Catching the Blues

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 5 comments

Known for having the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, the Musee d’Orsay gave us an opportunity to view the impressionist paintings we had read so much about in class in person. The museum was filled with statues, furniture (?) and more paintings than I could count.

Including this masterpiece, which is one of my favorite paintings.

The moment I entered the museum, I headed straight for those famous impressionist paintings. Rows upon rows of paintings filled the gallery as I joined the people milling by. Not wanting to get too close to the crowd around the paintings, I initially decided to look casually at the beautiful scenery of landscapes or normal people out for an afternoon walk. I found myself being drawn to some of Monet’s works; his paintings all seemed to share a common theme of loose, delicate brushstrokes and unsaturated, pastel colors.

Le Givre (1880)

Tempest, the Coast of Belle-Île (1886)

Woman with Parasol (facing left) (1886)

I enjoyed looking at them because it gave me such a sense of calmness, as I let my eyes take in the subtle flecks of colors and light. Soon, one among them in particular caught my eye.

Camille Monet sur son lit de mort 1879)

Monet’s 1879 painting, Camille sur son lit de Mort, or Camille on her Deathbed, gives the audience a sense of Monet’s melancholy emotions for the death of his wife. The brushstrokes used for both these paintings all work together in harmony, in one given direction, to draw the viewer’s gaze down and to the right. When viewing this painting, I also noticed myself subconsciously tilting my head a little bit to my right, contemplatively. The features of his wife can be made out and seems at peace—almost as if she was asleep, as the cliché goes—but when looking at the lights and colors in the painting I was suddenly brought to mind of feelings of not only serenity, but also a deep sadness as it brought to mind a memory of one of my close relatives who had recently passed away as well before this trip. One could say that it was the similar situations of the subjects of the painting that triggered my own memory, but I was feeling a certain weight and despondency even before I knew what the painting was of—I felt that something about the mood that the painting evoked with its colors and textures was able to influence my own emotions and memory.

Emotion has been widely known to be influenced by color, and this concept has been applied to various studies. For example, color cues can affect the chemosensory perception of foods and drinks we consume, through an implicit connection with emotion. Gilbert et al found that people have “pre-existing expectations” regarding what their food and drinks should look and taste like, and that this expectation is modulated by how the color or appearance of these foods makes them feel (2016). In a study closer to home, it was shown that different colors in learning environments could also influence student moods and subsequently their learning performance. As expected, paler colors and colors towards the bluer end of the spectrum increased the students’ feelings of relaxation and positivity. However, they also found that more vivid colors such as red and yellow increased heart rate and helped to focus attention, resulting in higher comprehension test scores (Al-Ayash et al, 2015).

A recent study by Lisa Wilms and Daniel Oberfield published in 2017 expanded on that study, looking at how all the perceptual dimensions of color (hue, saturation and brightness) could also lead to changes in an individual’s emotional state, as measured by arousal and valence.

Valence/Arousal Model

They found that bright, saturated colors induced higher arousal (as measured by heart rate and skin conductance) and valence (associated positive feelings) in the viewers, especially colors closer to red on the color spectrum compared to blue or green. In addition, achromatic colors such as white, grey, and black, caused a short-term decrease in heart rate, and vice versa for the chromatic colors. This was the first study that not only considered the actual hue of the colors, but also how the saturation and brightness of the colors interacted to produce a more nuanced response (Wilms and Oberfield, 2017). This was significant especially in terms of Monet, as he tended to use many different colors—his color palette was in no way wholly monochromatic, if you look closely—but the colors were very unsaturated and more muted. He also used a lot of achromatic colors, especially white and grey. According to Willms, both of these factors would have caused the viewer to feel lower valence (less pleasurable emotions) and more calm, which could have led to what I was feeling that day when viewing that painting.

 

References:

Al-Ayash A., Kane R.T., Smith D., Green-Armytage P. (2015). The influence of color on student emotion, heart rate, and performance in learning environments. Color Research and Application. 41:196-205.

Gilbert A.N., Fridlund A.J., Lucchina L.A. (2016). The color of emotion: a metric for implicit color associations. Food Quality and Preference. 52:203-210.

Wilms, L. & Oberfeld, D. (2018). Color and emotion: effects of hue, saturation, and brightness. Psychological Research. 82: 896.

All images taken by me; June 2019.

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Please don’t yell at me, I don’t understand

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 4 comments

A couple days before I left for Paris, I started a new show called “The Good Place” (and finished about one season a day, but that’s not relevant to this blog post and I’m not proud of it). The premise of the show is that people who lived an honest and positive life helping the world end up in “The Good Place” after dying while the rest go to “The Bad Place”. In one episode, there was a particular line that stuck out to me:

“Plus, they’re all French, so they’re going to the Bad Place automatically.”This line got me scratching me head because I was about to live in France for five weeks! What’s so bad about the French?

Locations in Arles where Van Gogh based his paintings

Well, I’ve only been in Paris for about two weeks now, and I think I have a vague idea as to why the writers put that line into the show. The drivers are constantly honking up a symphony. Cashiers at the supermarket have no sympathy, and do not have a problem with letting you know that they’re upset with you if all you have is a 20€ bill. If you’re in someone’s way, people on the streets would rather walk right into you with a death glare rather than take one step to the right to avoid you. I’ve gotten pushed around, yelled at, and unfortunately, pick pocketed. The summation of my experiences the past two weeks has resulted in my interactions with the community members around me changing. And when an older French lady starts scolding you on the Metro, of course my mood changes from neutral to negative.

Van Gogh also seemed to have gone through a few mood changes during his time in France. During class this past week, we watched a couple of snippets from the movie “Lust for Life”, a biographical film on the life of Vincent Van Gogh. The famous Dutch painter moved to Arles, France to clear his head after living in Paris with his brother for over a year. However, it is in this place of isolation where he started to go insane. The movie illustrated that as time passed by, Van Gogh began to be less aware of his surroundings and the people around him, such as the bartender and the post man. And when his friend Paul Gauguin visited, he strongly expressed how lonely he had been. Van Gogh’s interactions with people began to shift, his mood changed, and he ultimately ended up cutting his ear off. This led me to learn more about the neuroscience of mood and interpersonal relationships.

