With all of its faculties, a human being can be thought of as an index of the whole universe. Therefore, we witness correlations between the processes taking place in the human body and in the universe. Accordingly, the world we live in has a correspondence to human biology. For example, the cyclical processes in the environment (water cycle, carbon cycle, etc.) ensure the continuous recycling of the same matter, hence the cleanliness of the habitat for all. Similarly, the human body includes mechanisms to cleanse itself from harmful and unnecessary materials.

Prior to the development of such an understanding, the prevailing attitude encouraged consuming natural resources and using the environment as a “trash can.” Even today, we live in a world that promotes excessive consumption of daily goods leading to accumulation of incredible amounts of trash. For example, in developed Western societies, an average family discards more than one ton of trash every year, which is mostly paper, packaging material, and kitchen waste.

Nevertheless, as we realize the importance of the recycling systems in nature and the multi-faceted harms of trash accumulation on the environment, recycling of conventional and technological waste is encouraged by collecting plastics, glass, paper, and tins. On a larger scale, recycling centers have been developed to minimize the damage to the environment and to meet the need for raw materials.

The recycling process consists of three main steps as depicted by the famous three-arrows symbol representing 1) the collection of materials, 2) the remanufacture of new materials from the collected ones, and 3) reselling or reusing as new products. Thus, recycling centers not only contribute to the economy, but also serve as clearance sites to maintain the harmony of the environment.

Cellular recycling through “fasting”

Similar to recycling centers at the macro level, there are recycling centers in the cellular level too. These centers have the duty to help with the digestion of cellular trash (i.e. damaged cellular organelles, misfolded proteins, toxic load) so that energy can be generated and raw material obtained for the construction of new cellular units. This recycling phenomenon was simply named as autophagy (i.e. self-eating) by cell biologists. What is interesting, though, is that autophagy is primarily activated or enhanced via fasting or food deprivation.

How autophagy works

Autophagy is a process that occurs when astarving cell starts to form double membrane containers through an orchestration of several proteins. These containers are called autophagic vesicles or autophagosomes ¹. Their main role is to target and collect cellular trash. Then, they start to fuse with lysosomes, the digestion centers of the cells, to degrade the trash into building blocks—amino acids. The amino acids can then be used both for the construction of new proteins needed by the cell and in the production of ATP, which is a source of energy for the cell.

The whole process corresponds to micro-scale representation of a real world recycling concept: collection, re-manufacture and resell/reuse. Through autophagy, a cell recycles its own material and obtains energy ².

Fasting: An emerging trend

With the discovery of mechanisms initiating autophagy and its involvement in various diseases such as cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, auto-immune diseases etc., autophagy has gained a unique significance that is progressively increasing ³. After the year 2000, the number of publications on autophagy-related research began to increase exponentially. Moreover, due to the increased conviction about the link between fasting and autophagy, fasting started to become a real trend in modern civilizations. Let’s examine a few of the important recent findings that reveal the relationship between autophagy and fasting.

In a study involving mice, the response to fasting was assessed in liver cells (hepatocytes) by tracking the presence of a protein (GFP-LC3) that indicates autophagy. It was seen that the lack of food, which is the source of energy, led to the disintegration of mitochondria, which are the power plants of the cells. Subsequently, the components that made up those mitochondria were re-utilized for the building of other necessary proteins⁴. These results indicate that unnecessary mitochondria were eliminated for the sake of recycling organic materials during fasting.

Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson, etc, are linked to the accumulation of trash in the brain cells, which is indicative of a lack of autophagy. Drugs developed for these diseases do not possess effective treatments since they are unable to penetrate into the brain cells (a concept known as the blood-brain barrier). During another study involving mice, in one track, animals were exposed to fasting, and in the other, their brain cells, (more precisely cortical neurons and Purkinje cells) were isolated and exposed to food deprivation. In both tracks, researchers observed that fasting enhanced autophagy, suggesting that fasting could be a simple, cheap, and safe therapeutic cure for prevention of neurodegenerative diseases ⁵.

In another study, this time involving a subset of kidney cells (proximal tubule cells), a lack of autophagy resulted in the accumulation of dysfunctional mitochondria and other cellular debris. As a result, the cells grew in size abnormally (hypertrophy), decreasing the functionality of the kidney. This suggested that autophagy was part of the continuous maintenance of proximal tubule cells and that inducing autophagy in the kidney may provide a novel therapeutic approach to minimize acute kidney injury ⁶.

As a final example, one more study revealing the association between autophagy and the immune response should be mentioned. It was found that the number of autophagic vesicles (chambers) in the macrophages, a subset of immune cells that are the first to perceive threats to our body, increased as a response to invading bacteria. These vesicles wrapped, sequestered, and digested the bacteria eaten by macrophages ⁷. Thus, fasting has the potential to improve the fighting ability of macrophages against invading pathogens by enhancing autophagic machinery.

Taken together, the autophagy process seems to be a recycling mechanism with minor variations depending on the cell type and activation triggers. Once initiated, it leads to a) reduced accumulation of cellular trash (toxic protein aggregates); b) an improved immune response for removing bacteria (intracellular pathogens); and c) the protection of the interior of the cell (cytosol). As one of the main stimulators of autophagy, fasting or food deprivation seems to be a way for improving health.

Next time you fast, keep in mind that while you are starving, your cells are feasting for your health. Just as the natural world is structured to continually cleanse and renew the earth, fasting seems to trigger similar processes inside the human body. While individuals may choose to fast for spiritual cleansing, their physical bodies experience a cleansing as well.

Abdullah Acar is freelance writer in the US with a special interest in biology.

References

1. Mizushima, N., et al., Autophagy fights disease through cellular self-digestion. Nature, 2008. 451(7182): p. 1069-75.
2. Mizushima, N. and M. Komatsu, Autophagy: renovation of cells and tissues. Cell, 2011. 147(4): p. 728-41.
3. Yang, Z. and D.J. Klionsky, Eaten alive: a history of macroautophagy. Nat Cell Biol, 2010. 12(9): p. 814-22.
4. Kim, I. and J.J. Lemasters, Mitochondrial degradation by autophagy (mitophagy) in GFP-LC3 transgenic hepatocytes during nutrient deprivation. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol, 2011. 300(2): p. C308-17.
5. Alirezaei, M., et al., Short-term fasting induces profound neuronal autophagy. Autophagy, 2010. 6(6): p. 702-10.
6. Kimura, T., et al., Autophagy protects the proximal tubule from degeneration and acute ischemic injury. J Am Soc Nephrol, 2011. 22(5): p. 902-13.
7. Fujita, N. and T. Yoshimori, Ubiquitination-mediated autophagy against invading bacteria. Curr Opin Cell Biol, 2011. 23(4): p. 492-7.

These findings might help researchers to design more effective drugs for various human infections by focusing on the minimization of the inflammation. Moreover, bats are capable of sustained long flights, as some bat species can fly more than 1,000 km in a single night. With such intense physical activity, cells often produce high levels of toxic (free radicals) that would usually damage DNA sequence.

This study also found that bats are equipped with a highly functional set of genes that mediates DNA repair in response to DNA damage, thus bats are protected from toxic cellular waste with this advanced mechanism. Aging, cancer and infectious diseases are the three major issues medicine is facing today and biological abilities granted to bats seem to provide important clues for us to discover new ways to combat these big health problems

The newborn babies who are fed with infant formulas are becoming sick more frequently and are four times more prone to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) as compared to babies who are breast-fed. The statistical analyses made in the US have shown that, if fed solely by breast milk instead of infant formulas, deaths of at least 9000 infants will be prevented annually. A vitally important feature of the breast milk is that its contents are being dynamically and precisely formulated in direct proportion to the development and as per the needs of the baby, whereas baby foods and formulas do not have such a feature. The taurine amino acid, which is vital for the development of the brain and eye, are abundantly available in the breast milk.

The breast milk, which is recommended to breast-feed for up to two years, is special because of its various aspects: it has a unique chemical composition; the lightly yellow-colored alkaline milk (colostrum) generated right after giving birth is very helpful in protecting the newborns from infections and diseases; mammary (milk) glands operate on a very fine time adjustment and they have a perfect developmental coordination; its prevention against lymphoma, which is a kind of cancer, and its feature of leading cancerous cells to programmed cell death (apoptosis); adjustment of the quantities of minerals and trace elements in milk-generating cells of the mother in accordance with the needs of and in proportion to the growth of the infant; breast-feeding has positive effect on the infant’s IQ development.

Nevertheless, newly conducted researches have been yielding fresh findings and new wisdoms (truths) regarding the breast milk.

The tens of researches conducted on the breast milk till now have all indicated and proved that breast-feeding for a period of 7 to 12 months will positively add to the healthy development of infants’ bodily organs along with their IQ development. There are a number of different factors which contribute to infants’ IQ development and breast-feeding is just an important one among them. The positive contributions of breast-feeding to an infant’s IQ development may be better observed if the infant is raised within a genetically and environmentally healthy medium.

A steady brain development and its positive contribution to an infant’s IQ are related to the molecules such as Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), Omega-3 fatty acid, Arachidonic acid (AA), Cholesterol and Taurine Amino Acid that are sufficiently found in the breast milk. The breast milk is even more useful for a healthy development of the infant’s social intelligence. According to IQ measurements, the IQs of children who have been breast-fed for periods of 7 to 9 months are found to be 6 points higher than those who have been breast-fed for less than a month.

