miércoles, 23 de marzo de 2011

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.

martes, 15 de marzo de 2011

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.


martes, 8 de marzo de 2011

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.

 

jueves, 3 de marzo de 2011

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.








martes, 1 de marzo de 2011

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.