Chapter 6 and 7

Chapter 6: Sensation, Perception, and Adaptation

As a person with a high interest in art the Adaptive Functions of Color Vision was exciting to read because I had never heard of it before---and I took color theory! Mark Changizi's "skin theory of color vision" says that we have color vision because it allows us to better understand someone's health (yellow for sick) or emotion (red when angry or embarrassed) based on the colors displayed by their skin. Colors we often use to describe the skin (red, blue, yellow, green) align with the colors that rods and opponent cells respond to!! Another supporting point for this theory is that non-human primates with trichromatic color vision have no fur on their face, while primates who have retained dichromatic color vision have full facial hair. All of which is incredibly fascinating to me.

Chapter 7: Movement

I have anxiety myself and it was interesting to read about the effects our minds have on how we move. An example the textbook gave was on Alicia Sacramone, the Olympic gymnast, who had to wait before she could start her beam routine. It said that her motor memory was likely disrupted which could be what caused her to mess up. Beilock did research on athletes and speculated that those who had high-level automaticity (requiring less cortical input) but then take time to really think about what they are doing disrupt "the movement machine." I use to be in gymnastics as a kid and it was probably for the best that I didn't stick with it. I tend to be an over thinker, so that mixed with flinging my body through the air just doesn't seem like a good mix after reading this chapter.