Moving through the Senses

We are moving very quickly through the senses:  perhaps too quickly.  I warned the monks that I am providing only an overview of neuroscience.  Each of the topics I discuss with the monks for one or two hours can be a complete separate class lasting several weeks or months.

Our journey into vision ended with depth perception.  We compared the placement of the eyes of different animals.  Predators have their eyes on the front of their faces while prey animals have their eyes on the side or top of their heads.  Having two eyes with overlapping visual fields helps animals with depth perception. 

We played a game to demonstrate this concept.  I divided the monks into three teams.  Each person on a team got a paper clip.  About three feet away, I set up a paper plate.  The monks had to toss their paper clips on to the paper plate using two eyes and then we did the game again when they used only one eye.  The game was very competitive and the data showed that two eyes were better than one. 

Back in the classroom, I mentioned that I played basketball behind the temple yesterday and that I was watching them play the paper clip game.  I said I wanted the people who landed a clip on the plate on my team the next time I played basketball. Although I was just joking about this, but the monks took me up on my offer and they all now want to play basketball!  I said I will try to arrange a time to play tomorrow before dinner.