Come with me and you'll be
In a world of pure imagination… —Willy Wonka
I’ve often wondered how many bakers and cooks stay slim. Is it something in their genes? In their will power? As a kid, I peddled past Schaller’s Bakery on my bike, slowing down to take in the smell of fresh-baked bread that wafted into the street. I thought of the bakers constantly enveloped in that olfactory paradise as having a pretty good job. What I wasn’t thinking about was the sensory adaptation response that I also experienced anytime I went into the bakery or into a donut shop and how that wonderful smell, though a potent attractant upon first encounter, dulls with overexposure.
It makes sense that our sense of smell deadens with continuous exposure to an aromatic. If our neurons fire with a stimulus and maintain their activity on that stimulus, they won’t be able to respond to the next stimulus. It seems to be a safety mechanism built into our senses. Wrapped in the smell of a bakery in a peak response that does not diminish with time, a baker might be tempted to continuously sample his product, gaining weight through over consumption. But more importantly olfactory nerves devoted exclusively and intensely to one smell would not be able to sense the smell of smoke should the bakery catch fire. Humans can’t stay in some state of sensory peak without losing the ability to respond to new stimuli.
Apparently and according to Willy Wong, there’s a consilience among animal studies: Simply put: peripheral sensory adaptation response systems are similar across the animal kingdom. The modes of sensory reception, such as chemoreception, mechanoreception, photoreception that are wired to the brain lose their effect over time. Thermoreception, however, appears to differ though the pattern is closer to the other modalities for rising temperature than it is for cooling temperatures.
Wong points out that the base for receiving a new stimulus is the steady-state spontaneous rate (SR) that is present before the reception of a new stimulus. I’m in that SR on my bike before I peddle past Schaller’s. When I encounter the bakery smell, I quickly rise to a peak rate (PR) of response to the olfactory stimulus. That intense state then weakens to become the subsequent steady-state (SS) response. The formula for this is in words is:
The Final Steady State equals the square root of the Peak Response times the Initial Steady State.
I suppose that in driving through Hershey, Pennsylvania, each of us would experience what I experienced as I peddled past Schaller’s Bakery. Our olfactory sensors in Hershey are leavened by a suffusion of chocolate. Willy Wong explains that how we respond in Hershey differs little from how a Drosophilia responds in a fruit factory. The smell would drive us to sample the chocolate, but with continued exposure, our desire wanes. We just can’t keep eating either fresh bread or chocolate because our physiological responses to those stimuli decrease after we rapidly reach our peak rate of response.
So, let’s take this to another realm of neuronal activity, to, as Descartes might say, that duality of mind and body. Unlike our senses, which dull over time in response to a stimulus, our mental responses appear to obey another pattern with respect to ideology. Once stimulated by an idea, we appear often to maintain a steady diet of thought with respect to politics, philosophy, and theology.
Once stimulated by an idea, we carry a high level of response well past the place or moment of stimulation. And unlike the localization of a smell, such as just outside or inside the bakery or the chocolate factory, our intellects appear to bike along a street that has multiple Schaller’s bakeries or Hershey’s chocolate factories. There’s a bakery or chocolate factory on every block we pedal past. Thus, our neurons peak as we tie everything to a single ideology. This seems to be a universal pattern among so many of us today as almost all topics become ideological stimuli.
Would that our minds could learn from our senses and grow tired of the dominant stimulus. The lesson would translate to our emotions, dulling them to the stimuli that drive so many of us to anger on block after block as we pedal our way along the streets of our lives. In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Willy sings, “Come with me, and you’ll be/ in a world of pure imagination.” Once we reach our peak mental response, we enter a factory of imagination, where what is real for us isn’t necessarily real for those around us. We carry that stimulus as a constant whereas others might respond to it only momentarily and then pedal on, not to return to the sidewalk outside the bakery or chocolate factory.
Any advice from this?
Sure, the next time a recurrent ideological stimulus fires those emotional responses, think of yourself on a bike pedaling past a bakery or chocolate factory, and realize that the stimuli don’t waft from all the storefronts along the streets you pass. But should you return to the ideological stimulus in the bike ride of your mind, to that place in your pure imagination where the intensity of feeling derives from a single smell, think of how your senses respond to overexposure to physical stimuli. The thought might lessen your desire for ideological bread or chocolate.