Van Gogh’s self portrait with bandaged ear

Mood and emotions are tricky concepts as they are so subjective to each individual. One study was conducted on the neural mechanisms involving addition. It was found that withdrawal and aversive mood states may share a common pathway through the medial habenula (MHb) and interpeduncular nucleus (IPN) (McLaughlin et al., 2017). This pathway is associated with the medial forebrain bundle which is responsible for reward activation in the brain. Simply put, when something gives you pleasure, like drugs, the medial forebrain bundle is activated. When a patient that experiences drug abuse goes through withdrawal symptoms, they show aversive side effects and mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Another study was able to support this claim. A port-mortem study of sections from the brains of patients diagnosed with various mood disorders and depression showed significant reductions of the volume and area in the medial habenula (Ranft et al., 2010). The McLaughlin et al. study realized that the MHb-IPN circuit is where treatment should be targeted to treat drug abuse and mood-associated disorders. A partial explanation to Van Gogh’s mood swings and volatile interactions with others may be because of his addiction to drinking. Beyond simply the neural circuitry behind bad moods, neuroimaging investigations were also able to show that interpersonal emotions are associated with how we make sense of others’ state of mind. The anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex at the same time process one’s own bodily arousal during such interpersonal emotional experiences (Müller-Pinzler et al., 2017). Social neuroscience researchers are very interested in knowing how interpersonal relationships with the people around us affect our mental and physical state. The way that both Van Gogh and I have changed the way we interact with our communities can be explained through neural circuits in our ACC.

MHb-IPN pathway (McLaughlin et al., 2017)

Our mood can directly impact how we go about the rest of our day. It is interesting to know that how we interact with others has a direct effect on our brains and how we process our emotions. As I adjust the way I interact with fellow Parisians, I can’t wait to see how I adjust back when I go back to all-sunny-Southern-hospitality Atlanta!

References

McLaughlin I, Dani JA, & Biasi MD (2017) The medial habenula and interpeduncular neural circuitry is critical in addiction, anxiety, and mood regulation. Journal of Neurochemistry 142:130-143

Müller-Pinzler L, Krach S, Krämer UM, & Paulus FM (2017) The social neuroscience of interpersonal emotions. Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences Springer 30:241-256

Ranft K, Dobrowolny H, Krell D, Bielau H, Bogerts B, Bernstein HG (2010) Evidence for structural abnormalities of the human habenular complex in affective disorders but not in schizophrenia. Psychol Med 50:557-567

Self-portrait with bandaged ear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Portrait_with_Bandaged_Ear#/media/File:VanGogh-self-portrait-with_bandaged_ear.jpg

The Good Place https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4955642/

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What Colorful Language!

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 2 comments

We always see it in the movies: the younger child and the father laying together in the grass, gazing up at the midday sky. She asks what color the sky is, and he says blue without hesitation. Such a simple answer to what is, in reality, such a complex question. Over the past few weeks, to combat my occasional homesickness, I’ve found myself looking up to the sky, wondering if my parents can see the same sky back home in Georgia. When we discussed the colors of the sky in class, it encouraged me to investigate the simple answer to the question: what color is the sky?

Just one example of the types of colorful skies one could witness here in Paris.

The real answer, it turns out, depends on a variety of factors; the time of day, location of the viewer, location of the sun, the viewer’s visual abilities, language, mood, etc. From personal experience, I believe the same sky can be different colors to the same viewer in different states of mind. For example, individuals experiencing sadness have a greater tendency to “focus on the tree instead of the forest” (Gasper 2002), which translates to not seeing the full visual picture and instead fixating on visual detail, such as the shade of one item instead of the collective colors in a room. In a more scientific sense, a red-green colorblind viewer would have a different visual opinion of a sunset than a normally sighted individual. But what about language?

Interestingly enough, language and culture also exert a large influence on color perception; different languages have different words for different colors, and some only have one word for a whole category of colors. The color category perception effect (Zhang 2018) describes this phenomenon in which “people were more likely to distinguish colors from different colors than those that landed in the same area.” Those who speak languages that have more words for different colors would, under this theory, be better able to distinguish various shades than those who speak a language with fewer words for color. Based on this perception of color, two people from different cultures could view the sky in different shades. The figure below displays how the color wheels of the English and Greek lexicon differ due to variations in groupings.

Image result for the color wheelImage result for color wheel in greek

There is evidence that language centers in the brain are activated with color perception; in an experiment performed by Siok et al., when stimuli are observed from different linguistic categories, there is a greater activation of visual cortex areas 2/3 – the areas responsible for color vision. This enhanced V2/3 activity coincided with enhanced activity in the left posterior temporoparietal language region, which suggests a top-down control from the language center to modulate the visual cortex (Siok 2009). In other words, increased activity in language perception areas of the brain correlates to increased modulation of color vision before you’ve had the chance to pay conscious attention (Athanasopoulos 2010).

This is especially relevant in Paris; as an English-only speaker in a world of French speakers, I can’t help but wonder how differences in our color-related vocabulary translate to questions like that of the sky’s color. It is known that language effects sensory perception in its earliest stages (Athanasopoulos 2010), but would learning French color vocabulary change my perception of what colors I see? A previous experiment (Theirry 2009) demonstrated a difference in brain activity for both a native Greek and English speaker, the former of which makes a lexical distinction between light blue (ghalazio) and dark blue (ble). This is shown in the figure below, which demonstrates a greater Visual Mismatch Negativity response for the Greek participant when they were observing a blue stimulus due to greater lexical representation for this color.

A report of differences between speakers of different languages in early color perception. The shaded area represents presentation of a specific marker between 170 and 220 milliseconds post-stimulus. Notice the difference in negative response between Native English and Native Greek for the color blue.

In summary, the influence of language is one often underestimated when considering why we see the colors we do. I believe perception of color is a uniquely integrative experience, combining elements of culture, background, language, personality, and individuality to create specific visuals distinctive to one person. This seems all the more evident in Paris; everything is so new, so fresh and exciting that I cannot help but feel that the very colors of Paris hold something special that I have not seen elsewhere. So what color is the sky? You may be surprised, as I was, to find your answer constantly changes.

