Narcolepsy

Falling asleep at any time without having control over it must be frustrating. As we were able to see in the video last week in psychology class about narcolepsy, people who suffer from this chronic disease of the nervous system or sleep disorder can fall asleep several times during the day. You may think this could cause no damage, but it is a serious disease which is uncomfortable to live with. I was astonished to see the life that Muhammad had to lead after experiencing around 60 sleep attacks every day. After watching this, I am sure we all realize how lucky we are and appreciate the fact that we can perform almost any task without difficulties. This man struggled because he was not able to drive, take care of himself in public places, and had to be in company of someone that would look after him. He even had to wear a helmet at home to avoid any head injury if he fell down to the ground and hit his head. People who suffer from narcolepsy go directly to REM when they have one of these sleep attacks, they lose control of their muscles and experience dizziness. Now I understand how dangerous and awful this sleeping disorder can be.

Sleep and Dreams

Everything in this world needs a rest, thats why we sleep in my opinion. While we sleep, our consciousness is reduced or absent but our brains are still active. Humans experience different stages of sleep. The first one is very light and it can be considered a transition from wakefulness to sleep; it lasts from 5-10 minutes. The brain produces thetha waves. Many people experience sudden muscle contractions followed by a sensation of fall. During the second stage the temperature of the body starts to decrease and the heart rate slows down. Extremely slow brain waves called delta waves begin to appear during stage 3. Stage 4 is very similar to stage 3 because it is considered a deep sleep with no eye movement or muscle activity. Bed-wetting and sleepwalking usually occur at the end of this stage. Most dreaming takes place during stage 5 and is known as REM, or rapid eye movement. The brain paralyzes the muscles because it is the stage where dreaming occurs and it stops people from performing the actions they have dreamt. Scientists believe that during our sleep all the information that has been stored is reviewed and piled up in the brain. I agree because I have experienced several dreams that are related with things I have thought about or done during the day, or things that have happened in the past, as well as things I plan for the future.

sensory deprivation

How do you imagine if for some reason we could not use our 5 senses hear, smell, taste, touch, and see. In personal I would survive a single day without only one. Each of the 5 senses have a remarkable task in the human body. Last week in phsychology class we saw a video that was about sensory deprivation, in other words it is the isolation of somenone or the lack of stimulation for the brain. Humans need to interact with each other thats why god made two kinds of people, girls and boys, like some people say "One man is not an Island". Sensory deprivation was used in the years of 1950´s during the Korean war, they used it to torture the opponents and try to exctract the information by applying mental and physical torture. In the video a group of phsycologists are studying the effects that sensory deprivation have on the brain. Six people volunteered to make the test. At first they were tested to see the mental skills and abillity. Then they were locked in a room for 48 hours non-stop. Without any person to talk to, anything to entertain them, the main idea was to decrease the amount of stimulation a person have. During the 48 hours almost all six people were anxious to get out and walked back in forth to do something to stay awake. In fact one of them was getting little crazy because he said he saw a snake, which was not true, there were no snake in the room. Indeed sensory deprivation can cause tremendous damage to our brain.

Synesthesia

1. synesthesia- condition of brain where stimilation of a sense causes automatic stimulation of another sense.


2. Grapheme color synesthesia- letters or numbers appear in color.


3. Ordinal linguistic personification- numbers, days of the week and month of the year take on persoalities.

4. Number form synesthesia- numbers, dys of the week and or months of the year are seen in precise locations in space.


5. Sound color synesthesia- words cause specific taste sensations in the mouth.


6. Lexical gustatory synesthesia-  One of the rarer forms of synesthesia, in which spoken or written words evoke vivid sensations of taste, sometimes including temperature and texture.

 

Made Genuis

Can someone be capable of becoming a genius? Well, Susan is a clear example of becoming a genius. Last week in psychology class we saw a video that was about people who are born genius or become genius during the early ages of their lives. Susan teached us that if you put effort and discipline in what you want to accomplish you will succeed. This mastermind woman in chess shocked me when the video showed us that Susan has millions of chess game positions in her brain memorized because of all the years of training and hard working with her dad. Without the support her father gave her she wouldn't be the person she is now. Susan’s dad taught her how to play chess and all the rules. When she was very young, Susan loved to play with her dad, and she would often go with her dad to the chess men club to beat all the old bald guys. Now Susan sees everything different compared to normal people, she developed and stimulated her brain extremely well and it made her a genius at playing chess.

Gifted Children

Why didn't God make all of his children gifted? This is a question that we will never be able to know the answer of. However, there are some causes that have been discovered by different scientists around the world.  Mark, who is very young and plays the piano extremely well, is an example of a gifted child. One of the possible causes is that Mark's mother listened to classical music when she was pregnant. The song she heard the most was from Beethoven and it is also the piece that Mark can play perfectly and enjoys most. Although the advantages of being gifted are many, there are also disadvantages. We were able to see in the video that Mark has low social skills when it comes to interacting with other children.  The reason for this could be that gifted children's brains are more advanced and developed in comparison to the brains of children that are not gifted. Sometimes these gifted children struggle in this world because they are, unfortunately, the minority and don't realize the importance of interacting with others.

MENTAL ABILITIES

1. Explain in detail what "savant syndrome" means.
Savant syndrome is a rare condition which very few people who have very different and rare mental abilieties that make them special but at the same time there mental abilities cut down there other abilities is like one things takes more than the other.