A mother becomes like an innately secure shelter for the infant during breast-feeding as the secretion of the oxytocin hormone in the mother’s mammary glands is increased during her physical touch to the baby. Though motherly love and compassion are immaterial sentiments, a corporeal hormone is deemed a contributor to the attachment of love between mother and child. Breast milk is also rich in cholecystokinin (CCK), a hormone that acts as somniferous both in the mother and the infant. Thus, breast-fed infants more easily sink into sleep and this favorably contributes to infants’ healthy growth while enabling mothers to take rest. Mothers who are complaining that their children are not easily sinking into sleep can thus try to breast-feed them more frequently and for longer durations.

Breast milk versus allergens

Parallel to babies’ development, their foods also diversify. In order for foods other than breast milk given to the infant for the first time not to cause any sort of allergic reaction, that foodstuff should not be recognized as strange and unfamiliar, and this depends on the degree of sensitivity of that infant’s immune response mechanism. Therefore, whether breast milk has any role in the baby becoming accustomed to potentially allergenic foodstuff is being researched on experimental animals. When lactoglobulin is fed to baby rats, which are highly prone to activating allergic response, together with baby food and with breast milk respectively, the one which is fed as blended with the breast milk has not caused any allergic response while the one which is fed as blended with baby food has caused powerful allergic responses (1). In conclusion, it has been proved that, not the baby foods, but only the breast milk plays an important role in activating an immune response in babies.

It has also been found that, in order to ensure healthy intestinal development in newborn babies, only breast milk should be provided in the early stages after birth. As breast milk forms a protective shield against bacteria and viruses, it eliminates the need for response activation of the immune system during the early stages following birth. Moreover, breast milk also causes growth of Lactobacillus bifidus in the newborn’s intestines which prevent formation of pathogenic bacteria. The oligosaccharides in the breast milk are favorable stimulants for growth of Lactobacillus bifidus and also function as adhesive molecules. A resemblance of lock and key model has been observed between the oligosaccharides of the breast milk and the carbohydrates over the epithelial cells of the intestines. This implies that oligosaccharides of the breast milk function as free-floating receptors over the pathogenic microorganisms of various nature. They prevent adsorption of microbes over epithelial cells of the intestines and hence form a preventive shield against infections.

Oligosaccharides and Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC)

The enterecolitis which causes necrosis is a most widespread and fatal intestinal disease, being observed at a rate of 85% in premature babies. Insufficiency of oxygen in epithelial cells of the intestines due to various factors is an important reason for its happening. Insufficiency of oxygen in the intestines deforms the healthy functioning of epithelial cells bringing the medium susceptible for infections due to which the necrosis beginning on mucosa membrane of the intestines may develop down to the depth of the intestines’ innermost layer. Roughly 10-26% of all the infant deaths being observed in the newborn intensive care units of US hospitals are occurring due to Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC). This happens very rarely in infants who are breast-fed.

A series of controlled researches have been conducted on baby rats for the purpose of understanding the causes of Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC). These baby rats have been sorted out in three separate groups as the ones fed only by breast milk, the ones fed only by baby food and the ones fed by baby food blended with oligosaccharides of breast milk. Animals in all three groups have been exposed to hypoxia (deprivation of adequate oxygen supply) for three consecutive days and their intestinal tissues have been analyzed at the end of the fourth day.

It has been observed that, while symptoms of enterecolitis in intestines of those fed solely by breast milk were the least, and in intestines of the ones fed by baby food blended with oligosaccharides of breast milk were relatively low, but in intestines of those fed only by baby food were extremely high. Medical reports too indicate that Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC) is quite rare in breast-fed babies for the oligosaccharides of breast milk prevent formation of this disease. What is amazing is that the oligosaccharides and the complex glycans which play preventive roles against infections are abundantly available in breast milk whereas they are not found in baby foods (2). Although galacto-oligosaccharides which are similar to oligosaccharides of the breast milk are being added into most baby foods, they have not served as preventive against necrotizing enterocolitis. Molecular researches are presently being conducted as to how oligosaccharides of breast milk do function in favor of prevention (2).

It has also been verified by researches that breast-feeding of the infants is having favorable effects on their development of a sense of taste and on likes and dislikes of foods during their childhood years. In a recently conducted research, sour, sweet, mildly sour, salty, bitter and tasteless foods have been given to infants who are being breast-fed, cow milk-fed and baby food-fed and their reactions to these foods have been observed and evaluated. Those who were fed by baby food made a lesser grimace and also preferred more soury and bitter foods (12). When these babies were later offered normal foods, they replied only for the tastes of foods which were similar to the foods they were previously given. Moreover, their facial expressions were lesser and insufficient in terms of differentiation of unpleasant tastes. Basically, the contents of baby foods and nutrients affect children’s future responses to those foods and nutrients and their taste perception ranges (3).

Breast milk conduces to expression of differing genes in infant’s intestines

A reply to discussions on “whether breast milk or readymade baby foods” is given by researchers of the University of Illinois. Of the 22 healthy infants, the researchers fed 12 with breast milk and 10 with readymade baby food for a certain period of time and later analyzed the messenger RNAs (mRNA) in the intestine cells collected from their stools. These mRNAs have been exposed to a number of molecular tests, being later analyzed and compared. The results have disclosed that gene groups different from each other were being activated in intestines of the infants who were being fed by breast milk and baby foods. Genes of intestines that were expressed differently as foods of infants were diversified (4). Moreover, such a different reading, that is, revealing of the genes’ potential was not limited to only a couple of genes. Contents of baby foods and nutrients have been influential on the expression of hundreds of genes. The most striking outcome was that, while the data encoded by the gene that was assigned for revealing response of the genes being exposed to hypoxia (deprivation of adequate oxygen supply) was properly expressed and activated in infants who were fed by breast milk, the data encoded by such genes of the infants who were fed by baby foods was not being described and read. Thus, the probability of developing of enterecolitis (inflammation of the intestines) due to hypoxia (deprivation of adequate oxygen supply) was increasing. It has been understood that preference of feeding the newborns with either breast milk or baby foods plays a significant role in disclosing the data of about 140 genes which stimulate quick development of their intestinal and immune systems. In other words, the genes which are assigned for preservation of the immune system and thus for strengthening the infants against diseases are being easily expressed in the intestines of infants fed by breast milk but not of the ones fed by baby foods (4).

Finally, it is vitally important to feed the infants in hospitals’ newborn units more with breast milk in order to stop the developing of Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC). It has been understood that reading and suppression of the genes which are assigned for arrangement of particularly stomach-intestine functions are being arranged depending upon both development and epigenetical mechanisms as, for instance, the environmental factors that influence nutrition. This assertion shows that, while future studies will shed light on how to make ingredients of baby foods more similar to those of breast milk, it will never be substituted by any other nutrient.

Hamza Aydin is a freelance writer from Turkey with PhD degree in biology.

Notes

1. Katie L. Tooley et al. (2009). Maternal Milk, but not Formula, Regulates the Immune Response to ?-Lactoglobulin in Allergy-Prone Rat Pups. Journal of Nutrition, Vol. 139, No. 11, 2145–2151, November 2009.
2. Bode,L., Goth,K., Guner,Y. et al.(2010). Human milk oligosaccharides prevent Necrotizing Enterocolitis in neonatal rats. FASEB J. 2010 24:206.3 [Meeting Abstract]
3. Mennella, J. A. Et al. (2009). Early milk feeding influences taste acceptance and liking during infancy. Am J Clin Nutr. Vol. 90, No. 3, 780S-788S.
4. Chapkin, S.R. et al. (2010). Noninvasive stool-based detection of infant gastrointestinal development using gene expression profiles from exfoliated epithelial cells. The American Journal of Physiology, Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology. Volume 298, Issue 5. May 2010.

At the beginning, I really did not pay much attention to him. He was very small, almost invisible and harmless-looking. However, he started to reproduce all of a sudden. Now, there were billions of his copies on one of my leaves. Everything was happening so quickly. They were taking me over. Something had to be done urgently.

As plants, we cope with such environmental stresses everyday. If the stress factors affecting us are living organisms, such as bacteria, harmful insects, and weeds, we call those as biotic stresses (1). On the other hand, if we are exposed to drought, salinity, heat, cold, and deficiency or excess of a chemical in soil, those are abiotic stresses for us. Both biotic and abiotic stresses impair our growth and even lead to our death sometimes. Therefore, stress response mechanisms are very important for us. Unfortunately in the United States alone, crop losses due to plant pathogens amount to billions of dollars (2). As we are the main food resource for the humans and assigned for so many other important functions on earth by God, our health and productivity is taken very seriously by scientists. So, it is of great interest to them to find out how our defense responses against microbes work. If scientists learn what is going on when a plant is infected by pathogens thoroughly, they can introduce better resistance mechanisms into economically important crop plants via genetic engineering.

Oh “NO,” I am stressed!

