Lazy Day

So today is going to be a lazy day, I can feel it! Went for a 1hr run this morning, didn't have my iPod so all was pretty quiet. Munched some cereal. Took a nice long shower just the way it's supposed to be. Now drinking my piping hot tea.

After the strenuous programming of yesterday, I'm almost in heaven-- yes, I helped program a task in a new version of MATLAB, learning along with my adviser as he became more and more frustrated by the "call functions" that are so different from the old version. We started from scratch at 11AM and worked until 6, and we're not even close to being done... but, I consider it all a learning experience, so if my eyes bleed from staring at a bright screen for 7 hours, then so be it!

Along the way, I told my adviser about my ideas for the coming summer. You see, there isn't any class over the summer, so I could just go home and write my thesis. But I want to keep running experiments to increase my chances of publication. So I talked about my ideas for visual deprivation studies-- I'd like to blindfold subjects and find out whether they experience hallucinations. Now that's already been done, but I'd like to add another group of subjects whom I will instruct to practice imagery tasks for a large part of the day, and see if they experience less hallucinations.

See, the reason people who are blindfolded hallucinate is because the visual areas of their brains suddenly lose a lot of stimulation, so those parts of the brain become over-excited and basically "reach out" for any kind of stimulation available-- and at that point, weird things happen, like hallucinations. I think, since imagery uses a lot of the same brain areas as visual perception, if people perform imagery tasks, it will exercise the visual areas of the brain and hallucinations will be reduced if not completely alleviated. There is SOME evidence that alludes to this--ish-- but no studies have looked at this directly, so I think that would be a good summer project.

And of course, if I can't find any subjects, I'll just do it on myself-- which I was planning on doing anyway. Yes, I am going to buy a pair of goggles, paint them black, and mosey around for a couple of days until I see hallucinations. I finally found a hallucinagenic that is completely harmless. GO ME! I read it takes a day or two, but I can wait. If I can roll around in a hungover stupor for 12 hours after drinking nutmeg tea, I can sit around for that log in the dark, waiting for visions to appear.

Why is this research important you may ask? Well, studies of blindfolding in normal people can help us to understand visual acuity loss in clinical populations. You see, anywhere from about 15-25% (and maybe even 40%) of people with visual degeneration will experience hallucinations. This is especially true in the elderly population, because people's eyes usually get worse after age 64. When there is a sudden loss of vision, visual areas of the brain become deprived, and there you have it, hallucinations. The stats may not be reliable-- as in, the percentage of hallucinators may actually be higher-- because people are reluctant to admit it when they are hallucinating. They're afraid people will think they're crazy. But really, visual deprivation hallucinations are the most normal hallucinations you can have, and if patients are told they're not crazy, it usually helps them to deal with their symptoms.

Anyway, that's all stuff I'm reading for my literature review-- which I've tailored now to focus on the relationship between perception, imagery, and hallucinations in the visually-deprived. My adviser might have been attracted to the idea of studying visual deprivation this summer, but we didn't have much time to talk about that since the goal of yesterday was to program that task.

I made sweet potato fries last night for dinner and they turned out perfect! I ate an entire monstrous sweet potato and felt like I'd done my gullet good the rest of the night for it.

I also had two great dreams last night: one involved the head of the course (HOC, remember)-- he told me my BPS poster was brilliant. He said the same thing in a dream a few weeks ago about my essays, and I got 90s on those, so I took this dream as a good sign. I also dreamed I went to the synaesthesia conference with Hannah, but Jana was also there, and she complained about having to take the bus as she always does he he he. However, I will be taking a train to this conference, not a bus-- I am more stylish than a bus.

On Monday, I went shopping for some conference clothes. I don't have anything in my wardrobe that is even close to "business casual" so on my list for that day was a pair of nice shoes, pants, and a blouse. Fours hours, a haircut, an electric shaver, and a pair of Clarks later, and I still had not found my blouse and pants. Most of the pants I tried on were too long, and when I found a pair that were short enough, they bunched weirdly in the back, as if they had been long but someone took them in badly in the buttcrack-area.

So... I will have to search for conference clothes another day. The conference isn't until next month, so I have time.

Today, my plan is to fill in the references on my BPS poster. And perhaps write a few words on hallucinations on visual deprivation. Maybe write a little of the introduction to the random experiment I haven't even got ethics approval for yet. We'll see how ambitious I am today, but I get the feeling I'm not going to be doing much more than those references.

Lazy day!

Amazing day.