Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2012 March 9

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 9

Deaf Thoughts

In general, English speaker's think in english, Spanish speaker's speak in spanish, and French speaker's speak in french etc. We develop from a baby, and initially, we cannot understand what we are told to do, (Speaking as correlating action to object,) because we are unfamiliar to sounds being applied to action and object. In lack of a better explanation, we think how we speak. Thinking is speaking thoes sounds inside your brain to apply them to action and object. So if you are born deaf and never are exposed to sound, how can you effectively create thought and apply it to action and object? Antoine Lavoisier's theory of conservation of mass states that matter cannot be created or destroyed. You cannot create somthing out of absoloutly nothing. My point being, you cannot create sound without having a refrence to a sound to begin with. So in conclusion, my question is what does a person that is born deaf think? Is it silent, or do they eventually develop a way to organize thought as a person who is not deaf does? Please explain if possible. Thank you; Pierce — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pierceedward (talk • contribs) 04:02, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

While I think in English, I don't hear myself think in English. Language is not synonymous with sound, and so I expect that deaf people process their thoughts in much the same way the rest of us do (perhaps with a lot of signing mixed in). — Lomn 04:45, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

That's a great question! I imagine they learn language through sign language and would somehow incorporate that into their thought process. What would happen if a def adults hearing was restored and they learned to TALK? Whoa, that's blowing my mind, lol.. This can get REALLY philosophical. Spoken language it self is called symbolic communication (not a great article yet), because when you say a word, like "house" for example, you aren't communicating the concept of house, but a symbolic representation of the concept. When the listener hears "house", they don't THINK the word house, but they think the concept of house. You have used a symbol to communicate a concept. In here is where it gets DEEPLY fuzzy, when you THINK of a house, you don't actually think of the word "house", but because our thoughts are so closely intertwined with language, we can't really conceive how the two could be "UN" intertwined, the only way we have to effectively communicate the concept of house is with language, but that doesn't mean it's the ONLY way. There's a really fascinating concept of "post symbolic communication" which is what might happen once we have really good brain machine interfaces, where we could communicate to each other not using words, but using actual thoughts, concepts and emotions. THAT blows my mind. Sorry if that's all a garbled unintelligible mess, it's just stuff I've read about. Vespine (talk) 05:15, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Only loosely relevant but looking into this I came across Hellen keller, an extraordinary woman who was born deaf blind, and no doubt The Miracle Worker based on her life would be fascinating. Vespine (talk) 05:27, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

She was not born blind and deaf. She became blind and deaf due to an illness at the age of 1 year and 7 months. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 19:55, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

You can also think in pictures. In fact, visualization is often helpful for solving certain problems which can't be easily solved with words alone. The classic "monkey stacking the boxes to reach the banana" experiment must require this type of thought, for example. Now, if you are both deaf and blind, then that does pose a real challenge. I suspect that the brains of such people often don't reach their full potential. StuRat (talk) 05:32, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

The short answer, born-deaf people think in sign language if they know it: [1]. LukeSurl ^{t c} 12:14, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

"Antoine Lavoisier's theory of conservation of mass" has nothing to do with it. Deaf people can be taught to speak (sounds) - see Oralism, Visible Speech - as well as to read/write (see this earlier question). They can still handle words as tokens/symbols even if they don't hear them. Sign language seems to be easier to learn, being picked up naturally (e.g. see Nicaraguan Sign Language), but even without it the deaf can acquire language. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:25, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Here's a thing to remember: our brain has specialized parts that are all about language acquisition. We are built (in a sense) to learn languages. Deaf people have these mental functions as well — they are not specifically oral in their workings. Conservation of mass has exactly zero to do with it, and frankly, purely philosophical approaches to how language is acquired are going to be really quite impoverished if you black box the brain. Our brain is not a purely rational instrument: it has a lot of functions that are hard-wired by evolution to make things like language acquisition easy and flexible. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:44, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

To restate the question - can deaf people make use of auditory memory, and if not, does this create a deficit in certain problem solving? To give an example, there is a certain sort of problem in silly computer games which I remember working once or twice long ago. A person has to work out a sequence of symbols to cause some action, and finds out somehow that some are right and wrong by various actions. They then are entered back in by some direct or indirect means. Only so much time and so many tries are allowed, and a person has to somehow remember what the string of symbols is. The symbols are not familiar- they're like letters in some strange language. The way in which I solve these puzzles - the only way I know - is to use auditory memory. I name each symbol as a different letter or number, and once I've come to see each symbol as a particular one, I have no trouble remembering that. Then when I see the order of symbols I have to use, I say the string out loud - though thinking it would work much the same way, only weaker. Then I can enter the string at my leisure, relying on the auditory trace to tell me, for sure, what order the symbols were in. But what would a deaf person do with the puzzle? Wnt (talk) 00:57, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Presumably the reason you find it easier to remember things once you assign them a name is because you can hear, and thus have developed a reliance on auditory memory. If you couldn't, then presumably you would have developed more of a reliance on visual memory. The task you describe actually sounds easier with visual memory, as no mapping between visuals and names is needed, so people who rely on visual memory should have an advantage. StuRat (talk) 01:09, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm... maybe this [2] gets at it but I'll have to finagle a look at the text to know. Wnt (talk) 01:02, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

