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Behavioral Optometry BOAF
Volume1 Number1 2012
feel like to touch, whether it is harmful or not, and how far away it is. About seventy (70) percent of the body‘s sense receptors are grouped in the eyes. These receptors pass information to the brain, where it is analyzed. What we see depends on our personal perspective, and often overshad- ows much of the information we receive from our other senses. No two people see an object in quite the same way. They even create their own vision field, which will influence their communication abilities.
In our communication with others, seeing is very important, but what about hearing? Humans spend much time talking and listening. The ability to hear provides a fast and effective way of receiv- ing information. Sounds can be protective, giving us immediate warning of danger. What we hear can also trigger strong emotional responses: music or laughter may lift our spirits; a baby crying can arouse caring instincts. Our ears also provide a constant flow of information about the body‘s ori- entation in space. This input gives us our sense of balance, allowing us to stand and move without falling.
But still we also like to touch, smell and taste. Unlike any of the other senses, the sense of touch works all over the body. Touch tells us about our environment and whether we are in contact with something harmful. We need to touch, and the as- sociated ability to feel pain, as a survival mecha- nism. Equally important to our safety and enjoy- ment of life are the closely related senses of smell and taste. Both these senses function as chemical detection systems, picking up and reacting to molecules of odor and flavor. Smell works well on its own, but taste is relatively inefficient without the partnership of smell.
Floating in fluid and cushioned by its mother‘s body, a new human grows within the seclusion of the womb. Over a period of about 270 days, a sin- gle cell, an egg barely visible to the naked eye, develops into a baby human being, ready to emerge into the world. Very few babies are born on
the exact date calculated for their arrival. No-one can predict just when labour will start, but once the process begins, there is no going back. A human birth is prolonged and difficult because of the large size of the baby‘s head and the narrow opening of the mother‘s pelvis.
What we all like to discover and to know is what is going on in someones mind. What is my baby thinking, or my older son, my daughter, my husband, my mother, and so on. What are humans thinking? Most scientists now believe that what we know as the mind and the brain are a single entity, but the term „mind“ is often used to refer to the brain‘s higher functions: information collection, storage, and processing. The mind is viewed as incorporating brain functions such as emotion, consciousness, language, and intellect, but not its purely physical ones, such as breathing. The hu- man mind has been long misunderstood; even to- day, most of us seriously underestimate its power. Many researchers talk about increased under- standing and conscious minds or even of talking minds. During my patients‘s examination always the same question pops up in my head. Are we all the same?
While our brains‘ internal workings are essen- tially the same, how we use our minds and how we feel „in them“ may be completely different for two separate people. This uniqueness is the very es- sence of individuality. Every person feels both the result of and the owner of his or her mind. We feel that no-one else could understand what it is like to be us, even though we know that everyone else has the same workings and shares this feeling of uniqueness. Paradoxically, perhaps, one of the biggest things we have in common is the fact that we are different. It is clear that personality, intellect, and identify differ enormously from one person to the next.
Quite different from everything else that we know and understand, consciousness is a particu- larly difficult concept to pin down. The word con- sciousness is used in many different ways. We are conscious of our identities and our surroundings;
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