All Articles by Sajid Surve, DO
Dr. Surve is a physiatrist, acupuncturist, and osteopath who specializes in musculoskeletal medicine and integrative medicine.
What is Proprioception?
Everyone learns in school about the five senses: vision (sight), audition (sound), olfaction (smell), taction (touch), and gustation (taste). These senses are responsible for our interaction with the external world. Additionally, we have several senses that are responsible for our internal functioning. One of the most important internal senses is called proprioception, or position sense. Proprioception affects our lives every moment of every day, and allows us to accomplish complex tasks that would otherwise be impossible. The sense is so fundamental to our functioning that we take its existence for granted.
Reflections on Plasticity
Neuroplasticity is a relatively new concept for researchers. Up until the 1970s, scientists held firm to the belief that once we exit childhood, our neurons are fixed and we are unable to grow any new ones, except for very select areas of the brain such as the hippocampus where memory is processed. Since that time, new research and tools such as functional MRI have suggested that our brains are constantly being molded and shaped by our experiences, and maintain some degree of plasticity throughout life. Indeed, the works of such pivotal researchers as Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. and William Jenkins, Ph.D. have demonstrated that our brains wish to conserve real estate, and will remap unused portions of the brain lost due to injury so that they can process different information. As an example, if a patient lost their eye due to a traumatic accident, over time the area of the visual cortex responsible for processing that eye would convert and begin processing information for the remaining eye.
Medical Controversy – When Does Life Begin?
One of the most contested questions in history is a seemingly simple one: When does life begin? Different cultures and societies have battled to answer this question, and to date no consensus has been reached. Of course, the answer to this question has profound ethical, legal, moral, and philosophical implications. As the United States debates the merits and pitfalls of topics like embryonic stem cell research and abortion, the arguments for the beginnings of life have found themselves renewed. Along the timeline from preconception through birth and beyond, there are several stops where one group or another has drawn a line in the sand and proclaimed that life has officially begun. In the interest of providing some clarity on this issue, let us examine the rationale behind why these groups picked their points. As a reference, a textbook on developmental biology will provide some framework.
Are Humans Hard-Wired to Torture?
With the reign of the Bush administration at an end, one issue that has plagued his legacy is the government-sanctioned acts of torture. The United States government was involved with several controversial actions ranging from the indefinite detention of so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, to the outright abuses and torture at Abu Ghraib. The almost universal response of the purveyors of torture was, "I was just following orders." Most citizens have difficulty accepting this argument as legitimate, and demand that the torturer be held accountable for their actions as criminal accomplices. We are quick to demonize these individuals as horrible outliers of our society, an unsavory fringe who are clearly well out-of-bounds with the norms of human behavior. However, research into the psychology of torture and obedience tells quite a different story.
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