Camelia Bhattacharyya, Amity University Kolkata
Coordination, a term used to describe a proper balance and work-together atmosphere amongst certain things or people. This term is very important when dealing with a car. To drive a car, the most important thing is the proper coordination of sight, hearing, and the movement of the limbs in order to control the movements of the vehicle. The next most important thing is knowledge about the car. Several accidents occur everyday due to a lack of these qualities while most often the real lack happens due to drinking and driving. Alcohol, as we know causes threats to the body by not only damaging the kidneys but also weakening the control center of the body, the brain, by interfering with the signaling pathway of the neurons. Previous studies had shown that alcoholism could cause impaired vision while driving but recent studies have shown more dangerous results. While 0.15% levels were previously considered as the limit from which the vision starts getting impaired, 0.015% of blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) are now proved to interfere with the coordination between the hands and sight.
The study was conducted by NASA in order to detect the sensitivity of the astronauts in space and how the changes in the functioning of the brain due to certain stress factors like sleep deprivation, etc can interfere with the coordination of the sense organs and the limbs. Alcohol was used in these experiments. Certain methods of measuring the slightest changes in the responses of the body were tried only to be shocked with the results. It was noticed that a very little amount of alcohol can slow the rate of the responses of the motor neurons. This then fails to combine the situation with the knowledge to create a stimulus. Let’s take an example to explain this: consider a person walking on a road that is under construction. Now there’s a hole being dug with a signboard warning the trespassers. Now a person with the proper vision and proper coordination amongst all the organs of the body would choose to take another way, but the one lacking it won’t. Why? Well, a damaged vision would cause a disturbance in reading the signboard and once it’s read, the response or the stimulus will be delayed and the person would realize that he was supposed to move only after falling inside the hole. This is exactly how alcohol works. It slows and gradually ruins the senses.
To deal with these problems new technologies are being discovered to measure the changes in the eyes and the problems it can create. Hope we soon get to live in a world where the inner mechanisms of the body is exposed to us and the changes felt. But before that, it is our responsibility to take care of the most complicated machine, the human body, and follow this popular slogan, “Don’t drink and drive, think and drive”.
Also read:Replicating self-cleaning, anti-reflective nanocoating of insects’ eyes
Source: “Want to win a bowling game? Beware of even one glass of alcohol!” by Philippe Lefèvre, 17 December 2020, The Journal of Physiology.
DOI: 10.1113/JP280395
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