The Eye, The Sight, and The Problems

From a very young age, whenever I was watching the television, or reading a book, I would always have it right up to my face. Due to this, my mom thought it was just a bad habit, and that if I did not fix this habit, I would develop problems in my vision. Little did…

Art of vision, what is the true color

Candy Gao Dr. O’Toole Freshman Seminar BIOL190 September 25th, 2020 When asked about the color of an object. It is easy for us to conclude that one is orange, blue, green, red, pink, grey, or etcetera. From what we have come to understand today, color is photons traveling in waves of varying wavelengths reflected and…

How Can Our Brain Sense Taste?

A few days before moving on campus my sister and I attempted to make bread for the first time and it went much better than either of us expected. After spending half the day making the dough, proofing it, kneading it, proofing it again, and finally baking it, the satisfaction we felt while consuming the…

The Biggest Mystery in Evolution: The Origin of Insect Flight

Growing up, I’ve always had a fascination for insects, including spiders, praying mantis’, moths, etc. When my friends ran away from a beetle on the playground, I always wanted to examine it and see how they worked. As I was walking around campus last week I found the first cicada I saw of the season….

Double Rainbow

It was an ordinary day when everything started to happen. I saw a weather forecast on the television that it has a similar strength as typhoon Mamie that devastated Korea in 1985 (Mamie is recorded as the worst typhoon cyclone to affect northeastern China in 26 years). I wasn’t scared of the typhoon at first…

Sensory Illusions: The Brain and Misperception

Illusions are fascinating phenomena that almost everyone has likely experienced at one point or another in their lives, leaving them utterly bewildered and baffled as to how seemingly unreal effects or situations suddenly become very real. In fact, even researchers who devote themselves to studying various aspects of these phenomena are left perplexed and with…

How does art affect us?

It’s no secret that art can impact lots of people’s lives in very meaningful and deep ways. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” can attest to this much at the very least. Whether you think art is paint on a canvas or scenes from the nature that surrounds you, what we as a…

Illusions of Sound

Ever since I’ve been at home from school, I’ve had much more time to spend with my family. One of our favorite things to do together is watch the TV show “America’s Got Talent”. We literally have hundreds of recorded episodes just for the purpose of watching reruns together. One night we were watching this…

Music Therapy for Mood and Neurological Disorders

Mood disorders are a cause of disability across the world, and their prevalence is increasing rapidly through time. They can be debilitating for the people whom they affect, and can control one’s life. There are treatments for mood disorders, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for depression which maintain a greater concentration of serotonin in…

The Imprint of Dance on the Brain

When I was a young boy, I used to tap my way through any and every dance floor. I danced so much that even as a four year old, I became an automatic hit for dancing to multiple songs at a wedding in England. I have always been told that I am a good dancer;…