Citations:

Athanasopoulos, P., Dering, B., Wiggett, A., Kuipers, J., & Thierry, G. (2010). Perceptual shift in bilingualism: Brain potentials reveal plasticity in pre-attentive colour perception. Cognition, 116(3), 437-443. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.05.016

Gasper, K., & Clore, G. L. (2002). Attending to the Big Picture: Mood and Global Versus Local Processing of Visual Information. Psychological Science, 13(1), 34-40. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00406

Siok, W. T., Kay, P., Wang, W. S., Chan, A. H., Chen, L., Luke, K., & Tan, L. H. (2009). Language regions of brain are operative in color perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(20), 8140-8145. doi:10.1073/pnas.0903627106

Thierry, G., Athanasopoulos, P., Wiggett, A., Dering, B., & Kuipers, J. (2009). Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(11), 4567-4570. doi:10.1073/pnas.0811155106

Zhang, J., Chen, X., You, N., & Wang, B. (2018). On how conceptual connections influence the category perception effect of colors: Another evidence of connections between language and cognition. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 50(4), 390. doi:10.3724/sp.j.1041.2018.00390

 

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the sky is more than blue

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 2 comments

“Why is the sky blue?” The question that children love to ask. Frankly, I want to know the answer too. Before tackling this question, we need to answer the question, “What color is the sky?” To me, the sky’s the limit (pun intended). Today on this beautiful and sunny day, the sky is blue, but when it is cloudy and gloomy, the sky is grey. At night the sky is black with the presence of stars that are spread throughout the galaxy. The sky can present itself as a spectrum of colors. During sunrise it is a refreshing mixture of yellow, orange, and blue. During sunset, the sky is a gorgeous blend of the rainbow from royal purples to warm, sultry reds. The colors of the sky can vary depending on your location on Earth. For example, during the northern lights, it is an array or colors that light up the sky. There are numerous answers to what the color of the sky actually is, but these are just examples of how I see the sky.


However, the perception of color is really at the core of this question. When we think about how we perceive the color of the sky, the answer to this simple question becomes quite complicated. There are many different ways that people see different ranges of color. This is quite special because these experiences and qualities allow for us to experience the world quite differently. People with “normal vision” will perceive the sky differently than others with something such as synesthesia.

Based on my thought process to answer this question, I really dove into different ways people with synesthesia are different in terms of how they perceive the world. Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which people experience unusual percepts elicited by the activation of a sensory modality that is unrelated or a cognitive process (Safran and Sanda, 2014). It is truly fascinating that people experience the world in such a distinct and unique way.

The literature provides great resources to better understand how people with synesthesia process many different stimuli in the world. In a study by Itoh et al. (2019), the experimenters performed a Stroop-like test in individual with synesthesia. The Stroop test is a neuropsychological test to test the ability to inhibit cognitive interference that happens when the processing of a specific feature of a stimulus disrupts the simultaneous processing of a different stimulus (Scarpina and Tagini, 2017).  For example, one must say the color of a word and not the actual word itself. When the color of the word and the word itself differ, this task seems to become increasingly difficult. The authors did this with people with synesthesia, except with an auditory stimulus because some people with synesthesia relate a color and sound together. This was done to test the automaticity of pitch class with relation to color. They did this by presenting pitch class names (e.g., do, re, and mi) in font colors that lined up with their color sensations. These results showed that people with synesthesia had decreased time in identifying font color when the color was incongruent with their associated pitch class names, concluding that pitch-class synesthesia is a genuine type of synesthesia (Itoh et al., 2019).

Stroop Test

 

Synesthetes have been implicated to have a cross activation of visual areas that processes shape and color, supporting how visual stimuli lead to their unique perceptions of the world (Amsel et al., 2017). A review by Safran and Sanda (2014) took a look into how people with color synesthesia have varying associations in regards to perceptions, emotions, and consciousness. For example, synesthetes showed improved digit identification because each number is represented by a color, making a specific digit stand out. Some synesthetes experience their emotions and understanding through color, as shown in the review. An example that was shown was how a painting called “Vision” showed how the synesthetic painter drew out the visual experience of a needle puncture during an acupuncture session (Safran and Sanda, 2014).

“Vision” (Safran and Sanda, 2014)

 

To me, I would interpret it as a red splotch that could be blood. Clearly, my interpretation is far less poetic and meaningful when compared to the synesthete’s perception. Even within this review, the authors explored and reviewed many different ways that people with synesthesia navigate the world around them.

It is genuinely mind-blowing how the person on my right can interpret the world completely differently than the person on my left. I never would have imagined how a simple question like, “What color is the sky,” could be such an intriguing conversation starter.

 

References

Amsel, B. D., Kutas, M., & Coulson, S. (2017). Projectors, associators, visual imagery, and the time course of visual processing in grapheme-color synesthesia. Cognitive Neuroscience, 8(4), 206–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/17588928.2017.1353492

Itoh, K., Sakata, H., Igarashi, H., & Nakada, T. (2019). Automaticity of pitch class-color synesthesia as revealed by a Stroop-like effect. Consciousness and Cognition, 71, 86–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2019.04.001

Safran, A. B., & Sanda, N. (2015). Color synesthesia. Insight into perception, emotion, and consciousness: Current Opinion in Neurology, 28(1), 36–44. https://doi.org/10.1097/WCO.0000000000000169

Scarpina, F., & Tagini, S. (2017). The Stroop Color and Word Test. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.   https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00557

Images

Media Library

https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-stroop-effect-in-psychology-definition-test-experiment.html

 

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Hallucinations or Chromesthesia?

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 2 comments

When we visited the Musée D’Orsay a couple of weeks ago, I was disappointed to hear that The Starry Night painting by van Gogh was at another exhibition; I had looked forward to the opportunity of seeing it in person. Although this was not possible, this past weekend we travelled to Arles, the town where van Gogh lived most of his life. It was a wonderful experience to walk around the areas where he painted his most famous works! Vincent van Gogh, one of the most famous painters from the mid-1800s, was also a man who lived a struggling life. Being somewhat of an outcast, he was ostracized by his community leading him to live a life of loneliness. Over the years, he spiraled into a routine of drinking absinthe that eventually led to the deterioration of his health. He was diagnosed with epileptic seizures and lived in and out of an asylum in Arles, France. Few know that he did his most famous works while he was suffering from these manic and depressive episodes. Seeing as how we have learned so much about him and even visited his hometown, I decided to look more into his medical diagnosis.