Note:
*Wong, Willy. 22 October 2021. Consilience in the Peripheral Sensory Adaptation Response. Front. Hum. Neurosci., 22 October 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.727551 Online at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.727551/full
In a world of pure imagination… —Willy Wonka
I’ve often wondered how many bakers and cooks stay slim. Is it something in their genes? In their will power? As a kid, I peddled past Schaller’s Bakery on my bike, slowing down to take in the smell of fresh-baked bread that wafted into the street. I thought of the bakers constantly enveloped in that olfactory paradise as having a pretty good job. What I wasn’t thinking about was the sensory adaptation response that I also experienced anytime I went into the bakery or into a donut shop and how that wonderful smell, though a potent attractant upon first encounter, dulls with overexposure.
It makes sense that our sense of smell deadens with continuous exposure to an aromatic. If our neurons fire with a stimulus and maintain their activity on that stimulus, they won’t be able to respond to the next stimulus. It seems to be a safety mechanism built into our senses. Wrapped in the smell of a bakery in a peak response that does not diminish with time, a baker might be tempted to continuously sample his product, gaining weight through over consumption. But more importantly olfactory nerves devoted exclusively and intensely to one smell would not be able to sense the smell of smoke should the bakery catch fire. Humans can’t stay in some state of sensory peak without losing the ability to respond to new stimuli.
Apparently and according to Willy Wong, there’s a consilience among animal studies: Simply put: peripheral sensory adaptation response systems are similar across the animal kingdom. The modes of sensory reception, such as chemoreception, mechanoreception, photoreception that are wired to the brain lose their effect over time. Thermoreception, however, appears to differ though the pattern is closer to the other modalities for rising temperature than it is for cooling temperatures.
Wong points out that the base for receiving a new stimulus is the steady-state spontaneous rate (SR) that is present before the reception of a new stimulus. I’m in that SR on my bike before I peddle past Schaller’s. When I encounter the bakery smell, I quickly rise to a peak rate (PR) of response to the olfactory stimulus. That intense state then weakens to become the subsequent steady-state (SS) response. The formula for this is in words is:
The Final Steady State equals the square root of the Peak Response times the Initial Steady State.
I suppose that in driving through Hershey, Pennsylvania, each of us would experience what I experienced as I peddled past Schaller’s Bakery. Our olfactory sensors in Hershey are leavened by a suffusion of chocolate. Willy Wong explains that how we respond in Hershey differs little from how a Drosophilia responds in a fruit factory. The smell would drive us to sample the chocolate, but with continued exposure, our desire wanes. We just can’t keep eating either fresh bread or chocolate because our physiological responses to those stimuli decrease after we rapidly reach our peak rate of response.
So, let’s take this to another realm of neuronal activity, to, as Descartes might say, that duality of mind and body. Unlike our senses, which dull over time in response to a stimulus, our mental responses appear to obey another pattern with respect to ideology. Once stimulated by an idea, we appear often to maintain a steady diet of thought with respect to politics, philosophy, and theology.
Once stimulated by an idea, we carry a high level of response well past the place or moment of stimulation. And unlike the localization of a smell, such as just outside or inside the bakery or the chocolate factory, our intellects appear to bike along a street that has multiple Schaller’s bakeries or Hershey’s chocolate factories. There’s a bakery or chocolate factory on every block we pedal past. Thus, our neurons peak as we tie everything to a single ideology. This seems to be a universal pattern among so many of us today as almost all topics become ideological stimuli.
Would that our minds could learn from our senses and grow tired of the dominant stimulus. The lesson would translate to our emotions, dulling them to the stimuli that drive so many of us to anger on block after block as we pedal our way along the streets of our lives. In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Willy sings, “Come with me, and you’ll be/ in a world of pure imagination.” Once we reach our peak mental response, we enter a factory of imagination, where what is real for us isn’t necessarily real for those around us. We carry that stimulus as a constant whereas others might respond to it only momentarily and then pedal on, not to return to the sidewalk outside the bakery or chocolate factory.
Any advice from this?
Sure, the next time a recurrent ideological stimulus fires those emotional responses, think of yourself on a bike pedaling past a bakery or chocolate factory, and realize that the stimuli don’t waft from all the storefronts along the streets you pass. But should you return to the ideological stimulus in the bike ride of your mind, to that place in your pure imagination where the intensity of feeling derives from a single smell, think of how your senses respond to overexposure to physical stimuli. The thought might lessen your desire for ideological bread or chocolate.
Note:
*Wong, Willy. 22 October 2021. Consilience in the Peripheral Sensory Adaptation Response. Front. Hum. Neurosci., 22 October 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.727551 Online at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.727551/full
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