Unlike animals, we are firmly attached to the ground so we can not escape from stress factors. However, thanks to God, we have fascinating defense mechanisms against environmental challenges. First of all, I need to know who this infectious agent (pathogen) is so that I can trigger a stress response mechanism against it. The interactions between me and these microbes are controlled by my receptor proteins and Pathogen-associated molecular patterns, or PAMPs, delivered by the pathogen. PAMPs help pathogen growth by suppressing my defenses and manipulating my metabolism (3).When I recognize a PAMP by my receptors, I activate a set of defense mechanisms known as the hypersensitive response (HR) to arrest and terminate pathogen growth before it terminates me (4). Just before or in conjunction with HR, I increase synthesis of several families of pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins in my infected part (5).

Do you want to know what I do after I identify a pathogen? I bet you do, so I am going to tell you about the other components of my signal transduction cascade that is activated upon brutal attack of microbes (Fig. 1). One of the early steps in this signaling cascade is the elevation of cellular calcium (Ca (2+)) levels mediated by my plasma membrane and channels such as cyclic nucleotide gated channels (CNGCs). After the initial Ca(2+) increase, I activate some of my calcium-binding proteins (calmodulin or CaM) and protein kinases, which modify other proteins by chemically adding phosphate groups to them, and ultimately I generate nitric oxide (NO) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) (6). ROS function as signaling molecules that coordinate a wide range of diverse plant processes, such as growth, development, stress adaptation, and cell self-destruction (programmed cell death) (7). However, the real reason I produce ROS under attack is to use them as local toxins to form unfavorable conditions for pathogen growth and reproduction. NO plays a key role in our immunity in synergy with ROS regulating responses that include defense gene expression and programmed cell death (8). As a result, I utilize both ROS and NO to say “NO” to the pathogens. Other important signaling molecules I utilize are salicylic acid and jasmonic acid. These essential plant hormones are chemical messengers that enable me to respond to my environment. Salicylic acid, SA, which is chemically similar to but not identical to the active component of aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid), is involved in the defense against pathogens that feed and reproduce on live host cells and activates signaling processes providing systemic acquired resistance, protecting the plant from further infection after an initial pathogen attack (9) (Fig. 2). On the other hand, jasmonic acid (JA) induces defense against pathogens that kill host cells for nutrition and reproduction (10). Another hormone in the complex cross talk of signaling pathways regulating my defense responses to microbial attack is ethylene, ET (11).

Although, I have not even told you all the details, I bet you have started to think that all these signaling cascades, regulators, hormones, molecular patterns, and receptors are highly complicated. Do not worry; I am not planning to tell you all the molecular mechanism(s) and relevant pathways I execute during biotic stress responses. If I do, then what will the plant scientists who are interested in plant pathogen interactions do for the rest of their lives? Instead I am going to briefly describe to you what strategies I use to prevent the spread of infection that the small microbe started.

Initially, I build physical barriers around the infection by increasing my cuticle, a protective waxy covering, and cell wall thickness, and then I release antimicrobial compounds, such as phenolics and phytoalexins to the sites of invasion (11). However, this effort is usually not enough to stop the microbes. Therefore, most of the time, the cells in the local region surrounding the infection decide to commit suicide to limit the growth of the pathogen through programmed cell death, which is a highly coordinated and sophisticated phenomenon. This resembles to the firefighters’ strategy to put down a forest fire. Firefighters control flames by cutting down trees, clearing brush away from the existing edge of the fire. This way they can form borders to mitigate the forest fire.

While I am fighting the infection, I also try to confer a long-lasting protection against this pathogen. I send mobile signals like salicylic acid to activate defense responses in distal tissues in case a secondary pathogen attack might occur there (12). Salicylic acid also induces numerous genes that encode PR proteins with antimicrobial properties (13).

I have done all those things I have told you here and a lot more that are still undisclosed to humans in a really short time because it was a matter of “to be, or not to be.” After all that stress, I have won the battle against the microbe at least for now. I have gained a life experience and will defend myself better in the future. I am recovering, but unfortunately my leaf, where all that fighting happened, has a big lesion, an abnormal tissue, which was formed when my poor cells died during the attack (Figure3).

As you can tell from my story, plants get stressed out too. However, we are not stressed due to problems at home, school, or work or spending time stuck in traffic. We deal with salinity, heavy metals, temperature, drought, lack of nutrition, herbivores (insects, mammals, etc.), and pathogens. Thanks to God that He gave us astonishingly complicated response mechanisms to resist all sorts of stresses to some extent, especially biotic stress. Otherwise, we might have become extinct. Can you imagine a world without us? You would have no more oxygen in the air, no more food for animals and humans, no more papers or books, no more clothes, no more furniture, no more blooming beautiful gardens, no more roses for your loved ones, and no more trees, which hold the soil in place so that wind and rain don’t cause severe erosion and destruction of homes for so many species. In addition, there will be fewer resources for drugs and dyes. Oh my God, you are the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful. Thank you that You created us, shaped us and gave us smell, taste, color, and resistance to stresses.

Safiye Arslan is a research fellow in the area of biological chemistry and lives in Nevada.

References

1. Holopainen JK, Gershenzon J. 2010. “Multiple stress factors and the emission of plant VOCs.” Trends Plant Sci. 15,176–184.

2. http://www.apsnet.org/online/feature/biotechnology/

3. Wulff BB, Chakrabarti A, Jones DA. 2009. “Recognitional specificity and evolution in the tomato-Cladosporium fulvum pathosystem.” Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 22, 1191–202.

4. Genger RK, Jurkowski GI, McDowell JM, Lu H, Jung HW, Greenberg JT, Bent AF. 2008. “Signaling pathways that regulate the enhanced disease resistance of Arabidopsis ‘defense, no death’ mutants.” Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 21, 1285–96.

5. Klessig DF, Durner J, Noad R, Navarre DA, Wendehenne D, Kumar D, Zhou JM, Shah J, Zhang S, Kachroo P, Trifa Y, Pontier D, Lam E, Silva H. 2000. “Nitric oxide and salicylic acid signaling in plant defense.” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 97, 8849–8855.

6. Ma W, Berkowitz GA. 2007. “The grateful dead: calcium and cell death in plant innate immunity.” Cell Microbiol. 9, 2571–85.

7. Gechev TS, Van Breusegem F, Stone JM, Denev I, Laloi C. 2006. “Reactive oxygen species as signals that modulate plant stress responses and programmed cell death.” Bioessays. 28, 1091–101.

8. Asai S, Yoshioka H. 2009. “Nitric oxide as a partner of reactive oxygen species participates in disease resistance to nectrotophic pathogen Botryis cinerea in Nicotiana benthamiana.” Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 22, 619–29.

9. Beckers GJ, Spoel SH. 2006. “Fine-Tuning Plant Defence Signalling: Salicylate versus Jasmonate.” Plant Biol (Stuttg). 8, 1–10.

10. Spoel SH, Johnson JS, Dong X. 2007. “Regulation of tradeoffs between plant defenses against pathogens with different lifestyles.” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 104, 18842–7.

11. Bouchez O, Huard C, Lorrain S, Roby D, Balagué C. 2007. “Ethylene is one of the key elements for cell death and defense response control in the Arabidopsis lesion mimic mutant vad1.” Plant Physiol. 145, 465–77.

12. Ficke A, Gadoury DM, Seem RC, Godfrey D, Dry IB. 2004. “Host Barriers and Responses to Uncinula necator in Developing Grape Berries.” Phytopathology. 94, 438–45.

13. Liu PP, Bhattacharjee S, Klessig DF, Moffett P. 2010. “Systemic acquired resistance is induced by R gene-mediated responses independent of cell death.” Mol Plant Pathol. 11, 155–60.

14. Durrant WE, Dong X. 2004. “Systemic acquired resistance.” Annu Rev Phytopathol. 42, 185–209.

We invite you to embark on a journey with us to explore some fascinating perspectives that shed a light on our relationship with sound and music.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, the Founder and Director of the Center for Neuroacoustic Research in California (www.neuroacoustic.com), is recognized as a worldwide expert in the field of acoustic pacing frequencies that are incorporated into musical sound tracks. A consummate musician and composer in his own right, he has established a method for using modulated sound-pulses that change states of consciousness for optimal “Mind-Body” healing. Dr. Thompson believes that the sounds in nature resonate with us because they take us back to the beginning of our journey and our primary senses.

Matter&Beyond: Why are sound and music so central for us, both culturally and personally?

I don’t think I’ve found a single culture on earth which at some point hasn’t used sound as a prominent technique in healing, in religious rites, or as a means of attaining a change of consciousness in one way or another. I think the tradition probably dates back to the first use of sound as a soothing or healing means for mothers; that is lullabies for babies.

M&B: Is this our earliest experience with sound? Is this what you call primordial sounds?

If you go back to before the lullabies, we’re talking about womb experiences and it’s one of the primal things we all share; this is what I call primordial sounds. Certain type of sounds have the same influence on anyone who hears it, no matter what age you are, what sex you are, what culture you were brought up in, what language you speak; womb sounds fit that criteria.

M&B: Why is it sound, but not the vision?

Because at 16 weeks, when the fetus is very small, the nervous system is developed enough that all the senses are functioning; however it is dark, so the eyes aren’t working, no information is being received and the nose and the mouth are filled with fluids, so there is no tasting or smelling, but sound travels through water five times better than it does through air; therefore the ears are working but amplified by five times, and the largest sense organ we have, the skin, is a huge sense organ for vibrations. Thus, we’re experiencing vibration and sound for nine months in the womb and that sound environment is a very specific type of environment; the amniotic fluid sounds, the watery bubbly sounds, the mother’s heartbeat through the placental artery, respiratory sounds from the diaphragm, noises of the internal organ; it’s a rich complex, three-dimensional sound environment that is exactly the same for everyone of us; we all experienced this in the same way.