Starry Night: One of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings

When you look at The Starry Night, you probably wonder how is it that van Gogh was able to see those colors in the sky when you can only see dark shades of blue at night. There are various theories as to why he decided to paint it that way, but one of those theories was that van Gogh had synesthesia. Synesthesia is a condition when stimulation in one sense automatically leads to sensations in another sense (Bradford 2017). For example, a person might see a letter and automatically associate it with a color. In the case of van Gogh, there is some evidence that points to him having chromesthesia. Chromesthesia is a subset of synesthesia in which certain sounds are associated with colors. “Vincent Van Gogh explained in his letters that for him, sounds had colors and that certain colors, like yellow and blue, were like fireworks for his senses” (Katie 2018). Could it be that he had synesthesia.

A famous cafe in Arles, France painted by van Gogh

Synesthesia is still a widely unknown occurrence. There are 6 regions in the brain, primarily in the motor and sensory cortex, where higher activation levels are observed, V4 (involved in color perception) being one of them (Rouw et al. 2011). For this reason, there are two differing hypotheses as to how it arises, one of them being that there is somehow a disinhibition when relaying back sensory information to the different brain areas, meaning that essentially anyone has the potential to develop synesthesia. The other theory is that there is a cross-activation mediated through white matter pathways that occurs between the different sensory cortex areas; this is something you are born with, so only those people are able to develop it.

To test this out, researchers performed a visual imagery task to induce synesthesia in a group of individuals (Nair and Brang 2019). They were put in a dark environment to simulate visual deprivation and were then asked about the shapes of multiple letters through audio. The results show that there was significantly more visual imagery when a sound was presented right after the audio recording. The fact that it took approximately 5 minutes to induce these sensations points to the theory that everyone is born with the capacity to be synesthetic, but it only appears when one of the other senses is deprived.

Could this be what van Gogh was experiencing? In a 2016 case study, they describe how a 20-year-old woman who was diagnosed with social phobia and schizophrenia due to her avoidance of social groups and claims that she could see colors when she heard sounds. The doctors thought that she was suffering from hallucinations. In reality, she had savant abilities and synesthesia. To have someone be misdiagnosed only a couple of years ago, makes you wonder if maybe the doctors missed something when diagnosing van Gogh. At a young age, when he took piano lessons, he described the experience as overwhelming because each note was associated with a different color He was disregarded and His teacher believed him to be insane and wouldn’t allow him to continue the lessons (Taggart 2019). Could it be that he was never understood because he did in fact think distinctly due to his ability to perceive the world in a different way? A question that may never be answered, but could give us a little more insight into one of the greatest artistic minds of that time. Maybe for van Gogh, the sky was in fact joyous and explosive, not just a simple color.

 

The cafe that inspired van Gogh’s painting

References

Bradford, Alina. “What Is Synesthesia?” LiveScience, Purch, 18 Oct. 2017, www.livescience.com/60707-what-is-synesthesia.html.

Bouvet L, Barbier J, Cason N, Bakchine S, Ehrlé N (2017) When synesthesia and savant abilities are mistaken for hallucinations and delusions: contribution of a cognitive approach for their differential diagnosis, The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 31:8, 1459-1473

Katie. “Vincent Van Gogh and the Power of Synesthesia in Art.” Exploring Your Mind, Exploring Your Mind, 20 June 2018,

Nair A, Brang D (2019) Inducing synesthesia in non-synesthetes: Short-term visual deprivation facilitates auditory-evoked visual percepts, Consciousness and Cognition, 70: 70-79.

Rouw, Romke, et al. “Brain Areas Involved in Synaesthesia: A Review.” Journal of Neuropsychology, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (10.1111), 16 Sept. 2011

Shovava, and Shovova. “5 Synesthesia Artists Who Paint Their Multi-Sensory Experiences.” My Modern Met, 28 Feb. 2019

Picture 1: https://www.overstockart.com/painting/van-gogh-starry-night

Picture 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Café_Terrace_at_Night

Picture 3: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/cafe-van-gogh-forum-square-arles-aivar-mikko.html

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hearing voices

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 2 comments

While difficult, trying to retroactively diagnose Vincent Van Gogh was by far my favorite journal prompt. My group and I eventually decided that, based on the evidence we examined, Van Gogh most likely had schizophrenia. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders (DSM-5) is a list of psychiatric conditions and their symptoms that helps professionals diagnose patients. It includes criteria to help diagnose schizophrenia today. For symptom-based identification it instructs that schizophrenia patients are expected to exhibit catatonic behavior, negative symptoms, delusions, disorganized speech, and hallucinations (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Van Gogh showed many of these symptoms but the one that most clearly pointed to schizophrenia was his hallucinations.

According to the note from the Director of the St Rémy mental home, Vincent Van Gogh exhibited both visual and auditory hallucinations (Van Gogh Museum, 2016). The importance of hallucinations in both his life and the diagnosis of schizophrenia made me wonder about their underlying biological mechanisms. I was particularly intrigued by the idea that patients sometimes hear voices talking to them when no one else is there. The idea of “hearing voices” may be familiar from Hollywood’s portray of mental illness, but what actually drives these hallucinations?

In the scientific community, this phenomenon is known as auditory verbal hallucinations. One major theory is that these hallucinations are a result of malfunctions in the brain systems that monitor inner speech. This idea is that, when these brain systems are impaired, people misinterpret their own internal dialogue as the speech of someone or something outside of them (Catani and Ffytche, 2005). While this theory has been around for decades, there are still many unanswered questions about the specific biology and brain areas that are associated auditory verbal hallucinations.

Auditory verbal hallucinations are when patients
believe they hear voices speaking to them

A recent study by Cui et al. investigated the neuroanatomical differences that may be connected to this type of hallucination. The authors studied healthy control patients as well as a large population of schizophrenia patients who did and did not exhibit auditory verbal hallucinations from hospitals across China. The patients they gathered is an important aspect of this study because previous work had only compared schizophrenia patients with hallucinations to healthy controls. Here, the researchers wanted to specifically investigate what neuroanatomical difference leads to auditory verbal hallucinations, so it was important for them to look at schizophrenia patients that did not experience these hallucinations as well as those that did.

Once the authors had gathered this group of patients and controls, they used a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner to get a structural image of the subjects’ brains. They then used a computer software program to compute the thickness of the subjects’ cortex, the brain’s outer layer.In particular, these researchers were interested in measuring and comparing the thickness of the middle temporal gyrus (MTG).

