Proprioception Loss: Blinding the Mind From the Body
Proprioception can be described as the mind's awareness of the body. Proprioception provides the central nervous system unconscious information about the body (Bluestone, 1992). The "awareness" of our body may be difficult to understand until we have lost our proprioceptive sense. Researchers concerned with proprioception have usually directed their studies toward identifying in what processes proprioception plays a major role, and what processes may be hindered if proprioception loss is severe. Unfortunately, not much is known about proprioception, or how much proprioception contributes to functional accuracy (Gordon, Ghilhardi, & Ghez, 1995).
Sherrington (1961) declares that the proprioceptive receptors, the nerves associated with proprioception, are effective at determining changes inside the organism; which is where the term "proprioception" originates. He explains that proprioceptive receptors are used especially in muscles and their accessory organs. Proprioceptive receptors and some receptors in the labyrinth (equilibrium detector located in the inner ear) work together to form our receptive systems. Finally, Sherrington shares that proprioception is responsible for continuous reflexes in skeletal muscles. In other words, proprioceptive receptors are responsible for detecting when an area of the body is out of its natural state and prompts the muscles to return the area to a resting state. Proprioception may be best understood by looking at cases of proprioceptive loss.
To illustrate the profound effects of proprioceptive loss, Oliver Sacks documented a clinical case of a woman who lost all proprioception (1985). Sacks declared that the sense of our bodies relies on three things: vision, the vestibular stystem, and proprioception. His client lost all proprioception and could not walk without watching her own legs, or talk without listening to her own voice. She could not truly determine if she had a body. The patient could not perform any motor movements most people would deem natural without relying on environmental feedback to achieve the simplest maneuver. Oliver Sacks' clinical story reflects how much the mind depends on proprioception for even the most rudimentary actions not thought consciously considered. The following research demonstrates the importance of proprioception.
A group of researchers conducted a study to determine the deficits caused by the lack of neck and body proprioception (Blouin et. al., 1995). Their experiment consisted of normal individuals as well as a patient who had permanent and selective loss of neck and whole body proprioception. They determined through clinical tests that the patient could not "maintain upright posture without losing balance [or] perceive passive body rotations with the head stationary" (p.
The philosophical theory of dualism holds that mind and body are two separate entities. While dualism presupposes that the two ‘substances’ may interact, it contrasts physicalism by refusing to denote correlation between body and mind as proof of identity. Comparing the two theories, dualism’s invulnerable proof of the existence of qualia manages to evade arguments from physicalism. While a common argument against qualia—non-physical properties defined in Jackson’s Knowledge Argument—targets the unsound nature of epiphenomenalism, this claim is not fatal to the theory of dualism as it contains claims of causation and fails to stand resolute to the conceivability of philosophical zombies. This essay argues that epiphenomenalism, while often designated as a weakness when present in an argument, can remain in valid arguments from qualia.
...ter screen an arm that was placed onto his stump. When Ture Johanson saw his arm on the computer screen, he was able to control his own movements using his own neural command. In this particular study, Johanson was asked to perform numerous movements with his phantom hands such as driving a racecar. By driving a racecar, Catalan found that the subject moved muscles at the end of his existing arm to show the intent of moving his missing hand. From this study, subjects who had been experiencing PLP for several years had longer periods without pain and had shorter periods of intense pain. In addition, the phantom hand was relaxed from a tight fist to a half-open position. This study is different from others because the control signals are retrieved from the arm stump, and thus the affected arm is in charge. Moreover, it uses the signals from the damaged limbs itself.
Proprioception provides an awareness of the body and body positioning without 'continuous reference to consciousness' (Lephart et.al, 1997, p. 131). There are two types of proprioception, being conscious and unconscious. Conscious proprioception concerns joint position sense and kinetic sense (Khasnis & Gokula, 2003). Joint position sense processes joint movement and joint position sensations (Sharp et.al, 1994). These joint sensations provide the awareness of the position of the body and body parts in space (Khasnis & Gokula, 2003). Kinetic sense is the awareness of the motion of various body parts (Khasnis & Gokula, 2003). Joint position sense and kinetic sense are essential for proper joint function in daily activities. Mechanoreceptors are peripheral afferents and transmit signals that the joint position and kinetic senses identify (Lephart & Fu, 1995). Mechanoreceptors are located in spindle endings and tendonn organs in muscles, or Ruffini spray endings in deeper tissue (Stillman, 2002). Mechanoreceptors can act at different speeds, and conscious proprioception can pl...
Ioffe, M.E., Chernikova, L. A., Umarova, R. M., Katsuba, N. A., & Kulikov, M. A. (2010). Learning postural tasks in hemisparetic patients with lesions of left versus right hemisphere. Experimental Brain Research, 201(4), 753-761. Doi: 10.1007/s00221-009-2091-z
Owens, Robert E., Dale E. Metz, and Kimberly A. Farinella. Introduction to Communication Disorders: A Lifespan Evidence-Based Perspective. Four ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2011. 194-216. Print.
