Author Archives: Chidi Chukwunenye

Psychological Disorders and the Law

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I am sure many if not all of us have seen the news for today about the Franklin Regional High School stabbings. (Article: 24 Injured in Stabbing at Franklin Regional High School http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2014/04/09/multiple-students-reported-stabbed-at-franklin-regional-high-school/) Thankfully, no fatalities were reported, though a few of the victims are in critical condition. And the question becomes, “Why? Why did he do it?” The attacker, a sophomore student at the high school, was perceived as a nice guy to his peers.

Recently in class, we have been discussing psychological disorders and what constitutes abnormal behavior. Abnormal behavior is defined as actions that are statistically rare, deviate from the social norm, and/or cause danger to themselves/others, subjective discomfort, or an inability to function. In the last decade, it seems that unexpected (and sometimes unwarranted) violence especially in schools (Sandy Hook) and colleges (Virginia Tech) against others has become more and more prevalent. And this increase in random violent acts is making it seem like less of a deviance from the social norm, and we as a society are becoming desensitized to it. It seems as though any unstable or psychologically disturbed person can only act out their frustrations in a violent manner. Then, in the eyes of the law if they claim to be or are found by a medical professional to be “mentally unfit”, they no longer have to take responsibility for their actions (i.e. serve a prison sentence or other punishment).

There are some rare exceptions, but most people know whether their actions are right or wrong. Specifically in the cases of school violence, many of the perpetrators planned these acts( see Columbine in 1999 to Sandy Hook in 2012). These attacks took at least some amount of rational thought. If a person suffered from a psychotic break, typically a very sudden thing, it would follow that the violent reaction was triggered by some extremely adverse event and the person would react immediately. But in many of these cases that is not what is happening. In the Franklin Regional story, the attacker was described by one student (who had his face slashed) as having “the same expression on his face that he has every day, which was the freakiest part.” No rage, no anger, just blankness. To me, and I am in no way a medical or psychiatric/psychological professional, his behavior matches more with Antisocial Personality Disorder (formerly psycho- or socio-path). In this disorder, the person shows no remorse, and is often emotionless when describing their crimes. This is not some front they are putting up because they actually don’t even excrete the same level of hormones during what a “normal” person would find to be a distressing event. Nothing phases them. And while this is still a psychological disorder, it is not valid as a “get-out-of-jail-free” card, so the person can still be tried (see the Ice Man, Richard Kuklinski).

While I do feel it is necessary for people who are truly suffering to receive treatment, I think that in these cases, a psychological disorder just provides an excuse, and in my opinion a wholly unacceptable excuse. In an article discussing how people with mental illness deal with the stigma of having a mental illness, the author who suffers from chronic depression states how mentally ill people can still be almost completely “normal” functioning human beings and take responsibility for their actions. At the end, the author even states that the man who shot U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona (and others), though he was disturbed in some sense, was still a murderer. (Article: Mental Illness and Responsibility http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2011/01/10/mental-illness-and-responsibility/)

So, even though the answer to “Why did they do it?” may be a psychological disturbance, I feel that pleading “insanity” is a terribly insulting way to excuse murder that only sets a precedence for not so innocent parties that you can hide behind a sickness. In the future, I think that a solution is needed to separate the mentally ill seeking treatment to get better from the mentally ill murderers trying to hide from their actions.

*** Note: I do not mean to offend. I only mean to point out a serious problem that has only gotten worse in recent years. ***

 

Myopia, Binocular Vision, and Suppression

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I am near-sighted (myopic) in both eyes, but the degree of near-sightedness varies in each eye. The vision in my left eye is decidedly worse than that in my right eye. However, when both eyes are open, this disparity is not noticeable, and I can see with the better vision of my right eye only. It is believed that this is due to binocular vision mechanism in our eyes. With binocular vision, both eyes work in conjunction with each other to focus on the same object. Binocular vision allows for visual advantages like a wider field of view as well as depth perception.

Depth perception was specifically mentioned in class, and it is caused by retinal or binocular disparity. This disparity is a result of eyes being located slightly apart, and the slightly different point of view causes the image on each retina to be slightly different. When the brain combines these images together, they do not line up perfectly and they give the illusion of seeing an object in three dimensions. This concept was described in class as being similar to how Hollywood creates 3-D movies. They use two video cameras set about eye width apart to film the movie, and then combine the footage to give the illusion that the characters are coming out of the screen towards you.

Now as I mentioned before, my vision is significantly different in both eyes, but it appears to be the same when both eyes are open. While the brain is able to notice such subtle differences like retinal disparity in both eyes, it is also able to ignore the image from one eye. This is the concept of suppression, which is a subconscious adaptation of the brain to eliminate the symptoms of eye disorders in order to maximize the quality of vision. So, in my case, my brain is trying eliminate the extreme myopia (near-sightedness) in my left eye by ignoring the image on my left retina. This is probably beneficial thing because imagine taking a really blurry image and trying to combine it with a sharper image. The result would be less than ideal.

There is not much information on this phenomena (at least not on the internet!), so my question is: if my brain is ignoring the retinal image from my left eye, how can I still see in three dimensions? As I described before, the retinal disparity from both the right and left eyes causes the 3-D illusion. But if one image is ignored, there is no longer a disparity, so how am I not seeing a 2-D image? Is this another adaptation by the brain?

Classical Conditioning with Music

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Classical conditioning is the psychological concept of repeating a series of actions or stimuli designed to elicit a certain response or behavior in the test subject. The physiologist, Pavlov, probably best illustrated this idea with his “conditional reflex” experiment performed on a dog. The dog was “conditioned” to salivate whenever a bell rang. Pavlov and his assistant achieved this by ringing the bell for the dog to hear, and then immediately afterward feeding the dog. Eventually, Pavlov would ring the bell, not provide the dog with food. However, since the dog had been successfully “conditioned”, it salivated in anticipation of the meal it had come to expect with the sound of the bell.

In a way, I have often times conditioned myself. I have a habit of creating a playlist of new music I have bought, and then listening to that playlist on repeat for several consecutive days. After this extended period of time, I return to listening to my music on shuffle or in a different order than was set in the playlist. If a song from the playlist is randomly played, I find that by the end of the song, I am expecting to hear the next song in the playlist. And if I don’t hear that song, I am still “singing” or imagining it playing in my mind, regardless of what song is actually playing.

My experience demonstrates classical conditioning because by playing the same set of songs on a loop, I conditioned myself to hear those songs in a certain order. Each song acted as a stimulus to make me anticipate the following song, just like the bell acted as a stimulus to teach Pavlov’s dog to anticipate the food. My reaction probably wasn’t as drastic or visible as the dog’s salivation, but my conditioning did still cause me to feel surprised and even a little disappointed when I didn’t hear the anticipated song, and sometimes the song unconsciously invaded my thoughts.