Narcolepsy

We recently watched a video about a very strange condition
called narcolepsy which could be translated as the sleep of the dead. This
disease is a rare neurological condition which is shown by excessive “sleep
attacks” when sleep overwhelms the brain. It is possibly a condition caused by
damage or a condition in which the brain does not have the ability to repair or
recharge correctly and sleep does nothing truly effective or useful for
someone. This is dangerous in that a person is constantly exhausted, and never
truly is fully recharged no matter how many times they sleep or are hit by a
sleep attack. People with this, are frequently hit by dangerous sleep attacks
which overwhelm their desire to stay awake, and cause instant extremely short
sleeps lasting anywhere from seven seconds to a matter of minutes. It can cause
over sixty attacks a day, and even cause the person to suffer from instant,
temporary paralysis. This is a condition in which any voluntary muscle from the
mouth to the legs will be taken over and the brain will not be able to command them,
which causes anything from slurred speech to complete lock of the legs and arms
causing someone to fall over. This is a dangerous condition to live with and is
impossible to cure as of yet, but medication can help.

dreams!

Recently we watched a video discussing dreams. This video discussed the stages of sleep such as rem, stage 1, 2, 3 and 4. It all discussed the purpose of nightmares.                                                                                              The brain is capable of storing important memories from our ancestors, a ability known as genetic memory. It is in this strange and profound function of the brain that nightmares arrive. The purpose of nightmares, though is unknown but it is currently accepted that it is in nightmares that we gain the ability to practice dangerous situations, so that perhaps if they ever occurred in real life we would be ready to face them. However some strange issues are addressed, such as why children dream of monsters and wolves instead of normal problems children should face, this is due to the brain being young and unadjusted just yet. As people grow older, they begin to experience more appriate nightmares such as losing their keys, getting F’s on tests and such concerns. It also addresses the ability of dreaming to solve problems.                                                                                                                                                                          It shows an experiment which involves a video game, of skiing. A boy is only sub-par at the game, but after he goes to sleep and dreams about it he’s found that he is much more skilled at it then he was before, therefore showing a normal example of skill increasing due to dreams.   

isolation

Recently in class we watched a video describing the effects of social isolation, and mental isolation, which is basically when someone is left totally alone and complelty with out an activity to entertain themselves, so without mental stimulation. This controversial test is simply to test the effects on the brain, and the theory was that the brain’s abilities would be slowed after prolonged periods of no stimulation. This was due to the study which showed that the brain can lose unused connections in order to run more effectively and spend less energy, by narrowing the pathways.                                                                                                                        Six ordinary people were choosen to particate in this experiment in which they are taken to an underground nuclear bunker where they are depreived of mental stimulation, locked in a dark room with nothing to do for two days a full forty eight hours. They were tested before hand to see their memory, information processing, and succesptiably, which is basically their ability to resist the urge to change their minds from their own view points. After the experiment they were tested again to shocking results: the women were unaffected in succesptiably while the men were much more succesptiable. This helps prove that it was a successful torture tool, due to it being able to cause men to change opions much easier. It also showed that the effects of isolation can be really bad for our brain and mental abilities.   

Definitons

1. Synesthesia stimulation causes reaction of a sense typically associated with another sense

2. grapheme-color synesthesia: perceiving a certain color when seeing a letter word or number

3. ordinal-linguistic personification the involuntary and automatic tendency in certain individuals to attribute animate-like qualities  

4. number-form synesthesia: Numbers months and years have a defined shape.

5. sound-color synesthesia: Color as a response to a certain sound

6. lexical-gustatory synesthesia: Words have taste.

Genius, Savant, and Autism

1: A savant is effectively a genius with a severe mental disability which effectively cancels out his potential for growth. Savant's typically have a remarkable mental ability and a equally remarkable mental disability which makes them somehow unable to function in normal society. http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/
2: A genius is a staggering natural intellect often in math, science, music, creative arts. The most crictal difference between a genius and savant is the mental disability, which often cancels out the potential of the savant, as well as a savant normally can't learn truthfully, their mental ability's potential is cancelled out by the staggering disorders they have. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genius
3: A stroke is when the brain is deprived of blood and oxygen which causes brain cells to die. It affects the brain in many ways, capable of causing effective rewiring, unleashing inate savant like abilities and permant mental defects such as inability to speak, loss of mental ability, inabiltiy to understand langauges http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stroke/DS00150
4: It is a process by which using magnetic pulses and observing brain activty that the area's of the brain which activity increase by certain thought processes the brain can effectively be mapped out. This increases our understanding of brain activity by showing us which brain area's are on when we think about certain things in certain ways. http://www.fmri.org/fmri.htm
5: The corpus Callosum is the organ in the brain which connects right and left hemispheres. It allows information to go through both parts of the brain and allows for the information to be fully processed. http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/split_brain/Corpus%20Callosum.html
6: A condition of the nervous system which causes involutary physical actions such as twitching and seizures. These are caused by misfires of the brain electrical system.Since its caused by brain malfunctions it negatively affects the brain. http://kidshealth.org/teen/diseases_conditions/brain_nervous/epilepsy.html#
7: Autism is a neurological disorder. It causes social impairment, stero typed behavior, loss of sense of reality, and communication difficulties. Although its not uncommon for autistic childern to actually be brillant when fully aware of their surrondings. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/autism/detail_autism.htm
8: A variet of Autism in which social isolation and ecentric behavior are common. Also it causes impairments in non-verbal and verbal communication causing even more social isolation. It also causes unique often not age apporiate interests and clumminess creating social pariahs. http://www.aspergers.com/aspclin.htm

Accidental Genus

In this video we met a savant. A savant is a person whose mental abilities would be remarkable even in a normal person, and these people often have a staggering mental disability such as retardation, or extreme lack of social skills. We met a artist who had a hemorrhage in his brain which although it didn’t kill him, didn’t affect him too badly expect for one thing: he become a skilled artist, who has a obsession with painting. His wife left him, and he went on drawing, although at point he became scared and sent out a message for help. A neuroscientist in Harvard answered, and she had a very special connection with this man. She had a similar accident which caused her to develop a similar condition in the terms of mania but instead of drawing, she felt a obsessive compulsion to write what happened to her, she wrote everything on everything.  We also met another artist with very good drawing skills, who happened to be a calendar drawer, but his origins were different, instead he was born with his unique talent due to a tester tone overload before he was born, while he was still in the womb. This video demonstrated that genus isn’t always made or created on purpose but can come from surprising sources.

Made genus

This video discussed how genus could be made with only some natural talent, an early start, and a good background. We met and talked too Susan Pulgar in this video, she is a chess “genus”. She is a young woman who was raised by someone determined to break the natural genus stereotype, someone determined to prove that a genus isn’t always born but can be molded. Her father was a above average chess player, who taught her how to play at age four even though the world of chess like many other things at that time was a male dominated world. She rose through the ranks and become an acknowledged grand master, defeating the stereotype that women can’t play chess. She proved that genus can be made, and helped show the world that women can be just as good at chess as others. She also is the mother of an other chess genus a young seven year old who is a ranked US player for his age group. She says however that “he has a long way to go, and a teacher who will teach him”