Last day

I've just spent the last few hours studying and my brain hurts. This is not a fun way to spend a Friday night. I just keep telling myself that life will get a little better once Thursday afternoon rolls around and finals will be over.

And I wrote on my blog everyday this month! I did it!

Drawing disorders

I'm studying for finals tonight, and I finished going through my notes for my Visual Neurophysiology class for the entire semester. These last few weeks w have been discussing brain disorders and how they affect vision. It's actually super interesting. If you've ever read anything by Oliver Sacks, you are pretty familiar with what can happen.

Anyway, I made a list of 5 disorders that can be manifested by asking a patient to sketch a picture. And to help me study, I thought I would sketch some examples here on my blog for you all. Now you can say that you studied Visual Neurophysiology with me!

1. Apperceptive agnosia. If you have this, you can't understand what you are looking at, but you can still draw objects from memory. If asked to draw the sketch on the left, you would draw something like this on the right:

2. Associative agnosia. If you had this, you can draw objects extremely well, but you have no idea what they are until you touch or smell them. So if you were asked to draw the apple, it would be very accurate, but you would have no idea what it was that you drew.

3. Simultagnosia. If you had this, you can understand bits of pieces of what you see, but you can't pull it all together to understand the "Gestalt" of that thing. So you would say that you see a leaf, stem, and a round thing, and a small white reflection, but you wouldn't say you see an apple.

4. Constructional apraxia. If you had this, you know you're looking at an apple, but you can't draw it well. And I don't mean that you just draw things badly. I mean it looks really bad. This is common in people with Alzheimers.

5. Unilateral neglect. This one is really interesting. If you have this, you neglect half of whatever symmetrical object you're looking at. Men with this often shave only half of their face, or only put on one shoe. You might think that your left arm isn't even yours. 

I am proficient (I think)

I took my final proficiency exam today. It was a full exam that I performed on another student while a professor proctored me. I was really nervous, but I think I did alright. Actually, I was mostly nervous about being nervous, because I didn't want my hands to get all shaky or sweaty, and I didn't want to stutter or have my face turn red. But none of those things happened!

I messed up on a few things, but nothing too serious. So if it turns out that I have passed, I'll start seeing patients in January! Woot woot!

If anyone wants a free eye exam, come see me between January and April! The 2nd years all offer free comprehensive eye exams to friends and family, and we have to find our own patients to work on. Once May hits, I'll be a 3rd year student and my exams aren't free anymore--I guess I will be just too awesome at that point.

Make your eyes look like a dead fish

You can do this thanks to a reflex called "Bell's phenomenon." Basically, it means your eyes move up and out when you try to close your eyelids. You can see this if you hold open your eyelids then forcefully try to close them. You can't see it yourself, but if you do it on someone else, you should see their eyes move out.

Why is this useful? Basically, it's a defense mechanism. If something is coming at your eyes and you clench your eyelids shut, you move the center of your eyes out of the way so that they won't get damaged.

This was first noticed in patients who had Bell's palsy, where half of their face was paralyzed. When they try to close their eyes, the eye on the paralyzed side of their face moves up and out, like int he video below. I've seen a few patients with Bell's palsy at the clinic where I work. They often complain of their eyes drying out because one of their eyes cannot blink. Fortunately, Bell's palsy is usually not permanent.


I remember doing this to David while he was sleeping. We got the Gameboy Camera and held his eyes open and took a picture, and I guess he was trying to close his eyes while sleeping, and his eyes rolled out like that. It was really funny/creepy.

Commissioner Cleverbot

I wanted to draw something in MS Paint, so I asked Cleverbot what I should draw.

An apple? OK.

That was a little boring, so I asked another question.

That wasn't so helpful.

Fine. I'll draw a movie on the apple.

I hope you're happy, Cleverbot.

Fire

When I was little I thought fire was the secret ingredient to make things go fast. How did rockets reach outer space? They had fire coming out the back of them. How did race cars get a super-speed boost? Flames came shooting out the back. Even jet packs had flames shooting out of them.

So it wasn't totally unreasonable that I thought the same thing applied to paper airplanes. When I was little I made a paper airplane, went outside with a match, lit it on fire, and was totally expecting it to fly off for a few hundred feet. Instead it nosedived after about 0.01 feet and slightly smoldered on the ground.

10,000 hours

Katie and I arrived home from Virginia today after enjoying a lovely Thanksgiving break. On the drive out there and on the way home we listened to Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I read it a couple years ago, and we also listened to it last year on our drive out to VA, but we both thought it was pretty interesting and entertaining, so it made the 7 hour trip a little nicer.

One thing he talks about in the book is that in order to become an expert at something, you need to practice a lot. Studies have shown that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to truly master any activity. That is a lot of practice. And it got me thinking: is there something in this world that I want to become a master of? The interesting thing about this study is that it seems that innate talent plays no role in how good you actually become. The more you practice and the harder you try, the better you are at whatever you are trying to do.

How much practice is 10,000 hours? Let's say you do your hobby an hour in the evening every weekday, and three hours on Saturday. That would be 8 hours a week. It would take 1250 weeks, or 24 years to become a master of that hobby.

Or you can practice 40 hours a week, lowering the time required to reach expert level to 250 weeks, or about 5 years.

Maybe I should practice drawing everyday. That way I will a master artist by the time I'm 50. Well, probably sooner than that because I have been drawing for a few years already.

Or I can start something completely new and be an expert at it by the time I'm 50. I just can't think of anything new right now that I want to learn...

What about you? What would you want to be an expert in if given the chance?