Jessica Wurtz's blog

      When searching for a book to read and review, the title of the book by Roger Shattuck, The Forbidden Experiment stuck out and caught my attention.  It had a more interesting title than others I had looked at, so I looked it up to see what it was about; what could the forbidden experiment be?  When I discovered it was about one of the many cases of a child who had lived in the wild for a good part of his life until discovered by civilization, my decision was made: I wanted to read this book.  It is human nature to be interested in somewhat bizarre cases concerning their fellow man, and I was interested in finding out the story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron and those involved in his life.  The Forbidden Experiment is an interesting examination of the course of the Wild Boy’s life with a focus on the most important people in his life.  While this was not a subject discussed directly in class, general ideas can be applied to the story of the Wild Boy’s life.

      The word nymphomania is often used in an almost slang sense in modern language, especially in the abbreviated form of “nympho”.  While it is often used loosely, it is important to remember that there is a clinical basis for the word, although the disorder is more commonly called hypersexuality, perhaps to move away from the connotations that are now attached to the word nymphomaniac.  Upon researching hypersexuality, many articles came up that related various drug therapies in relation to hypersexuality, the most common one was any drug therapy related to Parkinson’s disease.  There were also articles about hypersexuality and drug therapy for strokes and epilepsy.  I found this to be quite interesting due to the fact that one does not often associate hypersexuality with older people, who are much more likely to have developed Parkinson’s disease or have had a stroke.  To discover how the two were related, research had to be done to discover what the effects of these diseases and their drug therapies had on the brain.

            The nervous system has so many different tasks to do every day that it is a wonder that there are not more mishaps in the day-to-day function of humans.  Despite the fact that overall, our nervous systems allow us to make it through everyday without falling over or running into things, there are cases where somewhere wires get crossed and the usual predicted outcomes do not occur.  One of the easiest examples to observe is anything to do with sensory input, because so many different things in our environment go into a single experience every instant of our lives.  There are people with synesthesia who associate smells, tastes, or colors with certain words, or other kinds of sensory recombinations.  Another interesting example is that of how pain is experienced and interpreted by the nervous system.  As I thought about this function of the nervous system in relation to other senses, the phrase “blinding pain” entered my thoughts and would not go away.  I began a search of this phrase that does not really make sense upon further thought but is used so frequently in common discourse.

Seeing without Sight

Jessica Wurtz

The brain and the rest of the nervous system is a vast network of neurons, synapses, potentials, and many other critical parts that we might not ever understand.  Just when we think we have finally figured something out about it, it seems that there is always something that contradicts the so-called scientific facts.  One of these curious phenomena is that of how a human being uses their senses to perceive the surrounding environment.  Since we are young, we are taught we have five basic senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.  While this seems cut and dried, there are circumstances that are a source of confusion, such as when a person is deaf or blind.  Being deaf or blind completely changes the way a person perceives the world and their surroundings.  Often times, the other senses will become much more sensitive, as if to make up for the senses that are not functional.  While it seems natural for this to happen, such as a 3-legged dog who runs just as well as any other dog, a closer look proves that it is not as simple as that.