M&B: How does the fetus perceive this sound?

Remember the fetus is small and the ear is small; the eardrum is extremely small. If the eardrum was blown up to the size of my eardrum and the mother’s heart was blown up in proportion it would fill this room. So what kind of sound would such a heart make? It wouldn’t be the sound that you would expect it to be listening to the adult’s heart with a stethoscope from the outside; it would be a very large, slow sound, a large thumping sound.

M&B: How is this related to the use of sound in therapy or for relaxation?

Most of us who have gone on vacations and have explored nature feel a peaceful, beautiful return to nature; why?

Because if you take the sounds of the amniotic fluid and you slow those sounds down, they sound a lot like the ocean. The size of the sound waves compared to the eardrum would make these watery sounds sound like they have also slowed down. So many of the watery sounds in the womb sound like other sounds that we can hear later in nature. This can spark a similar kind of primordial recognition which is beyond the control of the rational thinking mind.

So when we build up these kinds of sounds on a soundtrack you can then push the button and the body will automatically go back to what it felt like to have a natural experience; when we combine the sounds of nature with music this makes a relaxation tape. So I would say that the sounds of nature provide secondary primordial sounds, as not all of us would have heard the same natural sounds in our lives.

The idea is to extend the power of the primordial recognizable components of sound in order to create a physical response. The technique is to connect with a primal recognition at a subconscious level; this will tap into experiences that you have had in the womb and at other times.

M&B: You not only use sound for relaxation, but also in order to combat stress. Could you please talk about this?

When a person has a fight-or-flight response, a stress response, we know very precisely what happens physiologically. The very first thing, the most sensitive organ, to respond to stress is the heart and thus when we look at the heart waves we can gain important information.

M&B: Why the heart and not the brain?

The reason for this is that the heart is the perfect system in the nervous system; it is called the autonomic nervous system or the automatic functioning nervous system; it knows how to organize and control my organs and glands and body chemistry and perform biomechanics that I’m not aware of and can’t control.

My rational-thinking brain can control physical body movements and thinking processes, but there’s another section that controls the automatic functioning of how my body runs. There is another control of this autonomic nervous system, which has two large branches of nerves that innervate all the organs and glands; these two branches of the nerves are the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system.

While the sympathetic nervous system switches on, the parasympathetic switches off and mobilizes energy from the higher brain centers, from my digestive system, from my elimination system and from my immune system, it pulls that energy into my muscles to fight for my life.

This is when the brain freezes when you take an exam. You’re frightened about the exam; it is your final exam and you’re frightened that you’re not going to pass it or that you’re not going to do well. That fright causes the sympathetic system to switch on and drain the energy out of your brain; this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You don’t have a brain left, because all the energy has gone to your muscles. At the moment the sympathetic system switches on, it mobilizes the pituitary which signals the adrenal glands; these fires adrenaline, the adrenaline starts the heart and the respiration and a number of other things. At the same time it suppresses the pancreas and lets loose extra glucose so you can fight for your life more and so what you end up with is the very first thing that happens.

M&B: What is the normal stress response and how do we return to a normal state?

When a person is required to carry out special tasks, like running or fighting for one’s life, then the sympathetic nervous system has to switch on, mobilize the energy from various places and send it to my muscles. If I am injured, but I survive and win, then the parasympathetic system is going to switch on and build up; that energy will be sent to my immune system, healing centers and recuperation areas for my muscles; when this is finished these are basically switched off, because we don’t need this energy anymore. This is certainly the normal way of functioning.

Thus, there are certain normal ways in which the body should function when a person is okay and normal. When the patient comes in and lies down on their back we hook them up and look at what’s happening in the autonomic nervous system. Normally when you lay down for three to five minutes your system should relax. Gravity isn’t affecting you, your heart doesn’t have to do extra work to pump the blood up to your brain; as a result the muscles relax and the sympathetic system and parasympathetic nervous systems should be at a level playing field. Now they can conserve their energy and this state of balance in the autonomic nervous system is known as homeostasis. The best state of health you can have is in homeostasis, where you’re not using energy in an unnecessary way. Homeo means unity, one, within my body, while stasis is a perfect state of rest.

M&B: What are the results of your studies to date? How many of us return back to homeostasis in three to five minutes?

Clinically what I see is maybe two patients with a normal response; I’ve been checking every patient with the real time heart rate variability system now for 7 years. This means thousands of patients; in all of that time I have seen one, maybe two patients with a normal response. I hook the patient up, and see what the response is. Most people’s response is abnormal; what this abnormality says is that after five minutes they have not attained a balance, and they have a good strong, healthy, dominant sympathetic stress response which never stops.

M&B: What do you think is the reason for this?

This state is constant because of the artificial, extremely stressful world that we have artificially created for ourselves. It wasn’t supposed to be like this; you are supposed to wake up in the morning and grab your spear and go catch a rabbit and that’s your workday; when you get there and you see that rabbit the sympathetic system turns on and the heart rates increase, the same thing happens with the rabbit, and it’s all going to be over in a couple of minutes. You’re going to catch the rabbit or he’s going to get away and then everything goes back, the clutch pushes in. Let’s say you get the rabbit, and the clutch pushes in; everything is fine and you are going to go home. Now you hear a growl behind you and there’s a saber tooth tiger looking at you, thinking about dinner; now the sympathetic system switches on, the heart rate is up, and you are running and he is running. It is all going to be over in a couple of minutes and either you are going to get away or you’re not.

But what I’m talking about here is that the nervous system, at its core, and its stress response are both designed for a sprint and not a marathon; but what we have had in the twenty-first century and throughout the twentieth century is a marathon of stress; but these are the kind of stresses that we can’t see, i.e. invisible stresses. They’re electromagnetic frequencies; the walls in this room, television channel frequencies, military frequencies, microwave frequencies, air pollution, food pollution and traffic jams when going to work to a job that doesn’t pay enough money for a boss who has the emotional development of a three-year old are all problems for us. The stress goes and then it’s back again; it’s time to get dinner for the kids and watching 7:00 news. This doesn’t stop; the nervous system’s solution to surviving this is to invent a mechanism of merely stepping on the gas, switching on the emergency sympathetic system on and bulldozing your way through the stress for the rest of your life with great momentum; but at nighttime, when it’s time to go to bed the nervous system doesn’t want to let go of this momentum that it has built up to get through the day.

M&B: And this has devastating effects on our health?

You can’t keep running in high gear for the rest of your life without some horrible consequences; the body’s not designed for it. You can only do this for a few decades before your heart or your brain blows up, the two biggest killers in Western society are heart attacks and strokes – there is also high blood pressure and diabetes. But what can we expect if our sympathetic nervous system is all the time working, which means by definition that our heart pressure is up and the pancreas is suppressed, so there is extra glucose being sent out? So people who don’t have the constitution to handle the stress blow a fuse; they have no way to handle the stress and as a result they have immune system problems, digestive problems, and problems that come from that colon cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, autoimmune diseases, allergies.

M&B: You are using sound in order to help people return to their normal healthy state. How does this work?

I’ve come up with a way to use sound to force the autonomic nervous system to push in the clutch, removing us from a place of high stress from which you can leave by using sound; we do this by using the heart-rate variability to see how bad the heart rate is and then explore various precisely tuned sound frequencies which will actually force the nervous system to push in the clutch. There will be a very specific tone for every person; this is like a glass vibrating if I sing the right note. An opera singer can sing the right note to make the glass vibrate. Well, now let’s imagine that your autonomic nervous system is the glass and we’re going to explore various sound frequencies that are very precisely tuned to find out which one affects your autonomic nervous system function; when we find it the response will be like pushing in the clutch and sending it into a state of relaxation. So we hit the right note and we get the response; this is what I’ve been looking for. Now we can see this phenomenon clinically. Once we’ve got the tone that’s associated with the pushing in of the clutch of the autonomic nervous system we can use that therapeutically through a specially designed sound table that I have made; this consists of low-frequency sound components which drive the low frequencies right into your cells via headphones. This relaxation mode is introduced to your nervous system over an extended period of time. We can burn this sound onto a CD and you can take it home and work with it at home on your stereo; it is like an internal training program. Every time your nervous system pushes in the clutch, the ability to push in the clutch grows, just like working a muscle in a gym.

This is a kind of high-tech stress reduction training program for the nervous system with sound. This is one of the three components I mentioned earlier; there are three parallel processes using sound for healing. This one is the idea of using the physical resonance to cause an effect on the nervous system to relax people.

M&B: This is what is called a sound table, right?

Yes, the sound table I needed had to have specific requirements, which is why I had to make my own to attain the exact clinical results I wanted. The power in the table actually delivered more power to your body than I wanted to be delivered. Therefore, I had to be able to have the sound that was coming from the table split into the right and left speakers, but none of those that were available on the market could do that. So I had to have it specially designed. As a composer, musician and audio engineer I was able to design the sounding board of that table and the transducers so that a lot of free sound could be delivered and spread out, therefore it is much more effective and delivers the sound to your body via headphones. Thus there is a lot going on in that table that you cannot see and this is what makes it work properly.