The middle temporal gyrus (MTG)

Previous scientific studies have indicated that the MTG may be important for the monitoring of inner speech and is often less activated in schizophrenic patients (Shergill et al. 2000; Seal et al. 2004). The function and development of the MTG is well-suited for it playing a role in auditory verbal hallucinations. First, the MTG is involved in brain pathways that make it important for interpreting certain sounds we hear, especially processing language (Cabeza and Nyberg, 2000). The MTG is also unique in the way it develops. This area of the brain develops relatively late in life (Gogtay et al. 2004). This makes sense for hallucinations associated with schizophrenia, which is a disease known to be associated with brain development that often doesn’t appear until patients are around 30 years old (Lewis and Levitt, 2002).

Previous studies had shown that the volume of the MTG is smaller in schizophrenic patients than it is in healthy people (McGuire et al., 1995). The point of this study was to test if that reduced size was associated with schizophrenia in general or auditory verbal hallucinations specifically.  When Cui et al. calculated the volume of the subjects’ middle temporal gyrus they found that it was significantly smaller in schizophrenia patients that had auditory verbal hallucinations than patients that did not. They also found that there was not a significant difference between the schizophrenia patients that did not have hallucinations and the healthy controls. These results suggest that a thinner MTG is not only connected to schizophrenia but is specifically associated with schizophrenia patients that experienced auditory verbal hallucinations.

Starry Night, a famous Van Gogh painting some
believe is the result of his hallucinations

While this new study offers great evidence comparing schizophrenia patients with different symptoms, there is still a lot to figure out about this kind of hallucination. Scientists are still working to discover what exact processes lead to cortical thinning and how those processes begin. However, what we do know about auditory verbal hallucinations emphasizes how heavily we rely on our perception of the world around us. We will not ever get to know the thickness of Vincent Van Gogh’s MTG, but the auditory hallucinations Van Gogh experienced were probably the result of his hearing system malfunctioning in some way. Today, many people believe that some of Van Gogh’s most famous decisions and artworks were informed by his hallucinations (Jones, 2016; New York Times Archive, 1981). Modern neuroscience tells us that those hallucinations may have actually been an erroneous interpretation of his own inner dialogue all along. 

 

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: Author.

Binney RJ, Parker GJ, Ralph MAL (2012). Convergent connectivity and graded specialization in the rostral human temporal lobe as revealed by diffusion-weighted imaging probabilistic tractography. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 24, 1998–2014.

Catani M, Ffytche DH (2005). The rises and falls of disconnection syndromes. Brain 128, 2224–2239.

Cabeza R, Nyberg L (2000). Imaging cognition II: an empirical review of 275 PET and fMRI studies. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12, 1–47.

Cui Y, Liu B, Song M, Lipnicki D, Li J, Xie S, . . . Jiang T. (2018). Auditory verbal hallucinations are related to cortical thinning in the left middle temporal gyrus of patients with schizophrenia. Psychological Medicine, 48(1): 115-122

Jones, J. (2016). Vincent van Gogh: Myths, madness and a new way of painting. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/aug/05/vincent-van-gogh-myths-madness-and-a-new-way-of-painting

Gogtay N, Giedd JN, Lusk L, Hayashi KM, Greenstein D, Vaituzis AC, Nugent TF, Herman DH, Clasen LS, Toga AW, Rapoport JL, Thompson PM (2004). Dynamic mapping of human cortical development during childhood through early adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101, 8174–8179.

Lewis DA, Levitt P (2002). Schizophrenia as a disorder of neurodevelopment. Annual Review of Neuroscience 25: 409–432.

McGuire PK, David AS, Murray RM, Frackowiak RSJ, Frith CD, Wright I, Silbersweig DA (1995) Abnormal monitoring of inner speech: a physiological basis for auditory hallucinations. The Lancet, 346(8975): Pages 596-600,

New York Times Archive (1981) Van Gogh’s Hallucinations. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/07/science/science-watch-van-gogh-s-hallucinations.html

Seal ML, Aleman A, McGuire PK (2004). Compelling imagery, unanticipated speech and deceptive memory: neurocognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 9, 43–72.

Shergill SS, Brammer MJ, Williams SCR, Murray RM, McGuire PK (2000). Mapping auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Archives of General Psychiatry 57, 1033–1038

Van Gogh Museum (2016). Shortly before 27 February 1889 In Concordance, lists, bibliography (Documentation). Retrieved from: http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/documentation.html

 

Images: 

https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/71b807e7-29fd-445d-95a1-4d282ccf02e5

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Gray726_middle_temporal_gyrus.png/250px-Gray726_middle_temporal_gyrus.png

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/757px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

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Van Gogh Case Study: Is Creativity Linked to Mood Disorders?

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 5 comments

Vincent Van Gogh’s genius is undeniable now. His paintings are revered around the world and sell for multi-million dollars. His brushstrokes, thick and globular, severed tradition and gave rise to a new, unique sect of art. Moreover, his paintings broke convention. They showed the emotional depth of humanity through rich texture, raucous colors, and depictions of labor. Yet, one may say Van Gogh’s prolific work came at the cost of his sanity.  For much of his most productive working years which overlapped with his time in Provence, his health deteriorated. He often experienced hallucinations, episodes of mania, and a dangerous blend of depression and paranoia. When absorbed in his work, he could be in isolation for weeks, even months at a time, barely interacting with neighbors. On the occasion, he did venture in town it was mostly to look for more alcohol. Rarely sober, Van Gogh became a burden on the people of Provence, his only confidante being his family, particularly Theo, his brother, and his brother’s wife, Joan. Theo took immense sympathy on his brother who seemed always plagued with emotional turmoil and believed in his work but found his pieces hard to sell.

Van Gogh’s mood disorder, which today, could be categorized as bipolar, is one not uncommon in artists. Many artists whether it be writers, musicians, actors, struggle with a type of mood disorder. Examples include Virginia Wolfe, Sylvia Plath, Beethoven, and Georgia O’Keeffe. These names represent only a small handful which makes me wonder if there is a link between creativity and mental disorder? And if so, what is it? Is there a neuroscientific correlation between creativity and mood disorders?

