This week as we try and stay sane as we learn everything there is about insanity

It's been a while since last we spoke OMG I MISSED YOU ALL SO MUUUUUCH.

http://youtu.be/DAyUzxDB9eE

If you were to diagnose a psychotic person described by the piece, what would your diagnosis be?

I recently visited Boston many times in an effort to help my little sister visit colleges. In doing so, I visited a philosophy/sociology professor at Boston University (who will be making a debut this coming autumn at NYMC). I dropped in on one of her seminars, which analyzes the culture of the mind through the lens of modernity, being all things during and after the European Enlightenment. When I took her class back in 2009, we looked at functional mental illnesses through the scope of modernistic thinking.

During this session, we discussed the influence of music on the culture of our mind. In discussion, neuroscience came into the picture (OH NOOOOOOOOOO).

When we perceive our external world, when we intake stimulus with our sensory apparatus, most of the sensations must be turned into an electronic signal that can be projected into our brain for interpretation. In other words, there is a translation that must occur - a true "green" from our outside world is turned into an electrical impulse by our retinal cells. In addition, smell, touch, sense of the self, warmth, and cold are all interpreted through an altered electrical stimuli and not an unmolested conception from our external universe. It is through these electrical stimuli that we fabricate a wondrous stage of a play that is our environment. Through such orchestration, I am able to appreciate and interact with this universe. 

In essence, we are confined within a box, into which electrical impulses seemingly tell us what is being done and influencing us on what ought to be done. We have no true concept of what is "green" or "sand" or "air" strictly because we are only interpreting them second-handedly, through an electrical impulse. And this is only one of millions of existential crises I have every time I walk from my dorm to the MEC.

We are in a box

We are in a box

But there is hope. There is one stimulus which proceeds unadulterated through the box and into our self. That is sound. As you may recall from lecture, our cochlear nuclei are comprised of multiple specialized cells that make the effort to remain as faithful as possible to an external sound stimulus. Through globular, pyramidal, spherical bushy, octopus, et al. cells, an electrical interpretation of a sound wave is created, but in such a way that almost directly copies the pressure wave stimulus from the external world. 

From here, the stimulus goes to our upper brain, where it is fed along frequency-specific areas of the brain (Brodman's 41st). It is this high fidelity to sound stimulus and frequency that is unique about our sense of sound. 

What implications does this have on the culture of our mind? Some things quite profound! Sound, from the above explanation of neuroscience (though much more complicated), is the most purest form of sense of our external world. If a person were born blind, anosmic, ageusic, and physically numb, how would he or she describe the world with only audition?