Interview conducted by Mustafa Tabanli for Ebru TV for the Emmy Award winning television series Matter and Beyond.

“How long have you been lost?” I asked her. “For three nights” (Maryam 19:10) was her Qur’anic rejoinder. I offered her food. She replied with, “Observe the Fast until night sets in” (Baqarah 2:187). “Yes, but we are not in the month of Ramadan,” said I. “Whoever does a good work voluntarily, surely God is All-Responsive to thankfulness, All-Knowing” (Baqarah 2:158) was her response. “It is permissible to break fast on a journey,” I informed her. “Yet better it is for him who volunteers greater good, and that you should fast (when you are able to) is better for you, if you but knew (the worth of fasting)” (Baqarah 2:184) she responded.

I asked her why she did not converse in the way I conversed. “Not a word does he/she utter but there is a watcher by him/her, ever-present,” (Qaf 50:18) recited she. I put a question to her: “Where do you belong?” “Do not follow that of which you have no knowledge, and refrain from groundless assertions and conjectures. Surely the hearing, the sight, and the heart – each of these is subject to questioning about it” (Isra’ 17:35) was her Qur’anic response. “I sinned; please forgive me,” I pleaded. “No reproach this day shall be on you. May God forgive you; indeed, He is the Most Merciful of the merciful” (Yusuf 12:92) said she. I offered to let her ride on my camel so as to deliver her swiftly to her convoy. “Whatever good you do, surely God has full knowledge of it” (Baqarah 2:215) she thanked me. I brought my camel and as she was about to mount on the animal, she said, “Tell the believing men that they should restrain their gaze” (Nur 24:30). I cast my eyes down. Just as she was about to climb on the camel, the animal shied and moved forward, and her clothing was torn a little. “Whatever affliction befalls you, it is because of what your hands have earned,” (Shura 42:30) she murmured. “Be patient, let me hold the camel!” said I. Reciting the verse, “We made Solomon understand the case more clearly. We granted each of them sound, wise judgment and knowledge” (Anbiya 21:79) she said, implying that I was more successful at controlling the camel. She mounted the camel and recited the verses, “So that you sit secure on their backs, (and), then remember and reflect on the favor of your Lord when you settle securely on them, and say: All-Glorified is He Who has subjugated this to our use. We were never capable (of accomplishing this by ourselves). And surely, to our Lord we are indeed bound to return’” (Zukhruf 13–14). “Come on!” said I, so as to urge the camel on. “Be modest in your bearing, and subdue your voice. For certain, the most repugnant of voices is the braying of donkeys,” (Luqman 31:19) she warned me. While walking, I began to recite poetry. “Recite from the Qur’an what is easy for you!” (Muzzammil 73:20) was her advice. “But reciting poetry is not forbidden in Islam!” I protested. “He grants the Wisdom to whomever He wills, and whoever is granted the Wisdom has indeed been granted much good. Yet none except people of discernment reflect and are mindful” (Baqarah; 269) was her reply.

We travelled for a long while; later I asked her whether she was married. “O you who believe! Do not ask about things which, if made manifest to you, would give you trouble” (Maidah 5:101) she snapped back. Soon, we caught up with her convoy, and I asked her, “Do you know anybody in the caravan?” “Wealth and children are an adornment of the present, worldly life!” (Kahf 18:46) said she, and I realized that she had children. I asked her their names. “God accepted Ibrahim as a friend; spoke to Musa; O Yahya! Hold fast to the Book!” (Nisa 4:125, 164; Maryam 19:12) was the answer. I called towards the caravan, “O Ibrahim, O Musa, O Yahya!” Three saintly-faced youths quickly appeared. She gave them money, reciting the verse, “Send one of you to the city with this coin of yours: let him see what food is most pure there (and so lawful), and bring a supply from it. But let him behave with utmost care and guarded courtesy,” (Kahf 18:19). When her children brought the food, she recited the verse, “Eat and drink to your hearts’ content for all that you sent ahead in advance in days past” (Haqqah 69:24).

I told her children that if they would not tell me the reason why their mother talked in that way, I would not touch even the smallest part of the food. ‘Our mother,’ they said, ‘for fear that she might blurt out some foul words that would call down God’s wrath, has been speaking through the Holy Qur’an for the last forty years.’”

Abdullah bin Mubarak (d. 797 AH) was an important figure from the second generation after the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

Suat Erguvan is the Academic Coordinator of the Rumi Forum, Islamabad.

Human beings are visually-oriented in their daily life; they use the sense of sight more than any of the other senses with which they have been endowed. The modern understanding of human vision and the underlining principles were only discovered in the past couple centuries. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed the development of photographic and digital imaging camera systems, which partially mimic human visual systems. We will open a small window on the history of human vision and camera systems, and try to compare today’s state-of-the-art cameras with the human visual system, focusing mainly on solid-state image sensors, or camera chips, and the image-sensing element of the human visual system, the eye.

History of human vision

Human vision has been the subject of conflicting interpretations since ancient times. Many ancient physicians and philosophers believed in the theory of extramission, or the active eye. According to this theory, the eye perceives objects by emanating light and seizing objects with its rays. It was in medieval Islamic culture that research on human vision and optics developed into a system similar to the modern theory of vision. Among others, Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965-1040 A.D.), a Muslim physicist, astronomer, and mathematician in the tenth century, played a great part in this field by promoting the intromission theory which states that vision only occurs because of light rays entering the eye. Ibn Al-Haytham founded physiological optics, which distinguished the functioning of the eye from the behavior of light. On the other hand, ten centuries after Ibn Al-Haytham, Winer et al. (2002) have found recent evidence that as many as 50% of American college students believe in the extramission theory.1

Although the fundamental features, anatomy, and physiology of the eye were documented by Galen (129–200 A.D.), an ancient Greek physician, in the second century A.D., it was Kepler, a close reader of Ibn Al-Haytham, who offered the first theory of the retinal image and the correct operation of the eye in 1604. He proclaimed, “Therefore vision occurs through a picture of the visible things on the white, concave surface of the retina.” Progress came slowly after Kepler, because little was known about the nervous system until the nineteenth century, and only recently have scientists acquired a more knowledge about how the brain apprehends the retinal image. But many questions still elude us.

History of the camera

In parallel with curiosity about human vision, human beings have also tried to mimic human vision by capturing images of objects with instruments. Around 1000 A.D., Ibn Al-Haytham, also known as the father of modern optics, invented the pinhole camera,2 and explained why the image was upside down. It was Johannes Kepler who further suggested the use of a lens to improve the pinhole camera in the 1600s. Capturing an image on a photographic plate was first achieved in the early 1800s. Consequently, photographic cameras began to be mass-marketed in the twentieth century. The photographic equipment with which we are all familiar today, such as the 35mm camera, flash bulb, Polaroid camera, and the point-and-shoot auto focus camera, all were developed in the twentieth century. The invention of the camera as we know it today paved the way for other technologies, including the moving image capture, and, later, the digital camera, in which electronic image-capture devices were used. In 1972, chemically processing an image onto photographic paper no longer became the sole destination of an image, because the first filmless electronic camera was patented by Texas Instruments Corporation. Filmless electronic cameras were made possible with the invention of solid-state image-capture devices called charge coupled devices (CCD) and metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) image sensors in the late 1960s. Since the invention of solid-state imagers, people have become more visually stimulated and oriented than ever before in history.

A comparison of camera chips and the human eye

The technological advancements of solid-state image-capture camera chip design and manufacturing during the past twenty-five years has made digital imaging more affordable and accessible to the general public. These advancements have become more visible to consumers in mobile products, particularly in cellular phones, in which there are still and video-camera functions. Although digital cameras are easily available today, the state-of-the-art image sensor chips used in these cameras exhibit a performance gap when compared with the capabilities of the human eye. How good these image sensor chips are today when compared to our eyes is a question that will be elaborated on.

It is possible to compare the capabilities of the human eye and state-of-the-art image sensor chips used in cellular phones or in mainstream PC and digital still cameras. It is also possible to compare the capabilities of the human visual system, including the eyes, the optic nerve, the visual cortex, etc. with a digital camera system which includes optics, image-capture and signal-processing chips and other camera apparatuses. The capabilities include ability to see different colors (spectral response), photo-element (pixel) characteristics (size, density, distribution), light sensitivity, light-intensity response range, functionality and operation modes, and signal processing capabilities.

