The Women Who was Perpetually Falling Relate and Review

In an excerpt from The Brain That Changes Itself, written by Norman Doidge follows a scientist named Paul Bah-y-Rita, who has dedicated his research in aiding people to regain sensory control. It explains how he was able to help a woman named Cheryl Schiltz, who would perpetually fall because of her damaged vestibular apparatus. She shared that "There have been times... when [she] literally lose[s] the sense of the feeling of the floor ... and an imaginary trapdoor opens up and swallows [her]"(2). I found this extremely shocking because I could never imagine not knowing the feeling of the floor. It seems scary to think that you could feel like you're floating because your balance has been so damaged. Bach-y-Rita helped Cheryl solve her problem. He developed a hat for her to wear that sends electrical signals through her tongue to allow her to balance again. The hat worked and after wearing it Cheryl could balance normally for short periods of time: "Cheryl wore the hat for two minutes and the residual effect lasted about forty seconds. Then they went up to about twenty minutes, expecting a residual effect of just under seven minutes. But instead of lasting a third of the time, it lasted triple the time, a full hour"(8). I found this very intriguing because just after wearing this device, Cheryl was able to have normal senses for short spurts of time. This is amazing considering the fact that she had only 2% usage of her vestibular apparatus. Later in the article, the narrator explains that "old people are more frightened of falling than being mugged. A third of the elderly fall, and because they fear falling, they stay home, don't use their limbs, an become more physically frail"(7). I found this very surprising because getting mugged seems like a more reasonable fear to have than falling. The irony to this excerpt is that they only are making their fear more prone to coming true since they make themselves weaker by not moving around. As the article goes on, it explains how Bach-y-Rita goes on to make more devices to aid in the senses and becomes very successful in doing so. This relates to what we are learning about in class because it has to do with the function of the brain and how the different parts can be manipulated with machines to work again.