October 29th 2012 the high wind destroyer struck the heart of New York. They called her sandy; she was a very devastating hurricane. She demolished more than 300,000 homes and left them homeless, and confirmed 285 deaths. Imagine big strong winds whistling around your home, no power, and a big river down your street with cars bobbing down it, scary, isn’t it. These are some of the tragic events that happened during hurricane sandy. What is a hurricane? The proper definition is, when a series of cold gusty winds mix with the warm humid air. It’s just like a tornado but it forms over water.
Hurricanes are tropical, violent storms in which many things are destroyed. But, if you know the proper ways to be safe, the hurricane will affect you very minimally.
Matson, J. L., Minshawi, N. F., Gonzalez, M. L., & Mayville, S. V. The Relationship of Comorbid Problem Behaviors to Social Skills in Persons With Profound Mental Retardation. Sage Journals, 30, 496-506.
Sensation, as we know it, is thought to be a result of direct contact between the body and an internal or external stimulus. However, in the case of phantom limb phenomenon, sensation is explained rather differently. The phantom limb phenomenon, in short, occurs when a person with a missing limb still has sensations of limb being there; it is having the perception of missing limbs and feeling sensations from i...
TBIs can impact these areas in many ways, for an example, according to Spikman et al. (2013); focal prefrontal damage can result in problems with social cognition, emotional recognition, memory, and executive functioning. Difficulties in these areas mentioned previously can cause drastic effects for a person such as employment, relationships, and conversations. For a specific case, the lady that I observed at the Crumley house had adequate social skills, however, had deficits in her memory that impacted social engagement. She had trouble with her short-term memory, short-term memory is a common deficit within the TBI population (Slovarp, Azuma, & LaPointe, 2012). During our conversation together, I had to repeat the topic several times and the most recent comment I made. For an example: (ME) “I love these blueberry scones.” What’s your favorite dessert you have tried so far? (TBI Resident) “I like this brownie, what’s your favorite?” Her difficulties, I believe, are due to prefrontal lobe damage. An additional area that could be affected is the temporal lobe, more specifically deep within this lobe to the hippocampus and the amygdala. Damage to the temporal lobe can result in difficulty retaining verbal information (Ariza et al.,
Reality isn’t real; imagine a world in which two or more of your senses were combined into one sense and perceived by you as one sense. You can start to see the world as a synesthete; their reality is completely different from most. Synesthesia is a perceptual bonus or condition, not a disease for those who experience it; I believe the condition should be more widely explained and understood by the general populous and resources made available to the people to see if they are Synesthetes. This can be done by examining how synesthesia works, the abilities of mirror neurons, what and how synesthetes feel, what qualifies a person to be synesthetic, and my personal experiences with synesthesia. If the general population understands how synesthesia works, they can better grasp how synesthetes feel and function.
While the great philosophical distinction between mind and body in western thought can be traced to the Greeks, it is to the influential work of René Descartes, French mathematician, philosopher, and physiologist, that we owe the first systematic account of the mind/body relationship. As the 19th century progressed, the problem of the relationship of mind to brain became ever more pressing.
But, “human persons have an ‘inner’ dimension that is just as important as the ‘outer’ embodiment” (Cortez, 71). The “inner” element cannot be wholly explained by the “outer” embodiment, but it does give rise to inimitable facets of the human life, such as human dignity and personal identity. The mind-body problem entails two theories, dualism and physicalism. Dualism contends that distinct mental and physical realms exist, and they both must be taken into account. Its counterpart (weak) physicalism views the human as being completely bodily and physical, encompassing no non-physical, or spiritual, substances.
...on on the position of the head in space for static equilibrium making it essential for maintaining appropriate posture and balance, where as dynamic they detect linear acceleration and deceleration. There are two kinds of cells in the two maculae, hair cells and supporting cells. The hair cells are the sensory receptors. Laying over the hair cells are columnar supporting cells that probably secrete the thick, gelatinous, glycoprotein layer called the otolithic membrane and over the membrane is a layer of dense calcium carbonate crystals called otoliths. When the head is tilted, the otoliths shift, and the hairs beneath respond to the change in pressure and bending the hair bundles.
John Moses Browning who is often referred to as the “Father of modern firearms” was born in Ogden, Utah on January 23, 1855. The younger John Browning was well suited for his soon to be chosen field of firearms manufacturer as his father Johnathan had been a gunsmith for many years with many original firearm designs of his own. This afforded John Browning the opportunity to be exposed to the art of gunsmithing early on, and his ingenuity and God given abilities were quickly compounded by the invention of the metallic cartridge. The initial effort was to improve the rugged firearms of the day that were used for hunting big game that were so bountiful at the time and made up a large component of life. John’s inventions developed from there and included all facets of firearm manufacturing; his designs dominate the field even in the present day. John M. Browning’s contribution to firearm design arguably influenced more firearm designs than any other firearm inventor, and played a key role in influencing the outcome of wars from the First World War up to the present day war on terror.