Spectral response

A single light-sensing element in a solid-state image sensor is called a pixel. In the human eye it is called the photoreceptor. Both elements convert impinging light or photons into electrical signals. The human eye sees in the so-called visible spectrum, between 380nm (blue) and 750 nm (red), and utilizes two kinds of photoreceptors on the retina; rods and cones. The cones are used for color and daylight vision. Rods are responsible for night vision. There are three types of cone photoreceptors on the retina that contain different types of photosensitive pigments. The three types of cones are L, M, and S, and they have pigments that respond best to wavelengths of light that are long or red (peak at 564 nm), medium or green (peak at 534 nm), and short or blue (peak at 420 nm), respectively. The rods (R) are most sensitive at a wavelength of approximately 498 nm (green), as seen in Figure 1.3 Image sensor pixels in digital cameras mimic the photoreceptors in the human eye for color vision. They utilize three kinds of color filters (red, green, blue) on top of each pixel to convert light rays into electrical signals in different visible spectrums. Unlike the cones in the human eye, camera pixels and color filters can be designed to cover wide spectrums that are not visible to the human eye, for instance, the x-ray, ultraviolet, and infrared spectrums. In the category of spectral response range, camera pixels exhibit greater flexibility than those of the photoreceptors of the human eye. On the other hand, interestingly enough, the eyesight that humans possess has similar spectral characteristics as the sun. The solar light emission peaks in the visible spectrum as seen in Figure 2.4

Figure 1. Spectral absorption curves of the short (S), medium (M), and long (L) wavelength pigments in human cone and rod cells.3

Figure 2. The daylight solar spectral power distribution on earth.4

Pixel and array size

The size of pixels in today’s modern digital cameras is getting closer to the size of the photoreceptors in human eye. The typical human eye contains an average of 130 million photoreceptors. The diameter of the rods and cones varies between 1.0m and 8.0m, depending on their location on the retina.5 Today’s state-of-the-art image sensor chips contain 10 to 30 million pixels. Each pixel can be as small as 1.4m in diameter. To date there has been no image sensor that is 1.4m pixel in size or more than 8 million pixels. However, the human being has been equipped with photoreceptors that are as small as 1.0m and has more than 100 million photoreceptors; and this is since the beginning of existence. It is also estimated that the resolution of the human eye is equivalent to an imager sensor chip of 576 million pixels with a 120 degree field of view.6 Thus we still have a long way to go in improving the image-sensor pixel and array sizes used in cameras if we are to match the human eye.

Pixel distribution and formation

In the human eye the photoreceptor size and densities change, depending on their location on the retina. For example, no rods exist on the focus center of the eye, which is called the fovea. Color vision photoreceptors, which total only 10% of the eye’s photoreceptors, are located mostly on the fovea. There is an irregular distribution of photoreceptors which is unique for every human being, like a fingerprint. Yet, we all see things the same, such as colors (with the exception of people who are colorblind). In camera chips, however, pixels are arrayed regularly, in two-dimensions. As the image-processing techniques and algorithms used in camera systems are linear and do not closely mimic the signal processing that exists in the human visual system, regularly arrayed pixels are required.

Light sensitivity and response range

Although the pixel sizes in image-sensor chips are approaching the size of the photoreceptors in the human eye, camera systems are not yet close to being able to match performance in terms of light sensitivity and response range. The human visual system and photoreceptors can easily adapt to very dim and bright light, with a light-intensity response range of ten billion to one (1010:1).7 This response range goes from light conditions on a bright sunny day to dim night vision. Typically, a conventional consumer camera pixel has a light intensity response range of one thousand to one (103:1).8 In a camera system, details of a captured scene are either concealed in the dark regions or washed out by the bright light, depending on the exposure settings of the system. Thus, one could say that the human visual system works ten million times (107) more efficiently than that of consumer cameras in terms of transferring scenes into images.

Operation principle

In terms of operation principles, the photoreceptors in the human eye convert light rays into electrical signals with extremely rapid electro-chemical reactions which can detect a single photon. Typically, in the image sensor pixel of a digital camera the photoelectric effect is used to convert impinging photons into electrical charges. Electrical charges are collected and stored in each pixel during the exposure period. Collected electric charges in each pixel are amplified and converted into digital ones (logic-1) and zeros (logic-0) during image readout before the image is sent to higher processing elements, such as a personal computer, digital-still or video camera. It is possible for a single photon-counting camera to be developed. However, very special and larger pixel sizes and extra apparatuses are required to build such a camera system. Thus, we could say that it is almost impossible to build imaging pixels that have the capability and dimensions of the photoreceptors of the human eye with today’s state-of-the-art technology.

Signal processing capabilities

The captured image in the human eye is preprocessed before it is sent to the visual cortex of the brain. This preprocessing consists of a data reduction operation in which nothing is lost, with a compression ratio of 130 to 1, as only 1 million optic nerves leave each eye carrying the information from 130 million photoreceptors. This compression allows the brain to process information at a rate of 25 to 150 scenes or frames per second. Typically, every pixel in an image sensor chip is first transferred to higher processing units. A data compression method is either carried out with some loss of details in the image or the compression is never used. The transfer of frames in camera chips typically takes place sequentially, reducing the speed of the image-capture operation or frame rate. Different techniques are used to maintain a capture rate of, at most, 25 frames-per-second in camera chips. With today’s technology, image sensors that have a capture rate of one million frames per second have been proposed and can be manufactured for scientific applications.

The inherent inefficiencies of image-capture in today’s image-sensor chips are hidden by employing the limitations of the human eye. For example, solid-state image sensors have always been produced with row or column-vice uncanny stripes which are easily picked up by the human eye. However, psycho-visual experiments have shown that the human eye can only detect contrasts between two adjacent gray lines when the difference is greater than 0.5%. Thus, if a camera chip is designed to have a column to column or row to row contrast of less than 0.5%, these odd stripes would not be visible.

Conclusion

Humans are visually oriented and without a doubt, our eyes are considered to be our primary source of information. It is obvious that the human visual system is extremely complex and this complexity has fascinated human beings throughout history. Yet, the underlining principles and basic functions of human vision and the eye have only been discovered during the last two centuries. These discoveries have led research in how to mimic these functions, which has resulted in moving and still-photographic and camera equipment, and the image sensors chips used in digital cameras today. Even though human beings are only taking baby steps in fully mimicking the human eye, curiosity and scientific inquiry allows us to discover functions and features of the eye and the visual pathways that will increase our knowledge and help us to build better pixels and image sensor chips.

References

1. Winer, G. A., Cottrell, J. E., Gregg, V., Fournier, J. S., & Bica, L. A., “Fundamentally misunderstanding visual perception: Adults’ beliefs in visual emissions.” American Psychologist, 57, 417-424, 2002.

2. Ertan Salik, “Pinhole Cameras, Imaging, and The Eye” The Fountain Magazine, Issue 54, pp. 30-33, April – June 2006.

3. URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cone-response.png

4. URL: http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color3.html

5. Stefan Winkler, Digital Video Quality – Vision Models and Metrics, John-Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2005.

6. URL: http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html

7. R.C. Gonzalez and R.E. Woods, Digital Image Processing, Addison-Wesley, 1993.

8. M. Schanz, et al., “A high-dynamic-range CMOS image sensor for automotive applications”, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 35, no. 7, pp.932-938, July 2000.

But this has started to change. Increasingly, professionals from respected institutions are conducting scientific studies of the effects of faith in healing. Recent conferences at Harvard, the Mayo Clinic, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) signal this change, as does major media coverage on PBS, NBC Nightly News, CNN, and CBS This Morning. Below we give examples of such scientific studies, the people behind them, and their findings.

Dr. Herbert Benson

Dr. Herbert Benson is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the founding president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Boston’s Deaconess Hospital. As the author of 150 scientific papers and six books, Benson has made important contributions to our understanding of the physiology involved in the healing effects of faith.(1)

As a young cardiologist working with people suffering from high blood pressure, Benson noticed that their blood pressure was the highest during office visits. He reached this conclusion after noticing that after treating his patients with anti-hypertensive medicines to lower their blood pressure, they would report such symptoms as fainting. This indicated that the adjusted blood pressure was generally too low. Since doses were set according to measurements made during the visit, the calibration was correct. He concluded that their blood pressure should have been lower before or after the visit.

To establish a model for stress-induced hypertension, he stopped his routine in cardiology and returned to physiology research at Harvard Medical School. Once when he was studying monkeys, about 15 young people involved with Transcendental Meditation asked him to study their responses to stress. Electrodes were attached to their chests and scalps to measure their heart waves and brain waves. Masks collected their breath as they exhaled, so their metabolism and rate of breathing could be measured. Then baseline measurements were taken while they sat quietly for 20 minutes. The same measurements were taken again while they meditated for 20 minutes, and then one last time while they sat quietly without meditating. The individuals had a 17 percent decrease in their metabolism during meditation, and a 20 percent drop in their rate of breathing. Also the frequencies of brain waves were lowered.

Benson identified two basic components of Transcendental Meditation: meditation and prayers involving the repetition of a word, sound, or movement with the out-breath; and passively setting aside other thoughts when they come to mind and returning to the repetition.

When he studied various religions and cultures, he found these essential elements in virtually every one of them. The earliest account was in Hinduism, where there were accounts of individuals focusing on their breathing and repeating a phrase of scripture while disregarding every-day thoughts. The pattern was found in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Shintoism, Taoism, and Confucianism. He posited that this practice may be conducive to improved health perhaps by reducing parasympathetic nervous system responses to stress, known as the “fight or flight response”.*

Benson sees his work not as alternative medicine but rather as one leg of a three-legged stool. In his words: “One leg is pharmaceuticals, another leg is surgery and other procedures, and the third is self-care. That last leg includes nutrition, exercise, and the relaxation response. It’s vital not to neglect the last leg, because 60 to 90 percent of visits to doctors are for conditions related to stress, where employing pharmaceuticals and surgery is not effective.” (2)

Benson also found out that as much as faith inspires prayer, this form of prayer or meditation inspires health. He and his colleagues treated such conditions as hypertension and cardiac arrhythmia with the relaxation response, the common ingredient in his self-care program and prayer/meditation practices. They cured 75 percent of insomniacs, treated symptoms of depression in people with AIDS and cancer, and relieved nausea and vomiting related to chemotherapy. In a fertility program for infertile women that emphasizes self-care through relaxation response techniques, proper nutrition, and re-framing thinking patterns, 34 percent become pregnant in contrast to 15 percent in other programs.