Prolific writer died of suicide

Music Genius many hypothesize had bipolar disorder

Famed visual artist Georgia O’ Keefe dealt with depression and anxiety

Before identifying a specific creative link, it is important to define creativity and distinguish what brain regions are responsible for creativity. Creativity is an ability to view problems or generate possibilities in a novel and unique way (Glück et at., 2002). This ability has been linked to personality traits such as flexibility and divergent thinking (Caroli et at., 2009). In recent years, several studies have further tried to understand the link between bipolar disorder and creativity and have generated several interesting insights. Burkhardt et at., 2018 had 38 participants partake in several formalized diagnostic testing as well as interviews to determine whether individuals were bipolar. Subsequently, they took creativity assessments which included the Barron-Welsh Art Scale (BWAS) and the Creative Achievement Questionnaire (CAQ). Results showed that those who tested for bipolar (no distinction was made in this paper between type I and II) had significantly higher scores on the creativity tests. Interestingly, the study notes that an increased creative capacity does not equate to higher creative achievement (Burkhardt et at., 2018).

Another study focused on the structural correlation between creativity and bipolar disorder (Tu et at.,2017). Here, they separated their 59 participants into bipolar 1 and bipolar 2, all of which went through fMRI scanning. Under the fMRI, participants completed two traditional creative tests: The Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults and the Chinese Word Remote Associates Test. These tests challenge the participant to make as many unique associations with a word and/or uses for an object. For example, a component of the Torrance Test could ask list all the uses of a paperclip you can in five minutes. The quantity and quality of nontraditional answers determines one’s creativity score.

Results of this study showed that divergent thinking in people with bipolar I and II was linked to gray matter volume in the right medial frontal gyrus. It is crucial to acknowledge that patients in this study were taking a variety of medication: mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and antidepressants-all of which could have tampered with the result. Nonetheless, the results are important in indicating the significant role the medial prefrontal cortex plays in creative thinking in people with bipolar as opposed to the more distributed neuroanatomical pattern for creative people without bipolar disorder (Tu et al.,2017).

While more extensive research needs to be conducted to understand the extent and depth of creativity’s correlation with bipolar disease, these two studies highlight a definite link between them. Given this knowledge, how does one go about treatment? The implications of treatment, such as potentially stunting creativity, may affect whether an artist decides to accept it. These insights will most importantly lead to more ethical debates and a greater understanding of neuroanatomical overlaps, especially in regards to mood, emotions, and capabilities. Perhaps, the creatives of the future will not have to suffer to Van Gogh’s magnitude.

 

References:

Burkhardt, Eva & Pfennig, Andrea & Breitling, Gwendolin & Pfeiffer, Steffi & Sauer, Cathrin & Bechdolf, Andreas & U. Correll, Christoph & Bauer, Michael & Leopold, Karolina. (2018). Creativity in persons at-risk for bipolar disorder-A pilot study. Early Intervention in Psychiatry. 10.

De Caroli, Maria & Sagone, Elisabetta. (2009). Creative thinking and Big Five factors of personality measured in Italian school children. Psychological reports. 105.

Glück, Judith & Polacsek-Ernst, Roland & Unger, Floortje. (2002). How Creatives Define Creativity: Definitions Reflect Different Types of Creativity. Creativity Research Journal, v.14, 55-67 (2002). 14.

Tu, Pei-Chi & Kuan, Yi-Hsuan & Li, Cheng-Ta & Su, Tung-Ping. (2017). Structural Correlates of Creative Thinking in Patients With Bipolar Disorder and Healthy Controls—a Voxel-Based Morphometry Study. Journal of Affective Disorders. 215.

 

 

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Paul Cézanne, Museum Fatigue Advocate

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 5 comments

Have you ever experienced museum fatigue? I thought that I made up this term to describe my own experiences, but upon performing a quick Google search, I discovered that this is actually a phenomenon first described in 1916 (Gilman, 1916).

Interior of the Musée d’Orsay (Image from TripSavy.com)

Going to a museum may seem like a passive process, but to me, it is actually quite a bit of work!

Navigating large crowds and carrying a heavy backpack for several hours is enough to wear me out. But even more so, interpreting piece after piece of artwork—each of which leaves a lot of room for interpretation—is a laborious effort leading to mental exhaustion. Though it is uncomfortable, I think that this is the way it should be. If you don’t experience some fatigue, are you fully engaged with and appreciating the art?

Exterior of Musée d’Orsay (Image from SortiraParis.com)

One particular French artist I have learned about in class is Paul Cézanne, and he seems to have been an especially avid proponent of museum fatigue; although his works were rejected from museums during his lifetime, it seems as if he were intentionally inducing this exhaustion. In the Post-Impressionistic style (abandoning the detailed, picture-perfect landscapes characteristic of Realism), Cézanne produced blurry, unfinished images in order to accentuate the mind’s interpretation process. Leaving blank spots peeking through the blobs of color is a technique called nonfinito, and it’s a bit like trailing off in the middle of a sentence—a visual ellipsis. In this way, the viewer’s interpretation is unique to the way the mind fills in the gaps at that particular moment, influenced by all of the emotions and experiences one brings to the table.

It turns out that this reflects how the brain works when interpreting all visual stimuli: even looking at the same things twice may trigger different responses from neurons dedicated to processing visual information (Jeon et al., 2018).

First, let’s start with some background information about vision and how our

The occipital lobe, shown in yellow (Image from The Science of Pscychotherapy.com)

brains process signals coming from our eyes.

Light enters the eye and reaches the retina at the very back. There, it stimulates light-responsive cells called photoreceptors (rods and cones). Signals from all these cells go through the optic nerve, the optic tract, a structure called the thalamus, and eventually reach the part of the brain that deals with visual information. This area is called the occipital lobe, and the section that is first to receive these signals is called the primary visual cortex, or V1. Here, there are cells that have been shown to respond to basic details of a scene like the width and orientation of lines (Gawne, 2015). Each cell is “tuned” to respond best to a certain width and a certain orientation, and logically, this is called neuronal tuning (Butts and Goldman, 2006). The conditions determining the responsivity of the neurons get more and more complex as the signals are processed (Tsunoda et al., 2001).

The perception of visual information (Image from Slideplayer.com)

As one views the same image, it would make sense that the same neurons respond each time. But, this is not exactly the case: In one experiment by Jeon et al. 2018 in the journal Nature, researchers found that the same neurons aren’t reliably activated by the same stimuli.

In the study, the researchers showed mice lines of different orientations and widths. Using a technique called two-photon calcium imaging, they looked at the activity of neurons in the V1 (Jeon et al., 2018). This technique involves installing an apparatus on the head of a mouse. Based on the movement of fluorescing ions, it lets us see what neurons are active as the mouse is awake and interacting with the world (Mitani and Komiyama, 2018).

