{"id":1313,"date":"2013-01-24T23:39:52","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T21:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swisswuff.ch\/tech\/?p=1313"},"modified":"2019-03-02T12:47:19","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T10:47:19","slug":"viewing-different-bodies-staring-at-different-bodies-who-knows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swisswuff.ch\/tech\/?p=1313","title":{"rendered":"Viewing different bodies, staring at different bodies [who knows]"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new USC [link<\/a>] study [1<\/a>]\u00a0is proposed to show that watching different bodies causes the brain’s network to process hard.<\/p>\n

Now, who’d a thunk that. I cannot say that comes as a surprise. While the study appears to examine what happens while<\/em> the brain “viewed” “different” bodies, we already have some good ideas about what happens after<\/em> the brain “viewed” “different” bodies.<\/p>\n

It is necessarily so, that, from experience alone,<\/em> we must conclude that those brains went absolutely ape shit before whatever it is that is documented here:\u00a0see, for example,\u00a0Aba<\/a>,\u00a0Goffman<\/a>,\u00a0Cloerkes<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0whoever else<\/a>.\u00a0All these often quite visible reactions to “viewing” “different” bodies require prior brain activity.<\/p>\n

More explicitly, before a person starts to feel stressed by an amputee’s presence, and before they start to exhibit sweating, aversion, disgust, helplessness or whatnot\u00a0(cf.\u00a0Goffman<\/a>,\u00a0Cloerkes<\/a>), their brains will light up. Before fetishists start to stare and get drawn into their own cycles of weirdness (cf. Aba<\/a>,\u00a0etc.<\/a>), these individuals’ brains – as we must assume – will start to spark and jolt. So even without fMRI, yes, there is them things going on for sure in them brains of them people staring at them amputees<\/a>. We knew that.<\/p>\n

It is in this day and age that they still go there and apply fMRI to these brains and, the results seem to show just that. But let us have a closer look what there is they really want to tell us.<\/p>\n

From the news blurb:<\/p>\n

According to the study’s lead author, the finding supports initiatives to include more individuals with physical differences in mainstream media — such as Sarah Herron, a contestant on ABC’s\u00a0The Bachelor<\/a>\u00a0this season, who was born with a foreshortened left arm.<\/em>\u00a0“Generally, it’s considered impolite to stare. But what these results suggest is that we need to look. It’s through this visual experience that we’re able to make sense of those different from ourselves,” said Sook-Lei Liew, who is the lead author of a paper on the research that appeared online this month in\u00a0NeuroImage.<\/em><\/p>\n

The study, in its essence, does not the mildest bit discriminate cold-hearted voyeurism from\u00a0emphatic\u00a0social learning experiences. From my personal experience, there never ever was any constructive social contact with just about anybody whose facial expression and stare matched that what the study suggests – overwhelmed visual activity when getting caught up in a baroque stare. Much rather, the folks where overwhelmed along the lines outlined above – see also references given – and subsequent attempts to do this or that followed these lines most of the time if not always. So, allowing ample stares as such, from a practical viewpoint, is not what is required to help others.<\/p>\n

To no surprise it is not at all conclusive from that \u00a0research that, as Sook-Lei Liew<\/a> proposes,…<\/p>\n