Neuro 🧠

Hi and welcome to the Neuro Channel 🧠 - a space where we dive into the wonders of the brain.

The brain is a fascinating organ and there's just so much to learn from it! In this channel, we welcome anyone with an interest in the brain to share interesting stories, facts or news about what they have discovered about the brain!

🧩 Today’s Story: A Case of Perception

This story comes from the amazing book "A User's guide to the Brain" by Dr. John Ratey ( a highly recommended read!!). The book is full of short chapters exploring different aspects of how our brain function.

👧 Meet Rickie

Rickie was a bright, lively young girl. But by the age of three, she started to experience stranger and unexplainale things. One day, while standing in front of a giant picture window, she told her dad, "The trees are falling down" It wasn't just a one-off comment - throughout her childhood, she kept having these odd visual experiences.

To others, Rickie was labelled as a "stranger/special" kid. Her parents had her tested, and all results came back normal- her eyesight and cognitive abilities were within the average range. But something was clearly off, even though no one could pinpoint it. People started to dismiss her, and eventually, she was even admitted to a mental hospital and was diagnosed with schizophrenia (which was a misdiagnosis).

👁️ The Breakthrough

Years later, a developmental optometrist named Dr. Kaplan examined Rickie and discovered something critical: her retinas went into spasm when exposed to bright light. For most people, our eyes adjust or shift away naturally from bright stimuli, but Rickie's eyes 'locked up', causing her vision to become narrow and distorted-like seeing through a pinhole or sitting inside a box.

This condition, which had gone undetected for years, explained all the bizarre experiences Rickie had described. What was once thought to be psychological was actually a visual perception disorder. WIth the right diagnosis, Rickie was finally given specialised glassed and began a jounrey of recovery. Her brain (like ours)- remarkably adaptable- began to reorganise how it processed visual input.

🧠 Perception Shapes Reality

Rickie's story shows us something powerful: perception is unique to each and every one of us.

Rickie thought what she was seeing was somehow 'normal' because it was all she knew. But because her experience didn't match the norm, she was misunderstood and dismissed throughout the first half of her life.

Her distorted perception led to struggles with reading, learning and social interaction-because our brains build everything from the raw data that perception gives them. And if that data is distorted, so is everything downstream.

💬 Two Insightful Quotes

Dr. Ratey offers two thought-provoking quotes that really bring this idea home:

In other words: when our perception is flawed, it throws off everything else-our thinking, emotions, learning and behaviour. The brain works with the information it receives, so if that input is 'glitched', everything built from it is affected.

This is the hopeful part. Because our brains are plastic-constantly changing and reshaping-we have the power to improve our mental and cognitive health by becoming mroe aware how how we perceive the world. With the right awareness, tool and support, even distorted perception can be retrained, and the brain can rewire itself.

🧠 Final Thought

Rickie's story reminds us just how powerful-and sometimes fragile- our perception can be. The brain is constantly shaping and reshaping itself based on how we experience the world. By staying curious, open-minded, and aware, we can better understand ourselves and others.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more!