2. What does genius mean?  Explain the difference between genius and savant.
genius is a person with extraordinary intelligence, geniuses and savants are very different because geniuses are good at all the skills that a person have a savant is a very skillful person but in certain areas.


3. What is a stroke and how could it affect your mental functioning?
A stroke is a brain attact it could afffect the mental function because the sudden and harsh movement in the braik may cause a discapacity of some function.


4. What is a functional MRI and how does it help us understand brain activity?
A functional MRI is a machine that helps to explain and determine where the mental activity occur in the brain and helps to read the activity.


5. What is the corpus callosum and what role does it play in your brain's activity?
Corpus callosum is a bundle or nerve fibers found in the mammalian brain. Its role in the brain is to connect all the memories and experiences we have lived.


6. What is epilepsy and how might it affect your brain's abilities?
Epilepsy is a deases that produces convultions and seizures which harm mental or physical functions.

7. What is autism?
Experts believe that Autism presents itself during the first three years of a person's life. The condition is the result of a neurological disorder that has an effect on normal brain function, affecting development of the person's communication and social interaction skills.


8. What is Asperger's Syndrome?
Asperger's Disorder is a milder variant of Autistic Disorder.   Both Asperger's Disorder and Autistic Disorder are in fact subgroups of a larger diagnostic category.

HOMOSEXUALITY

Homosexuality is a very contraversial topic when it comes to nature o nurture. Being gay or lesbian is very hard living in the now a days society. People discriminate homosexuals for various reason, some involve religion, society rules, macho men rule etc.. but non of these are right in what they are doing. I think that straight, lesbians, gays, metrosexual and all the kind and types of sexulity there exist, should let people what they want to do with there lifes and live cohesivly without any type of discrimination.
 In pyschology class this week i watched and learned a lot of interesting facts o Homosexuality. For example scientists have discovered the "Older brother Theorem", this theorem states that the person who has more older brothers is more vulnerable to be gay. Also scientist have discovered that if you are right handed with older brothers your are more prone of being homosexual.
In my personal opinion of wether homosexuality is nature of nurture, is that i think is nature because you do not choose when your born if your straight or gay. When your born theres no two boxes where one box is the gay box and the other one is the straight box which you put a check in the box you want to be. No, i can support this because in the video of homosexuality i saw there was twin brothers which one was all macho man with soldiers and GI JOE figures, and the other one was all girlish with barbies and a room full of pink color.

Criminal Minds

Studying criminal minds is a very interesting thing to do, because you do not know what is really going on inside their brains. Most people don't take the time to think about the reasons why criminals commit such hurtful actions and take wrong decisions in their lives. The main causes people become criminals are abuse suffered during their infant years, mental illnesses or injuries. After watching the video, I was able to understand that sometimes criminals are not aware of the damage they cause and are not completely guilty. However, the mental problems they have do not justify the crimes they commit and the pain they cause to others. The only way to prevent the increase of criminal acts is to help these people instead of just killing them and punishing them in prison.

Brain Injury

Brain injury can be caused by falls, car accidents, accidents when practicing sports, among others that are less common. Before I saw the brain injury video in psychology class, I didn't understand why people with mental problems and disfunctions acted the way they did. After watching the video and hearing Brian tell his story, I have a new perspective of people who have brain injuries and I know that in most cases they are not responsible for this and that their lives were truly affected by the injury.

A contusion, an axonal injury and bleeding inside the brain are all considered types of brain injuries. A contusion is a bruise inside the brain, an axonal injury is damage to the neurons and bleeding increases the pressure inside the brain.

The brain is an essential part of our bodies because it controls everything we do and what we think, and having a brain injury has to be one of the most difficult things to live with.

Mind Reading

It's fantastic to live now a days where the things that many years ago were considered only science fiction, are now reality. In psychology class I learned that there is a technique used in radiology called MRI(Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that can read and indentify where the movement and activity in our brains are. It is also useful to see the heart and to detect certain cancers.

Scientists tell that in approximately 4 to 6 years the brain reading machine would not only read it, but also read what people are thinking or what they intend to do. Reading minds is a very controversial topic. First of all because every person has rights and one of them is privacy. It would also be complicated if the government or other organisms tried to use this for their benefit.

Nobody wants others to know what they are thinking, but it could also help the policemen in solving crimes. For example, if in a trial the judge wants to know if the person accused is telling the truth, the judge could use the MRI to determine whether he or she is telling the truth. I think that it is a very good idea to improve the techonology and keep advancing because it can bring us new and interesting things, but with certain limits.

The Teenage Brain

Now I am able to undertand a lot better how our brain functions and the different spots where these functions take place. Most teenagers have a bad time passing through adolescene, and they end up feeling like nobody understands them.

After watching the teenage brain video in psychology class I could understand why these mood swings, incorrect reasoning and the making of wrong decisions occur. Incorrect or wrong decision taking in teenage years is caused because the frontal lobe in our brain is not entirely developed. The frontal lobe is the one in charge of reasoning, planning, thinking, and decision taking. Teenage life is hard sometimes, because our process of developing and maturing our brain in this time is not clear and understandable as if you see an adults brain. A very interesting fact of the teenage brain is that we need at least nine hours of sleep, and I regularly have 6 to 7 hours of sleep, because of my tight schedule.