Some of the images shown to mice in the Jeon et al. (2018) experiment (Image from the journal Nature)

Tracking around 300 neurons, the researchers determined the qualities of the image (such as the angle and the width of the lines) for which a neuron was most likely to respond. Then, performing the test one week later and again two weeks later, they compared the preferences of the neurons. While the majority of individual qualities were relatively stable over time, the researchers found that fewer than half of the neurons had exactly all of the same preferences as before.

What does this all mean? In the past it has been shown that the visual cortex is highly plastic, or able to rearrange and reorganize its connections based on new information (Hofer et al., 2009).  However, these results provide even more insight into how our visual systems adapt and change: some parts can remain stable while others change their responsivity in order to incorporate new information, altering our perception of the world around us.

So, our perception of static scenes is actually not static at all; it is being altered constantly! That boulangerie we pass on the way to class is not perceived by our brains in exactly the same manner every day.

Portrait of a Woman by Paul Cezanne (Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

That leads me to wonder: especially when looking at one of Cézanne’s paintings—since he left so much for the viewer’s mind to fill in—do we ever experience the same thing twice?  This may very well be the most intriguing thing about his work, making it both timeless and malleable. A perfect excuse to visit the Musée d’Orsay just one more time.  The unfortunate result is only that this “museum fatigue” may become an increasingly common affliction. However, it’s likely already a common experience for all the museum-goers of the world, and I’m not afraid. It certainly won’t deter me from absorbing all of the Post-Impressionism art I can while I’m here!

 

References:

Butts, D.A., Goldman, M.S. (2006). Tuning curves, neuronal variability, and sensory coding. PLOS Biology. 4:92. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040092.

Gawne, T. (2015). The responses of V1 cortical neurons to flashed presentations of orthogonal single lines and edges. Journal of Neurophysiology. 113:2676-2681. doi: 10.1152/jn.00940.2014

Gilman, B. I. (1916). Museum Fatigue. The Scientific Monthly. 2:62–74.

Hofer, S. B., Mrsic-Flogel, T. D., Bonhoefer, T. & Hubener, M. (2009). Experience leaves a lasting structural trace in cortical circuits. Nature. 457:313–317.

Jeon, B. B., Swain, A.D., Good, J. T., Chase, S. M., Kuhlman, S.J. (2018). Feature selectivity is stable in primary visual cortex across a range of spatial frequencies. Nature. 8:15288. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-33633-2.

Mitani, A., Komiyama, T. (2018). Real-time processing of two-photon calcium imaging data including lateral motion artifact correction. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics. 12:98. doi: 10.3389/fninf.2018.00098

Tsunoda, K., Yamane, Y., Nishizaki, M., Tanifuji, M. (2001). Complex objects are represented in macaque inferotemporal cortex by the combination of feature columns. Nature Neuroscience. 4:832-838. doi: 10.1038/90547.

 

Image links:

https://www.tripsavvy.com/thmb/l0SeupBCtJWyVCf7U_I4BGsPql8=/960×0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/8414359797_20e28f27f2_o-56a403d25f9b58b7d0d4f0e6.jpg

https://www.sortiraparis.com/images/55/1467/108625-jeu-de-piste-gratuit-au-musee-d-orsay.jpg

https://www.thescienceofpsychotherapy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/bigstock-Female-Occipital-Lobe-Brain.png

https://slideplayer.com/slide/6900016/23/images/4/Figure+4.1+%28a%29+Side+view+of+the+visual+system%2C+showing+the+three+major+sites+along+the+primary+visual+pathway+where+processing+takes+place%3A+the+eye%2C+the+lateral+geniculate+nucleus%2C+and+the+visual+receiving+area+of+the+cortex..jpg

https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/656892/1571903/restricted

Hyperlinked videos and sites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZDAwXh54is

https://goo.gl/maps/GM2ZURPTLpia3V7b9

https://www.paulcezanne.org/

 

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Do we see as well as we think we see?

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 2 comments

Picture of the sky over Pont du Gard

On the first day of Arts on the Brain, we were told to write freely about the prompt “What color is the sky?” I immediately remembered a podcast about a man, Guy Deutscher, who asked his daughter every day what color the sky is, and she didn’t answer blue. The podcast by Jad Abumrad and Jim Gleick starts off by talking about Homer and his lack of the word blue in his texts. It then goes onto talking about other old texts that don’t mention blue. It then goes into talking about the order that colors enter languages and says that blue is always the last one and that the theory was that it had to do with having the ability to make the color. They then talked about another person who brought a test to a group of people without the word for blue and that they had trouble identifying the blue box from green boxes. This seemed like proof that language impacts perception. They then got to Deutscher’s experiment with his daughter. They made sure that no one told her the sky was blue but made sure she did know the color blue. At first, she refused to answer the question about what color it was until one day she answered white and eventually she said blue. This seemed to answer why languages wouldn’t find it incredibly important to add a word for the color blue.

This made me wonder, how much does language impact perception? Do French people experience the world differently than I do? So many people speak more than one language here, unlike in America, and would that impact your perception as well?

Photo from https://theophthalmologist.com/fileadmin/_processed_/0/a/csm_0614-201-brain_b506a2a191.png

Broca’s and Wernike’s areas, outlined above, are two of the major regions associated with speech. The visual cortex at the back of the brain is where the majority of visual processing happens. At first, it appears that the visual cortex is so far away from the rest of the sensory processing and anything involving language. However, everything in the brain travels through multiple areas in the brain. Here is the path that light takes after entering the eye:

Photo from http://brainmind.com/images/VisualCortexOptic.jpg

Once the sight has been processed by the visual cortex, it then projects out to other regions of the brain.


Photo from https://nba.uth.tmc.edu/neuroscience/m/s2/images/html5/s2_15_10.jpg

Language and speech also move around to different regions like in the picture below.

Photo from https://michellepetersen76.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/redrawing-language-map-of-brain-neuroinnovations.png

With all of this and other information moving through the brain, it doesn’t seem super farfetched to me that language could impact our perception. Bhatara et al. (2015) showed that learning a second language would impact rhythm perception in native French speakers. Work by Ardila et al. (2015) shows that one region of the brain has to do with both recognition and adding a word to what you see. They also showed that this region connects with regions that play roles in thinking, categorization, and memory.

