TED journal

Oliver Sacks: What hallucination reveals about our minds

Oliver Sacks, a recognized neurologist and writer, talks about a specific type of visual hallucination called “Charles Bonnett syndrome”, which he found in his patients. This syndrome was found in 18th century and its name was taken from its founder, not himself but his grandfather having visual hallucinations. The syndrome happens to those of who have totally and also partially impaired visual and it shows people various kinds of visual hallucinations, usually things that have nothing to do with patients themselves. For example, one of Sacks’ patients Rosalie, a 95 years old lady who is blind, sees women in bright colored Eastern style dresses climbing up and down the stairs and cats and dogs walking toward her then stopping at a certain point. She said to Sacks that when she was seeing these hallucinations, it was like watching silent movies because though there were colors and motions, there was no sound. She also claimed that some of the faces she saw were often deformed, such as a face with one big eye or teeth. Sucks explains that as a person loses a vision, the visual parts of its brain no longer get any inputs and they become hyperactive and excitable, which lead them to create hallucinations. The other patient of Sucks, who does not have problems with her eyes but with visual parts of her brain, sees different sorts of hallucinations. She sees particular cartoons of Kermit the Frog, in Sesame Street and like Rosalie, the frog’s face was often deformed. Sucks explains that recent technology has made it possible to see the brains as it is hallucinating, and it has been discovered that the type of hallucination depends on the area of brain being activated. For example, there is a part of the brain which activates by watching cartoons, and when the part gets injured, one starts to see hallucinations of cartoon. There are also areas of the brain which activates when seeing faces and inside that area, there are also parts related to eyes and teeth. This is why when people have hallucination of deformed face, they find particular part of these face strange. To conclude his story, Suck says that those of who have this type of visual hallucination tend not to acknowledge them because they are afraid if they are losing their minds and they are also afraid of considered as mad by others. He states that it is important to know that visual hallucination is different from psychotic hallucination, which has strong interaction with its patience by addressing, accusing and seducing him or her. Visual hallucination has none of this addressing because it occurs naturally as a result of brain activity, and therefore, those of who have these hall hallucinations should let others aware of there worries.
Before listening to the talk, I did not know that there are different types of hallucinations and there is something like “Charles Bonnett syndrome”, which could be explained through medical analysis. I believed in some ways that hallucination has something to do with one’s mental problem but I think it was just another stereotypic image that I had. I also thought of the times when there were stereotypic thoughts that were even worse than the one I had. At these times, people were thought to be cursed if they have hallucination and they were often ostracized by the community which they belonged to. The other thing that I thought of is that the possibility of people who left their names in history because of their special features, such as being able to hear and see the God or an angel, or the Satan and demons. There are also famous authors and artists who are thought to saw mythical visions and reflected their experiences in their artistic works. I believe that since it is only recent year that we have made it possible to actually confirm that hallucinations are caused by our internal reasons and not by external forces, there were fare numbers of people who actually were having hallucinations but were considered to have special abilities. Though there is no way to find out who had hallucinations and who did not, for me it is just interesting to imagine. This talk has also reinforced my impression about brain as the most mysterious and undiscovered part of our body though we are using it every minute of our lives. I hope that farther research on brain will result in finding medical treatments to those of who suffer from diseases that we are not able to cure today.

TED journal

Devdutt Pattanail: East vs. West - the myths that mystify

To begin his talk, Pattanaik tells an Indian myth of Ganesha, the elephant headed god, the scribe of story tellers, and his brother Kartikeya, the worload of the gods. One day the brothers went on a race, three times around the world. Whereas Kartikeya took the words literally and flew around the world three times, Ganesha just went around his parents three times and claimed that he won the race. When Kartikeya asked his brother why, Ganesha answered "You went around "the" world but I went around "my" world - and what matters more?" Pattanaik introduced the story in order to explain the difference between the two worlds, one is "the" world, which is the world as it is and "my" world, the world which one perceives. "The" world is objective, logical, factual and scientific. It asnwers questions of "how", such as how we are born and how the sun rises. "My" world on the other hand, is subjective and emotional. It is the world based on perception, belief and myth, telling people "why" we are born and "why" the sun rises. Every culture tries to answer the questionof "why" on its own way and it comes up with its own understanding of life. This subjective way of thinking descends to generation to generation, in the form of mythology, such as rituals, symbols and stories. Therefore, by looking at myth, we could have good understanding of different culture, in other words, different behaviours of people. For example, in western myth, it is believed that everything has one and only life and this belief creates the tendency of making specific goal or objective in one's life. It leads Westerners to be in favor of linier thinking, binary logic, standardization and search for absolute truth. In Eastern myth, on the contrary, the main belief is "what goes around comes around". Life is considered to be infinite and cyclical, and people feel comfortable with contextual and curvaceous thinking, fuzzy logic, descision making based on opinions. As a former businessman, Pattanail considers that the lack of understanding these differences creates many problems in business fields. When doing business, Westerners look for logic and strategy, formula to apply for certain situations. However, Easterners, particularly Indians, rely mainly on their intuition when doing business. Since one's intuition cannot be put in to a formula, Westerners feel great stress when doing business in India. To make the situation worse, it is usually "my" world that is better than "your" world because one considers its own world to be the most rational and others to be irrational, not realizing the fact that people from other cultures are thinking exactly the same thing. I enjoyed listening to the talk because after having read "Geography of Thoughts", I have been interested in the topic of cultural difference between East and West and I wanted to know more about how the differences affect to real world, which was little discussed in the book. Also, one thing that I thought to be surprising was how quickly people in field of business adopt themselves to the situation of rapidly changing world. Pattanaik is currently working at Future Group in Mumbai, as the chief belief officer. His job is to help managers understand their emloyees, comanies and customers by teaching them local mythology. The need for such position was founded by the CEO of the Future Group, who intuitively noticed that his business will never be successful in India without understanding between Eastern and Western cultures. I agree with Pattanik's oppinion that in today's world, where people and information moves rapidly one place to other, it is inevitable that we face crush of civilization. However, I also believe that if we look carefully at a culture we are going to face and try to understand it , we will be able to cope with problems that arise from our differences.