Proprioception: How and Why
There are five common senses that are discussed and learned from an early age: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. The I-function, the conscious part of the brain, is very aware of these senses. It voluntarily checks information obtained by these senses in order to experience the environment, and also when a strong enough stimuli has signaled attention to these specific receptors. There are other equally important sensory systems set up that are essential for normal body functioning, but these are not so easily recognized by the I-function because the nervous system keeps the input unconscious.
One overlooked sense, known as proprioception, is as important, if not more important as the other senses, for normal functioning. Proprioception is "the process by which the body can vary muscle contraction in immediate response to incoming information regarding external forces," by utilizing stretch receptors in the muscles to keep track of the joint position in the body (1).
Proprioception and kinesthesia, the sensation of joint motion and acceleration, are the sensory feedback mechanisms for motor control and posture. Theses mechanisms along with the vestibular system, a fluid filled network within the inner ear that can feel the pull of gravity and helps the body keep oriented and balanced, are unconsciously utilized by the brain to provide a constant influx of sensory information (2). The brain can then send out immediate and unconscious adjustments to the muscles and joints in order to achieve movement and balance. Why has the nervous system developed the sense of proprioception, and why is it an unconscious aspect of the sensory system?
Proprioception, also often referred to as the s...
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...tion seems to be one of the most complicated aspects of the brain. Was the I-function one of the last aspects to evolve in the human brain thus far? If so was it because the necessities for survival were accomplished by the species, proprioception allows movement and eating is instinctual to the brain? Why did evolution cause the human to develop the I-function?
References
1)Proprioception, A simplified overview of anatomical structures and neurophysiological actions involved in joint stability.
http://www.umds.ac.uk/physiology/mcal/posture.html
2)Mixed up in Space, An article concerning how the vestibular and proprioceptor systems react in space.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast07aug_1.htm
3)Why can't this man feel whether or not he is standing up?, The story of one man's loss of proprioception
http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun98/touch.html
Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a good place to start examining the roles of African-American women. It is written by a woman, Zora Neale Hurston, and from a woman's perspective. This book examines the relationship between Janie and...
Oprah’s interpretation of Their Eyes Were Watching God sends multiple important details and significant events on a mass exodus, completely altering the story. With a different title, changing focus, unrecognizable characters, an altered theme, and the absence of symbolism, the entire meaning of the journey skews in this false interpretation of a classic novel. The elements of racial conflict and the purity of relationships are also replaced, removed, and distorted. All of the major details in the original story never reveal themselves in the movie, making the end product calamitous.
Throughout the movie of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Oprah Winfrey alternates Zora Neale Hurston’s story of a woman’s journey to the point where nobody even recognizes it. The change in the theme, the characters, and their relationships form a series of major differences between the book and the movie. Instead of teaching people the important lessons one needs to know to succeed in this precious thing called life, Oprah tells a meaningless love story for the gratification of her viewers. Her inaccurate interpretation of the story caused a dramatic affect in the atmosphere and a whole new attitude for the audience.
Unlike The Odyssey or any other epic tales, Their Eyes Were Watching God has a different perspective of what a hero is. In this novel, Hurston writes a story about an African-American woman named Janie Crawford whose quest is to find her identity and desire as a human being to be loved and appreciated for who she is. Her quest to fulfill those desires is not easy since she has to overcome so many obstacles and challenges in her life. A superiority that her Nanny posses over her to determine Janie's own life when she was a teenager and being a beautiful accessory to the glory of Joe Starks' are some of the experience that she encounters. She also has to make some sacrifices. And yet, just like any other heroes, at the end, she returns to her home with a victory on her hands.
Their Eyes Were Watching God provides an enlightening look at the journey of a "complete, complex, undiminished human being", Janie Crawford. Her story, based on self-exploration, self-empowerment, and self-liberation, details her loss and attainment of her innocence and freedom as she constantly learns and grows from her experiences with gender issues, racism, and life. The story centers around an important theme; that personal discoveries and life experiences help a person find themselves.