Dr. David Larson

Psychiatrist David Larson is the president of the National Institute of Healthcare Research and author of the teaching workbook, The Forgotten Factor (co-authored with his wife Susan). In this book, he discusses the relationship between religion and health. Numbers supporting his work come from Gallup polls showing that 95 percent of Americans believe in God, and that although half believe in Hell, 80 percent sanguinely trust in a forgiving God. In addition, 40 percent of Americans attend worship services weekly.

During his psychiatric residency at Duke University, Larson asked a professor for some guidance on how to bring his faith into psychiatric practice. The response was: “Are you the type person who wants people to believe like you do?” Although he said he was not, the professor continued: “It is obvious you are going to hurt your patients.” He recalls that anyone who would bring up that subject would be quickly labeled as a fundamentalist.(3) But his later research and extensive publications have brought attention, which helped fund the National Institute for Healthcare Research. The Faith in Medicine program, which the institution funds, gives $10,000 grants to medical schools for courses on religion and health. Johns Hopkins and George Washington University are among the eleven schools that have received the grants.

Dr. Harold Koenig

Among the pioneers of the study of faith’s healing potential is Harold Koenig, an associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Spirituality, and Health at Duke University Medical Center. Koenig first noticed the significance of faith as a factor in medical recovery when he was a young family doctor. He was consulted about a patient who had been hospitalized for a month after hip surgery. Her husband had died of a sudden stroke, and she had slipped on ice at his funeral and fractured her hip. The surgeon warned him that she was emotionally vulnerable. Indeed, she had experienced events that normally would trigger clinical depression and thus undermine her recovery.

He was therefore surprised to find the old lady cheerful when he entered her room. She said: “What can I do for you, Doctor?” Koenig’s search for obvious signs of depression-fatigue, darkened or tear-reddened eyes, difficulty concentrating-indicated nothing. Upon further conversation, he discovered that she maintained her cheerful mood by reading the Bible. She told him: “If I wake up alone or afraid, I read my Bible or talk to God. He is always there, even when my loved ones are not. It’s the most important thing that keeps me going.”

Koenig was impressed. When she recovered with few complications, he felt compelled to study further the medical significance of such deep faith. Since that event, numerous patients have told him how their faith helped them cope, thus speeding their physical healing. His research team, which has studied thousands of Americans since 1984, has compiled powerful evidence that religious faith not only promotes overall good health, but also helps patients recover from serious illness.(4)

“By praying to God, patients acquire an indirect form of control over their illness.” They believe they are not alone in their struggle, and that God is personally interested in them. This safeguards them against the psychological isolation that batters so many seriously ill people. In a study of 455 elderly hospital patients, Koenig found that people who attended church more than once a week averaged about four days in the hospital. People who never or rarely attended church spent about ten to twelve days of hospitalization.

Dr. Dale Matthews

Dale Matthews is an associate professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC. As a young internist in the early 1980s, he met a patient with strong faith who would make a lasting impact on his life. The man said: “I am a devout Christian. If you’re going to be my doctor, I want you to pray with me” before allowing Matthews to treat him. Matthews had never shared his own faith with his patients, so at first he was reluctant. But nevertheless he joined hands with the man, who he hoped would keep quiet and keep the matter secret. After all, he did not want to be labeled “unscientific.” He was alarmed when the man’s booming voice filled the examination room. But Matthews had a crucial realization that day: His patient was a whole person, not a composite of symptoms and tests forming a “case.” This led him to become sensitive to signals indicating that religion is important to a patient. If someone says: “I hope from God that nothing bad shows up in these tests,” Matthews will say: “Tell me your thoughts about God.” He declares: “We cannot prove scientifically that God heals, but I believe we can prove that belief in God has a beneficial effect.” In his recently published book The Faith Factor, he incorporates religious wisdom, scientific research, and patients’ stories to make a case for the faith-health connection.(5)

Statistical Findings

Health care institutions are beginning to pay attention to the faith-health connection. Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, and the AAAS have sponsored conferences on spirituality and health. Nearly half of all American medical schools now offer courses on the topic. Below we give findings of some published studies on the topic.

• In a survey of 269 doctors at the 1996 meeting of the American Academy of Family Physicians, 99 percent said they thought religious beliefs could contribute to healing. When asked about their personal experiences, 63 percent of doctors said God intervened to improve their own medical conditions. Their patients agree even more enthusiastically that prayer is a powerful tool in healing. Polls by Time/CNN and USA Weekend show that about 80 percent of Americans believe spiritual faith or prayer can help people recover from illness or injury, and more than 60 percent think doctors should talk to patients about faith and even pray with those who request it.

• According to researchers at Columbia University, children whose religiously committed mothers are less likely to suffer from depression later in life.(6) In their study, 60 mothers and 151 children were followed over 10 years to determine if there was any relationship between a mother’s religious commitment and resulting depression in her children. The study found that daughters, but not sons, of women who considered religion to be highly important were 60 percent less likely to have a major depressive disorder at the 10-year followup. A second important factor linked with less depression was the degree to which the children embraced their mother’s religion. When the mother and child were members of the same religious denomination at the followup, daughters were 71 percent less likely to suffer from a major depressive disorder while sons were 84 percent less likely.

• Another significant finding of the study was that highly religious mothers were less likely to be depressed themselves.(7) Women for whom religion was highly important were 81 percent less likely to have major depression at the 10-year followup. This finding is consistent with other studies showing an inverse relationship between religiosity and depression. Several possible explanations exist for these findings. According to the researchers, highly religious mothers also were less likely to be divorced or exhibit poor social functioning—-both of which could contribute to depression in children. Another potential explanation comes from a recent study at the Medical College of Virginia, which found that religion can protect people from depression by buffering them against stressful life events.(8)

• A Dartmouth Medical School study found that heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in group activities and did not find comfort in religion. Within six months of surgery 21 patients died, but there were no deaths among 37 people who said they were “deeply religious.”

• A Yale University study of 2,812 elderly people found that those who never or rarely attended church had nearly twice the stroke rate of weekly church-goers.

• A survey of 5,286 Californians found that church members have lower death rates than nonmembers—regardless of such risk factors as smoking, drinking, obesity, and inactivity.

• Those with a religious commitment had fewer symptoms or had better health outcomes in seven out of eight cancer studies, four out of five blood pressure studies, four out of six heart disease studies, and four out of five general health studies. According to one research analysis, people with a strong religious commitment seem to be less prone to depression, suicide, alcoholism, and other addictions.

• Can others’ prayers help? In a 1988 study by cardiologists Randolph Byrd, 393 heart patients in San Francisco General Hospital Medical center were divided into two groups. One was prayed for by people around the country; the other did not receive any prayers from study participants. Patients did not know to which group they belonged. The group that was prayed for experienced fewer complications, fewer cases of pneumonia, fewer cardiac arrests, less congestive heart failure, and needed fewer antibiotics.(9)

• Researchers studying a sample population of 2,730 drawn from the Alameda County Study—a long-term research project of health and mortality—found that people who both attend religious services and participate in other activities through their place of worship receive protection from the stress of financial burdens, health issues, and other problems.

• In a study of nearly 600 severely ill hospital patients aged 55 and older, researchers measured 47 ways of coping. They discovered that patients who sought a connection with a benevolent God as well as support from clergy and church members were less depressed and rated their quality of life as higher, even after taking into account the severity of their diagnosis. Researchers also found that patients who gave spiritual support to others by praying for them or encouraging their faith also faired better emotionally.

• Another recent study conducted at Duke University revealed more striking results. In the first study to examine the role of religion in recovering from depression, researchers followed 87 patients aged 60 or older who were diagnosed with depressive disorder after being admitted to the hospital for a physical illness. They discovered that religion can help people recover from depression. In fact, the more spiritual the patient, the more quickly he or she recovered.(10)

Conclusion

Can faith really heal? According to some researchers, the answer is a definite yes. The study of the link between religious faith and physical healing is very young. But there are important signs that faith can have significant positive impact on health, complementing such conventional medical practices as pharmaceuticals and surgery. Increasingly, professionals from respected institutions are looking into the relationship of faith and healing via scientific methods. Once considered a taboo, studying the healing powers of faith is now taken seriously in scientific circles. Regardless of its results, the very existence of this effort promises to expand the possibilities of cooperation between science and faith, and lead to a better understanding of human nature. *Fight or Flight Response: Stress has been defined as the perception of threat or danger that requires behavioral change. Stress results in various bodily changes, including increased metabolism, and increases in heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, and blood flow to the muscles. These internal physiological changes prepare us to fight or run away, and thus stress reaction has been named the “fight or flight” response. The fight or flight response was first described by Harvard physiologist Dr. Walter B. Cannon. It is mediated by the increased release of adrenaline and noradrenalin (epinephrine and norepinephrine) into the blood stream.