More recent research by He et al. (2019) compared color perception between Mongolian and Mandarin speakers. According to the study, both languages only have one word for light versus dark green. However, Mongolian divides light and dark blue into two different words while Mandarin only has one word for light and dark blue. They showed the subjects greens and blues and asked them to divide them into one of the 2 or 3 categories. They were then asked to sort the colors so that similar ones were together. The Mongolian speakers grouped the colors more closely together than the Mandarin speakers did. They also did an experiment where they timed how long it took the participants to find which color was different than the rest and found differences between the two groups. These experiments further show that language does have an impact on how we perceive color.

It would be interesting to find out if language or culture plays more of an impact on color perception. However, because the two heavily influence each other and are nearly impossible to completely separate, it would be impossible to know which plays a larger role. I would also be interested to know if language’s impact on color perception means that I would see artwork differently than a native speaker of a different language. Did all of the artists that we’re learning about in Arts on the Brain see their paintings differently than I do?  Would a bilingual person categorize colors according to their first language or the language they speak with the most color terms? Would common terms like light blue vs dark blue play a role or would they both be considered blue? I think the impact that language can have on perception is fascinating and will definitely keep it in mind the next time I’m looking at paintings in a museum.

Works Cited

Ardila, A., Bernal, B., & Rosselli, M. (2015). Language and visual perception associations: meta-analytic connectivity modeling of Brodmann area 37. Behavioural neurology, 2015, 565871. doi:10.1155/2015/565871

Bhatara, A., Yeung, H. H., & Nazzi, T. (2015). Foreign language learning in French speakers is associated with rhythm perception, but not with melody perception. [Abstract]. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41(2), 277-282. doi:10.1037/a0038736

He, H., Li, J., Xiao, Q., Jiang, S., Yang, Y., & Zhi, S. (2019). Language and Color Perception: Evidence From Mongolian and Chinese Speakers. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 551. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00551

Radiolab – Why Isn’t the Sky Blue? [Jules Davidoff and Guy Deutscher] [Audio blog review]. (2018, January 2). Retrieved June 9, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um6j_WRDggs

 

Pictures:

https://theophthalmologist.com/fileadmin/_processed_/0/a/csm_0614-201-brain_b506a2a191.png

http://brainmind.com/images/VisualCortexOptic.jpg

https://nba.uth.tmc.edu/neuroscience/m/s2/images/html5/s2_15_10.jpg

https://michellepetersen76.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/redrawing-language-map-of-brain-neuroinnovations.png

 

 

 

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What do Welders and Van Gogh have in common?

Posted on June 10, 2019 by | 3 comments

(Sounds like a bad joke, but I promise there is an answer.)

Recently in class we talked about the interesting life of Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh had many health problems, one of which he is infamous for: cutting off his own ear. Besides that, he was also afflicted with hallucinations, anxiety, mania, and delirium, just to name a few. The ultimate diagnosis regarding his mental state was never made clear but Van Gogh also had other problems not related to mental health. One problem concerned his vision and the yellow tint that is present in most of his work. There are several circulating hypotheses that describe why this is.

(Yellow) Vase with Fifteen (Yellow) Sunflowers by Van Gogh

Some say this yellow characteristic is attributable to artistic preference. Paul Gauguin, a friend of Van Gogh’s once commented on Van Gogh’s excessive use of the color yellow stating: “Oh yes, he loved yellow, this good Vincent… those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul” (Marmor and Ravin, 2009). Other experts attribute this characteristic to possible digitalis intoxication, which causes xanthopsia, a color deficiency (Lee, 1981). What exactly is digitalis? Digitalis purpurea commonly known as foxglove, is a plant with tubular flowers which is now known to be toxic to humans. Today the active ingredient in the plant (digoxin) is used to treat heart rhythm irregularities in small quantities (“Digitalis toxicity”, 2019). However, back in the day, digitalis was used to treat epilepsy, which Van Gogh was diagnosed with by Dr. Gatchet.

Portrait of Dr. Gatchet with a foxglove plant

Xanthopsia is an example of an acquired color vision deficiency. The possibility of acquiring a color vision deficiency is also demonstrated in one study that examines the color vision deficiency prevalence in welders. Welders are usually exposed to a range of light waves including UV rays to infra-red rays, and are also exposed to various gaseous emissions (Heydarian et al., 2017). The authors of this study wondered how this constant exposure to these substances have impacted the vision of the workers. This study was done by comparing the vision of 50 randomly selected male welders from Zahedan city, who had welded for at least 4 years and were around 29 years of age, to 50 randomly selected healthy non-welder men who worked in a hospital and were around 28 years of age.  The color vision of these 100 men were tested with a Farnsworth D-15 test which classifies the type of dyschromatopsia, or color vision disorder, that is being expressed.

Farnsworth D15 Color Test Apparatus

The results show that the prevalence of color vision disorder in welders was significantly higher than that of non-welders (Heydarian et al., 2017). Additionally, there exists a positive relationship between years spent employed as a welder/average working hours and the prevalence of color vision deficiency (Heydarian et al., 2017). Interestingly, blue-yellow impairment is more common (although not significantly) than red-green impairment, which is found to be a common factor in occupation related color vision deficiency overall (Mergler and Blain, 1987). The reason why blue-yellow impairment in occupation related color vision deficiency is more prevalent is not exactly clear but would be a great topic to study further (Gobba and Cavalleri, 2003).

In the end, while we know that Van Gogh did not experience occupation related color vision deficiency, he may have had digitalis induced color vision deficiency. So there you go, both welders and Van Gogh have color vision deficiency in common.

References

Digitalis toxicity. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2019, from MedlinePlus website: https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000165.htm

Gobba, F., & Cavalleri, A. (2003). Color vision impairment in workers exposed to neurotoxic chemicals. Neurotoxicology, 24, 693-702.

Heydarian, S., Mahjoob, M., Gholami, A., Veysi, S., & Mohammadi, M. (2017). Prevalence of color vision deficiency among arc welders. Journal of Optometry, 10(2), 130-134.

Lee, T. C. (1981). Van Gogh’s vision: Digitalis intoxication? JAMA, 245(7), 727-729.

Marmor, M., & Ravin, J. (2009). Artist’s eyes. New York, NY: Abrams.

Mergler, D., & Blain, L. (1987). Assessing color vision loss among solvent-exposed workers. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 12(2), 195-203.

Picture 1: https://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/586/Still-Life:-Vase-with-Fifteen-Sunflowers.html

Picture 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Dr._Gachet

Picture 3: https://www.ophthalmic.com.sg/product/farnsworth-d15-color-test/

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