Oprah Winfrey butchers a classic in her production of Their Eyes Were Watching God to the point that major characters and relationships become unrecognizable from the book. Throughout the entire movie, Oprah changes key aspects in character by weakening, strengthening, or removing all moral fiber in characters. She also alters every major relationship in the movie to further show these changes in character. By doing this, Oprah transforms Their Eyes Were Watching God into something completely distorted from its original.
“Their eyes were watching god” is a poetic novel, and it is the first black literature, which is showing the black women’s feminine consciousness awakening work, and as a milestone significance in black female literature creation. The novel describes the revolt against the bondage of traditional customs, and Janie also tries for human rights of her own life.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays the religion of black people as a form of identity. Each individual in the black society Hurston has created worships a different God. But all members of her society find their identities by being able to believe in a God, spiritual or other. Grandma’s worship of Jesus and the “Good Lawd,” Joe Starks’ worship of himself, Mrs. Turner’s worship of white characteristics, and Janie’s worship of love, all stem from a lack of jurisdiction in the society they inhabit. All these Gods represent a need for something to believe in and work for: an ideal, which they wish to achieve, to aspire to. Each individual character is thus able to find himself or herself in the God that they worship.
Oprah Winfrey lied on the opposite end of Zora Neale Hurston’s spectrum when she produced her atrocious rendition of Hurston’s stellar novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. She modified characters and symbols, altered the theme and relationships, and utterly desolated the significance of the title, making it almost unrecognizable to someone who has read the book. Winfrey totally eviscerated Hurston’s unsurpassed novel, extrapolating what she thought important without going in depth in to the true meaning of the story. Oprah took Hurston’s writing and morphed it into her own abominable movie.
This excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were watching God, is an example of her amazing writing. She makes us feel as if we are actually in her book, through her use of the Southern Black vernacular and admirable description. Her characters are realistic and she places special, well thought out sentences to keep us interested. Zora Neale Hurston’s art enables her to write this engaging story about a Southern black woman’s life.
Athletes must accomplish amazing feats of balance and coordination of the body. As scientist, Mikhail Tsaytin discovered in the 1970s, acrobats can successfully make a two person human tower in the dark, but after adding a third acrobat, not even the most talented can maintain the balance required to keep the tower intact while in the dark (1). What does darkness have to do with it? The point is that balance relies on at least three signals coming from the body, and one of those is sight. Once you eliminate one of these signals, the body cannot accomplish the required task. In addition to sight, signals coming from muscles and joints, called proprioceptors are sensitive to changes in position. The third contributor to the human tower and the topic of discussion of this paper is the vestibular system. A three-person human tower in the dark must not have enough information coming from the vestibular and proprioceptive systems to function without vision, whereas the two-person tower did have enough information.
L. R. Hochberg, M. D. (2006). Neuronal ensemble control of prostetic devices by a human with tetraplegia. Nature, 164-71.
Sensation refers to the process of sensing what is around us in our environment by using our five senses, which are touching, smell, taste, sound and sight. Sensation occurs when one or more of the various sense organs received a stimulus. By receiving the stimulus, it will cause a mental or physical response. It starts in the sensory receptor, which are specialized cells that convert the stimulus to an electric impulse which makes it ready for the brain to use this information and this is the passive process. After this process, the perception comes into play of the active process. Perception is the process that selects the information, organize it and interpret that information.
First, one must have the five senses; taste, smell, hear, see, and feel. Yes, these are physical aspects, however, these senses are what any human needs to be, human. For example, the human body needs to be able to taste. It must ingest food, and the food must appeal to a decent taste. A human must also be able to smell, so one may smell a poisonous gas, delicious food, or any other stench that may linger in the air. To be able to hear, enables the human to hear danger or a noise that appeals to them. When seeing, danger is also noted as well as the care of others. When one feels, the object that is being felt may make the person feel comfortable. Not only the sense of touching, but feelings.