As I sat in front of my computer
with writer’s block – the cruel inability to articulate one’s thoughts, if any
– not a single useful idea was being formulated in my young mind. A minute had
passed and I still had not written anything relevant to this psychology
assignment, for I have only talked about my misfortune. Helpless and downtrodden,
I immediately begun to frown, for all that lied beyond me was a sea of white on
this Microsoft 2010 Word document. But suddenly, I felt a sense of relief. A
fiery warmth had taken over my facial muscles and quickly changed my crestfallen
frown into a flossy smile. I realized
that within that brief period of time – that sudden painful moment when I
looked at the computer screen - laid a plethora of biological and psychological
phenomena ready to be explored. In this paper, I deeply explore the phenomena that
occurred during the formation and destruction of my writer’s block through a
biological and psychological lens. For the first segment, I will focus
specifically on the macro-scale processes of sensation and perception. After
establishing a macro-scale framework, I will then delve into the micro-scale
process of neurotransmission in the brain.
Sensation and perception are two
macro-scale processes that play an important role in vision. In my brief
haunting sight of the empty Microsoft Word document, sensation and perception played
a direct role in what I detected in my vision and in how I reacted to what was
visually presented to me. But before I proceed on further, it is important that
clear definitions of sensation and perception are set forth, for they are
different but interconnected. James Kalat defines sensation to be “the
conversion of energy from the environment into a pattern of response by the
nervous system” but perception to be “the interpretation of that information”
created by sensation (Kalat 97). Thus, perception is dependent on sensation, so
I will first dig into sensation with regards to what I saw at the midst of my
writer’s block before I venture into perception. Vision itself is a sensory process
that begins with the detection of visual stimuli –light energy. A stream of
light particles or photons strike an object and then reflect off of it. Our
eyes – the sensory tools of vision – detect these reflections of light energy
through an intricate process. However, these reflections have different
wavelengths which are only a part of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. From the
ones that lie between the length of 400 and 700 nanometers, our eyes make
visual sense of these varying wavelengths by matching each one to a specific
hue that we perceive as a certain color. As I peered at my computer screen, I was
able to see multiple colors, albeit mostly white. This seemingly instantaneous
and unconscious process was the direct result of my eyes at work- the detection
of differing wavelengths of light that were spurred from the strange environment
that I live in. But the detection of reflected light is only one part of the sensation
of sight. The reflected light passes through an intricate visual pathway - a “bio-maze”
of structures – in order to get to the brain, the final destination that gives
us vision. The journey through the eye begins
at the iris, a colored structure that reveals our eye color; but more
importantly, it controls how much reflected light can pass through the pupil, a
structure within the iris that acts as a gate. After passing through the pupil,
the light gently travels through a jelly-like substance called the vitreous humor
to reach the back of the eyeball where the retina is located. The retina is very
important because it contains a layer of visual receptors – rods and cones -
that detect the light and translate it into neural signals. The transmission of
these signals from the detected light marks the end of the detection phase and
the start of the neural phase. These impulses travel toward the center of the
eye, where they enter the optic nerve. And finally, the optic nerve channels
these impulses to the visual cortex of the brain where vision is beautifully created.
This complex process, which actively occurs, is the reason why I was able to
see the blank word document on my computer screen. But sight is merely a sensation.
My reaction to that horrifying sight was a result of perception, an interpretation
of that visual sensation. One avenue of
perception relevant to my experience is pattern recognition. I immediately made
sense of what I saw by noticing that the black colors formed a pattern in the
form of textual sentences. I also perceived that the white that continued
beyond those sentences marked an incomplete pattern that needed to be filled
with more black. Through pattern recognition, an interpretation of my visual
sensation, I was able to discern that there was an incomplete pattern, and this
instance of perception is what evoked my momentous sadness. With an
understanding of sensation and perception, it is now possible to go even deeper
by exploring what happens on a micro-scale during these essential processes of
life.
On a micro-scale, it is the intercommunication
between neurons that makes sensation, perception, and all the functions of our
body a possibility. Neurons are essentially the working cells of our nervous
system, and they played a marked role in my writer’s block experience. After the reflected light passed through my brown irises
and made its way to the retinas of my eyeballs, it was translated into neural
signals. These signals were actually the product of specialized
neurons – rods and cones. Neurons also made a strong appearance in the visual
cortex of my brain in which vision was created. So neurons were definitely
there during my experience (and they still are hopefully), but how do they
actually communicate with each other? The answer to that question lies in the
structure of the neuron. Neurons primarily consist of a cell body and an axon.
The cell body contains dendrites, which are essentially branches that can receive
signals from other neurons. These signals may instigate an action potential, which
is the creation of an impulse. The axon, connected directly to the cell body, acts
as tunnel to transmit the impulse. The impulse travels to end of the axon,
which consist of branches that form a synapse with the dendrites of another
neuron. Thus, neurons can easily communicate with one another by means of
synapses. These synapses between neurons are extremely important, for what lies
within them is the heart of neural communication. The axon side of the synapse contains
neurotransmitters, chemicals that can “excite” or “inhibit” the dendrites of
the other neuron depending on what type of neurotransmitter is released. If the
neurotransmitters excite the dendrites, then that neuron will conduct its own
impulse to possibly continue the chain of neurotransmission to another neuron
and so forth. If an inhibitory one is sent, then the chain of communication is
stopped. This “stop-or-go” system is how neurons communicate. As the moment I gazed
at the blank word document, visible light was detected by special neurons in my
retinas and then transmitted as impulses to the visual cortex of my brain.
Within that visual cortex, neurons were activated by those impulses; these
activated neurons then worked together in large chains of neurotransmission to give
me vision. And this is only one tiny instance of neural communication. Though
primarily in the brain, they are the gears of our nervous system, the system
that regulates all other systems. Thus without neurons actively communicating
with each other, life would not be possible, and neither would be the smiling at
the defeat of writer’s block.
And here marks the end of what I
once felt was an unconquerable foe. When I saw the boundless white, I was left
empty, saddened, and insecure. But when I instantly made the realization that
psychology was ingrained in my writer’s block, all my hope was happily restored.
Through a biological and psychological lens, I explored how sensation and
perception were instrumental to my vision. And with those macro-scale processes
in mind, I delved into their inner micro-scale workings – neurotransmission.
Looking back on this seemingly insignificant and rudimentary life experience, I
am glad to have found a treasure chest of biological and psychological gold beneath
its surface.
