Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Beauty is in the ear of the beholder

Olympus BioScapes 2007 Digital Imaging Competition Gallery Fourth Prize
Dr. Sonja Pyott
Department of Biology and Marine Biology
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Wilmington, NC, USA

This enamoring picture is of the cochlea and hair cells. The little green trolls are the hair cells. I wonder what my hair cells look like. Are they attached just waving around? Did they shrivel up like a weed? Do they turn a different color? Do they lose their troll hair?

The red part that looks like a heartbeat is the neurons. When my cochlear implant receives auditory information it sends out an electrical impulse which causes the neurons to fire. When the neurons fire, my brain interpret the firing as sound. I'm not sure what the other colors represent. I have to snoop around and dig up some information.

Artist try to portray an emotion, a scene, someone, or the essence of the moment. The use of primary colors are amazing. This photo looks like a garden with children standing behind the border of flowers holding hands.

Or I need to change my contacts.

7 comments:

Jennifer said...

Abbie, that's just gorgeous. Where in the world did you find that?
I wonder, too, what my hair cells look like. I always kind of imagined them mowed down like grass. When my grandfather developed Alzheimer's he would put the blade on the mower down as low as it would go and just drive around scalping the yard...you could see dirt. That's what I think my cochlea looks like! :)

Anonymous said...

That is so pretty. I envision mine as a newbie soldier getting his hair cut in basic training - left with nothing.

But now we have gorgeous cochleas that work!

Val

Sam said...

That is an awesome picture! How did you find it????

Anonymous said...

Thats how you tell if your a real Blonde

Geo said...

That is a cool shot. I always envisioned mine loking like a tornado went through. HA!

Kim said...

This is beautiful!! I always pictured them being brittle and dried out like the dreaded split ends. This pic reminds me of a high school art class assignment I had once. We had to fish out a something from a science text book and batik it. I found a simple cell structure-- then batiked it in reds, oranges and yellows. It reminded everyone of the sun.

Karen Putz said...

That's an amazing picture!