I watched a documentary on smell a while ago. As 90% of taste comes from the olfactory receptors rather than the tongue, even 'experts' can't tell the difference between coffee and tea when their noses are plugged. This guy that completely lost his sense of smell started losing much of his memory too, due to the interconnectedness of the brain parts and the way that his was wired. He claimed he has started hating eating too, and was highly depressed.
This got me wondering how not having the best eyesight might change your brain. If one has better eyesight, presumably, the brain would need to expend more resources to give a the clearer picture of what you see (Cognitive load theory). Just as a man who goes blind compensates for this as his brain re-wires itself so that his sense of touch and hearing are more sensitive, varying degrees of blindness, or even short-sightedness, must alter the brain’s workings quite profoundly. Perhaps even affecting your skills in maths, science, languages etc. Who knows in what way. Maybe having great eyesight improves your art skills.
2 comments:
Ah, the brain -- the final frontier of humanity. So vulnerable. So complex. A dose of this, a milligram of that, can so profoundly affect it ... and society still knows so little.
Is all crime chemical-based? If so, what should that mean for criminal justice?
Is maternal devotion nothing but a brain's response to hormones and therefore no more admirable than an LSD trip or an epileptic seizure?
Yes, I think ultimately, there are chemical explanations for almost all crimes. It is just whatever state the criminal was in. Obviously, it sounds less satisfying to say that somebody murdered because of an imbalance in this or that hormone or that somebody didn't empathise because they were brain damaged in this or that region.
I don't think the chemical explanations for criminal behaviour necessarily mean anything about the criminal justice code should change...because I don't think jailing someone etc is about holding them responsible for their actions or about punishing them, but about preventing that same imbalance from causing them to commit future crimes. So, yes, if it could be proved that some particular imbalance caused the antisocial behaviour, then fixing that imbalance would be enough.
Maternal devotion is due to a chemical. But a chemical is not all that maternal devotion is. I don't think we approve of certain things because of what they really are, as strange as that seems. Just as we don't approve of genius behaviour because it just *is* what an extremely intelligent brain produces.
Post a Comment