References

1. Herbert Benson, Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief (Fireside: 1997).
2. “Mindful Healing, Technology Review,” Edited by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 1996.
3. Jessica Cohen, “The Greatest Story Never Told,” Utne Reader, No. 80, April 1997.
4. “Doctors Report: Faith Can Heal You,” Reader’s Digest, October 1998.
5. Dale A. Matthews, The Faith Factor: Proof of the Healing Power of Prayer, Penguin USA, 1999.
6. L. Miller, et al. “Religiosity and Depression: Ten-year Follow-up of Depressed Mothers and Offspring.” J. Am. Acad. Child Adolescent Psychiatry 1997; 36:10:1416-1425.
7. Ibid.
8. K. S. Kendler, et al. “Religion, Psychopathology, and Substance Use and Abuse: A Multi-measure, Genetic-Epidemiologic Study.” Am. J Psychiatry 1997; 154(3):322-329.
9. “Doctors Report: Faith Can Heal You,” Reader’s Digest, October 1998.
10. “Why Doctors Believe Faith is Powerful Medicine,” Reader’s Digest, October 1999.
11. http://www.nihr.org/media2/99_apr_stress.html

A more systematic approach to language and cognition began in the 1920s. During the 20s and 30s Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf separately claimed that language is the main factor in the constructive process, that, in effect, language determines thought. Whorf claimed in his Collected Papers on Metalinguitics that language is the prime factor in objectification of reality. Language determines thought and certain aspects of it restrict our view of the world. A weaker form of the ‘language hypothesis’ does not insist that language determines thought, but that language predisposes the way people think.

During the 50s, when behaviourism was the intellectual fashion, there were not many studies on language and cognition. The stimulus-response-reinforcement model favoured by the behaviourists was applied to language acquisition by Skinner in his book Verbal Behaviour. According to Skinner, verbal behaviour can be acquired if the set of appropriate responses is frequently followed by reinforcement. Reinforcement, he claimed, is equally important after language has been acquired. The purpose and function of reinforcement is to maintain the strength of the response. Language acquisition and verbal behaviour are regarded as mechanical processes. Verbal behaviour can only develop in a social context, with the participation of another person or audience. The speaker learns to speak eventually only in the presence of a listener; the reinforcement that a speaker needs is absent or present when a listener is absent or present. This view treats language as a learning behaviour that can be changed or manipulated with the help of reinforcement, or deprivation, in other words ‘a specific controlling condition … control of verbal stimuli.’

Skinner presents three different types of behaviour which control the verbal stimuli: the echoic, the textual and the intraverbal. ‘Echoic’ behaviour is when the response consists of a sound pattern reproducing something very similar to the stimulus. It is established in the child through the special reinforcement that Skinner calls ‘educational’. Educational reinforcement is provided by institutions whose behaviour is influenced by economic reinforcement: for example, when a teacher gets some financial (or other) rewards for teaching the child how to acquire language effectively. ‘Textual’ behaviour relates to learning how to read. It too is established through educational reinforcement. The stimulus in this case is a text which may be in the form of pictures, formalised pictographs, characters or (more commonly) letters or symbols of an alphabet. ‘Textual’ behaviour describes the way people acquire the skill of writing. Writing behaviour has all the characteristics of ‘echoic’ behaviour, but expressed in visual rather than auditory terms. Three stages are distinguished: the stage of producing the necessary materials, the stage of making differentiated marks, and the stage of transmitting these marks to the reader.

In the case of intraverbal behaviour there is no correspondence between stimulus and response-produced, as in echoic behaviour or as in the correspondence between different dimensional systems as in the textual behaviour. This allows the consideration of all types of vocal and textual stimuli and responses in all combinations at the same time. Interestingly, Skinner regards translation as a ‘special case of intraverbal behaviour’.

Skinner’s approach to thought was abstract, not empirically based. His view was that the results of human thought can be most unpredictable and are therefore severely difficult to explain. So, the simplest and most satisfactory way of explaining thought is to consider it as a behaviour. Thought is not a secretive way of influencing the behaviour, but it is behaviour itself, the ‘sum total’ of the responses to the world and the environment the behaviour ‘lives’ in. He concludes: ‘When we study human thought we study behaviour.’

In the 60s the debate about language was between two conflicting positions. The behaviourist accounts of language and language-acquisition in terms of association, and the approach of Chomsky and his colleagues who presented a linguistic analysis strongly linked with psychology. Their basic argument was that the stimuli-response theory was highly irrelevant with respect to language acquisition. Being mainly interested in the syntactic forms of language they believed that the deep structures of sentences are abstract and inexplicable by the simplistic arguments put forward by the behaviourists. Their debate with the behaviourists, and the theoretical papers in which they criticized and cast doubt on their views, did not leave much room for attention to childhood development and how the processes of that development affect their language acquisition.

Piaget, although not a psychologist by profession (he started out as a biologist), showed a great interest in the way children think. He believed, in contradistinction to Sapir-Whorf, that thought determines language, a position since known as the ‘cognition hypothesis’. The basic difference between language studies in the 60s and Piaget’s approach was that Piaget’s interest was in children aged six and above, and investigated the first structured language during and shortly after the stage of two-word utterance. He discussed language and the thinking of the child, the language function, the questions that children put, and understanding between children.

Piaget and Chomsky came to be the most recognised and respected representatives of the cognitive movement; their work has inspired and influenced so many and to such an extent, that one can rightly speak of a school of thought within the field of cognitive studies. Chomsky had revolutionary and controversial views about language and thought sharply contrasted with anything that had come before. He claimed that every child has an innate knowledge system that contains abstract linguistic structures that are not taught rather, they are already part of the child’s system from birth. He hypothesized that under those circumstances, there must exist a set of grammatical rules that would produce syntactic descriptions for any sentence in any given language. Piaget on the other hand believed that a child must go through several stages to acquire an adult level of logical thought. The effect of the environment on a child’s thought and language is, for Piaget, crucial. Language is an extremely broad set of human capacities. Identical mental operations underlie one’s encounters with a wide range of materials and topics such as space, time, casualty and morality. So the later forms of thought can be located in earlier forms. Piaget examined the child and his mind as an active and constructive agent, that slowly gains knowledge and logic through developing cognitive processes. Chomsky’s view was different; he saw the mind as a set of pre-programmed units fully equipped, that need only a modest trigger from the environment to function. In other words Piaget considered human linguistic capacities as a product of a general ‘constructed’ intellectual development, whereas Chomsky insisted that they are a highly specialised part of the human genetic inheritance, largely separate from any other human faculty. They are, Chomsky said, a kind of an innate knowledge that has only to unfold. The Piagetian cognitive hypothesis claims that language derives from thought. Chomsky takes a radically different view, arguing that language is divorced from thinking. He claims that each human intellectual faculty is located in different areas of the brain, maturing at its own rate and through distinct processes. To make this statement more comprehensible, Chomsky used the analogy of bodily organs: he regarded the mind as a set of organs, like the liver or the lungs or the heart. A heart is not taught to beat, but matures according to its own genetic timetable. The same is true of ‘language’ as well as to other ‘organs of the mind’, that are programmed to function over time according to a genetic timetable.

Although both used and developed models provided by biology and logic, they showed interest in very different kinds of examples and explanations. Piaget tried to give a rich description of the stages that children pass through to achieve a higher level of knowledge. So he developed an elaborate technical vocabulary, rooted in biology, and he based his conclusions upon errors that children made when he gave them his famous challenging puzzles to solve. His ability to give convincing answers to the problems of the development of knowledge, and his hard work in collecting and synthesizing an enormous amount of data, are his big contribution to this field.

Chomsky’s contribution is no less important. His difference from Piaget is that he was not concerned to describe behavioural phenomena; his concern was the development of linguistic science and how its approach and methods could carry into the social sciences. His views of language as a part of an innate and universal system of knowledge and language are the same, had huge influence, although it is an hypothesis impossible to prove.

In October 1975, Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky were invited to express their ideas and present their theories in a meeting which took place at the Abbaye de Royaumont in France. The historical importance of this ‘rendezvous’ was noted by the psychology and linguistic community all over the world and even scientists from behavioural and empirical areas attended the occasion. Piaget and Chomsky exchanged views about language and cognition, but, as people who attended the Royaumont meeting commented, there was no agreed conclusion, only exploration of issues.

It is hardly surprising that no firm conclusions were reached at that meeting. The study of cognition is not an empirical study of given data or facts susceptible to quantitative measurement or experimentation. The subject-matter has to do with human psychology, where different views, theories, methods and experiments are used, different schools are created and several disciplines such as anthology, biology, philosophy etc. are involved together. Without ignoring the important contribution of schools such as behaviourism, psychoanalysis etc., only the further development of the cognitive movement appears likely to give satisfactory answers to issues that arise everyday about language and thought. The charm of uncertainty will draw the passion for further research that will lead from mere confusion to a new theory, a new argument for appraisal or debate.

Useful reading 

• Appel, M,H. (1977) Topics in Cognitive Development.
• Drorni, E. (1993) Language and Cognition: A Developmental Perspective.
• Massimo, P. (1979) Language and Learning.
• Skinner, B. (1957) Verbal Behaviour.
• Vasniadou, S. (1993) Language and Thought.
• Vhorf B.L. (1952) Collected Papers on Metalinguitics.