medical school. They are training doctors to maximize profits without the medical students even being aware of it. Medicine is a business and drugs are the product.
Attention is vital in the role of being a patient. We are marketed to in the doctors office and its effective. Certain cues exist in our culture that cause us to seek medical help and they are driven in deep. We feel a sensation that suggests we are about to get a cold. Without even giving it careful consideration we go to the store and buy cold meds to be comfortable. They are over the counter they must be pretty safe right. Our expectation is that the medical community knows what it is talking about and that expectation modifies every piece of information we get from them. In a normal scenario if two drugs work the same and have about the same side effects we are going to take the much cheaper one. But one piece of information from the medical community, the people trying to make money off us, and we opt for the more expensive medication.
There are several other ways to treat macular degeneration that do not involve drugs. One is high doses of vitamins C, E, beta-carotiene, zinc and copper. An ongoing 10 year long study found that a daily regimin of high doses of these vitamins was able to preserve vision abilities in about 25% of people. This is used to treat the dry form. Another technique i mentioned was laser coagulation, using intense heat to destroy blood vessels behind the choroid. This is used to treat the wet form. Photodynamic laser therapy is interesting. They inject a special chemical into the vessels behind the choroid and when this chemical is activated by laser energy it binds to the walls of the vessels filling up holes and stopping leakage. It is used to treat the wet form of macular degeneration and prevents vision loss for about 1 to 2 years in about 65% of patients who receive it.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/04/29/135833062/cheap-drug-beats-pricey-one-in-treating-vision-loss-in-elderly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macular_degeneration
http://health.usnews.com/health-conditions/eye-health/macular-degeneration/treatment#1