The main reason I refrenced Lavioisier is to give an example to my thinking and reasoning in reguard to my own question. I realize mass and matter have absoloutly nothing to do with it, but I think of it in the sense that somthing can't be created or destroyed out of nothing.That somthing being created, (In which I presumed impossible for a deaf person to do,) was the language that we hear in our head that we apply to symbals etc. The reason I asked the question is because I do not understand the concepts of how we process information in our minds. Thinking we must learn the word in order to comprehend and think it in our mind, it made sense to me that a sound is necessarry to do so. That sound being the "somthing" to create thought. None the less, can anyone explain how it is a deaf person thinks? It's hard to wrap my head around the concept of thinking without reliance on auditory memory. - Pierce — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pierceedward (talk • contribs) 06:15, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

It might help to note that we essentially still have earlier versions of the brain within our own, like the reptilian brain. Those parts use the same thought processes as they do in a reptile, which doesn't require language. That provides a kicking-off point for our more complex thought processes to develop in the higher brain. For example, the reptilian brain can tell when we are in danger and formulate the proper fight-or-flight response. Later, upon reflection, the higher brain might tell us what to do to avoid that danger in the future. StuRat (talk) 06:47, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Our Triune brain article argues that like most pop science beliefs, the reptilian brain is a myth. Henry^Flower 11:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Oliver Sacks's book Seeing Voices might be worth checking out, if you're trying to "wrap [your] head around the concept of thinking without reliance on auditory memory". It's been a while since I read it, but I remember being amazed at some of the descriptions of what it is like to think in a visual language. Actually I "read" the audiobook version, read by Sacks in a very enthusiastic, excited and engaging way. Looks like the audiobook version is available used or via audible. Pfly (talk) 12:16, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

in the absence of modern genetic techniques (recombination, forward screens, etc.) how did biochemists elucidate biosyntheses

Take the urea cycle, citric acid cycle or the biosynthesis of cocaine. Just how did they figure out how many ATP was required for a certain step (or prove that), etc.? Surely they couldn't "stop" a reaction at a certain stage to observe it, perhaps by knocking out certain enzymes. 72.229.63.12 (talk) 20:29, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Extremely careful measurements. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 23:15, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, bear in mind that isolation of particular proteins was possible (e.g. column chromatography) long before the genes coding those proteins were known. So it was possible to study a pure protein and figure out what it did in a controlled situation. Note also that the reaction could (usually was) studied before the pure protein could be had; the idea is, an "activity" turns up somewhere in the fractions you elute from a column. Radiolabelled chemicals were available pretty early, and they also greatly facilitated biochemical work by making it easier to see which atom came from where in a reaction mechanism. I'm leaving many things out - it was a vast field, even way back then. Wnt (talk) 00:49, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

A popular method was to use a collection of natural mutant strains of yeast or bacteria, and see which media they could grow on as various supplementary nutrients were removed. You'd often find that some mutants could survive on anything from A to E, while others needed something from B to E, C to E, D to E, or they absolutely needed E and nothing else worked. From that, a scientist would surmise that A→B→C→D→E was the order of the biochemical mechanism, and that E was the actual molecule the cell needed to live (everything else being taken in for the sole purpose of making E). Using replica plating, first described in the early 50s, screening hundreds of strains at a time for such mutations became quite easy. Many biochemical pathways were worked out this way, and it turned out that many of the pathways in yeast and bacteria are similar to some of the pathways in humans. Another possibility was to take defective organisms and look for chemicals that abnormally accumulated in media, and under what conditions. For a human example, it was discovered that phenylpyruvic acid accumulates in the urine of individuals with phenylketonuria, but only on the ingestion on phenylalanine. I believe that specific pathway was already suspected before the cause of the disease was discovered, but it's an example of the kinds of things you could have worked with. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:36, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Acid-citrate-dextrose anticoagulant buffer

In Acid-citrate-dextrose anticoagulant buffer, what is the purpose of the dextrose? ike9898 (talk) 20:49, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Will blood plasma clot without red blood cells?

If you collected blood, and immediately removed the red blood cells, would the plasma still clot on its own? Do red cells play an important role in clotting? ike9898 (talk) 21:28, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it clots. To collect plasma, blood is collected in tubes containing anticoagulants like EDTA or citrate, which bind the calcium in the sample, reventing clotting from occuring. The tubes are centriguge and the plasma is separated from the red blood cells. Clotting can be induced in the plasma fraction by adding excess calcium. Red blood cells don't play a major role in clotting. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 21:33, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, they play no role at all in clotting. Every single clotting factor is found solely in the blood plasma. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 23:17, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I think they do play a passive role. After all, they are fairly large cells and will tend to become part of the clot (otherwise the clots wouldn't be red, right ?). StuRat (talk) 00:01, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

This was a great question. I knew the proteins were plasma proteins... never in my life thought about plasma by itself clotting though. There's a picture at [3] showing blood clots where part of the clot is red, and part is just plasma and so yellow. Wnt (talk) 00:45, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I think a good analogy might be red blood cells = bricks, and platelets and clotting factors = mortar. So, a normal clot is both bricks and mortar. But, like you could build a wall without bricks, using only mortar, you can also build a clot without red blood cells. It's not the usual form, but it is possible. StuRat (talk) 03:29, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! Good answer. ike9898 (talk) 19:29, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome.

Resolved