PSYC 382: Bálint's Syndrome [Loyola University Chicago 2011]

A rare collection of neuropsychological impairments, Bálint's Syndrome consists of extreme attentional deficits that dramatically hinder everyday function. Simultanagnosia, ocular apraxia, and optic ataxia describe an individual's inabilities to isolate occluding objects perceptually in a single visual scene, control voluntary movements of gaze fixation, and coordinate motor movements with visual information, respectively. It is when these deficits cannot be explained by motor, somatosensory, visual field, or perceptual acuity deficits that they are attributed to ambiguous, higher-order problems rooted in attention. A Bálint's Syndrome patient's reality could be entirely two-dimensional, where either everything is in his or her "attentional spotlight" or nothing is -- we can really only speculate what these individuals actually see, think, and feel.

Based on discussion in class, we thought that the (hypothetical) situations where Bálint's Syndrome patients could best manage their attentional deficits -- empty, blank rooms with a single object in sight -- were very intriguing but unrealistic compared to real world settings. What if this is what a Bálint's Syndrome patient's life came down to in order to preserve basic independent functions? Confined to a living in almost empty, whitewashed rooms, with some sort of perfectly crafted obsessive-compulsive-like system to preserve attentional order (kind of like Leonard's system of photographs, notes, and tattoos in Memento), a Bálint's Syndrome patient and his or her eerie reality, we think, could be artistically captured through film.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Bálint's
• Syndrome
• Psychology
• Cognitive
• Neuroscience
• Brian
• Sweis
• Eric
• Lee
• Melissa
• Malka
• Matt
• Kmeicik
• Memento
• Loyola
• University
• Chicago
• awesome
• weird
• art
• trippy
• mind
• bending

[grajales05]

Awsome Video!!! Please do more!!! XD