NARCOLEPSY

Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder in which the person who suffers from it cannot control their sleep. This means that they can fall asleep even while standing up, driving, talking, etc. The simple disability to control an aspect of one's life is bad enough, but imagine falling asleep for a few minutes or seconds about 50 or 60 times a day without any control. This would prevent one from various activities such as walking through the mall or going to a park or having dinner at a restaurant, unless you have someone besides you whose willing to pick you up from the floor, over and over again. Finding someone that would be willing to stay each and every day of their lives with you helping with this sickness can be as tough and depressing as the narcoleptic staying awake. Also, the constant uncontrolable experience of falling asleep wherever, whenever, brings a negative aura around the person. All those around will believe the person is a drug addict or an alcoholic. Something as normal and common as sleeping becomes a shameful experience for a person who has no control whatsover and has no choice but live through this.

DREAMS

It has come to my attention that dreams have a huge impact on our lives when we are awake and conscious; they have the power to alter our decisions or cause us to create new ones. While dreaming we can also solve different types problems we are experiencing in our daily lives since our dreams usually depend on the events that occurred previously that day. Dreams can be so vivid and terrifying or so happy and exciting that one while sleeping can actually be moving around acting out whatever they’re dreaming. Although, this factor can negatively affect a person’s life and the life of his or her partner. A man who is aggressive during sleep, as the example shown in the video, makes it impossible for his wife to sleep next to him. This is called REM sleep disorder where the part of the brain that disables them to move during REM is not working as it should. Dreams are a kind of search for the truths that we’re unable to find while awake. I believe that dreams have motivation; they provide us the privacy to run wild and do the things that most of the time while awake we yearn to do but can’t because of the ball and chain of reality that keeps us down to earth.

Video Response: Alone

Around the world, authorities have come up with different types of torture to punish those who have done wrong or those they believe to be wrong. Never have I ever seen a type of torture such as this one shown in this video. Although no physical image of blood or screams of pain were shown, this type of torture is able to bring as much desperation as having someone cut your flesh wide open. The type of torture is called sensory deprivation in which persons are left days, months, or even years without using senses such as sight, touch, hearing or speaking with someone. It doesn’t sound as bad as physical torture but in reality, it is so much worse. The brain needs constant stimulation for it to be healthy and develop under the right circumstances. Patients being tested in a laboratory in which they had no sight or someone to speak to for 48 hours began to hallucinate, sing to themselves, pace around the room in desperation, and become terribly scared and drive themselves mad. Depriving one of these senses changes the person’s life forever; they become eternally segregated, even when given the ability to use their senses again. It makes them scream to God and wish for the pain to be physical instead of having to survive this unusual torture than creates a permanent sentence until the end of their existence.

Questions

1. Explain in detail what "savant syndrome" means.

Savants, despite serious mental or physical disability, have amazing, and sometimes spectacular, talents. This is one of the most fascinating phenomena in the study of human differences and cognitive psychology. http://www.psy.dmu.ac.uk/drhiles/Savant%20Syndrome.htm

2. What does genius mean?  Explain the difference between genius and savant.

One of the most awesome aptitudes of the brain is personified in the genius; an individual with sometimes astounding talents in one or more areas of achievement, usually without any education in their field. The difference between a genius and a savant is geniuses are astounding in various fields but a savant has mental and physical disabilities showing only one spike of ability in one area. http://scienceandreligion.com/genius.htm

3. What is a stroke and how could it affect your mental functioning?

 A stroke is a medical emergency caused by the blockage or rupture of an artery, which prevents the flow of blood to the brain. The injuries suffered after the stroke depends on where the stroke occurred and how much of the brain was affected. Smaller strokes may cause minor problems, such as weakness in an arm or leg. Larger strokes may lead to paralysis or death. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/7624.php

4. What is a functional MRI and how does it help us understand brain activity?

 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a relatively new procedure that uses magnetic resonance imaging to measure the tiny metabolic changes that occur in an active part of the brain. Functional magnetic resonance uses a powerful magnetic field, radio frequency pulses and a computer to produce detailed pictures. It is used to: examine the anatomy of brain, determine which part of the brain is handling thought, speech, movement, and sensation (also known as brain mapping), helps assess the effects of a stroke, trauma or degenerative disease, monitor the growth of brain tumors. http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=fmribrain

5. What is the corpus callosum and what role does it play in your brain's activity?

 The corpus callosum is a huge bundle of nerve fibers found in brains belonging to mammals. It connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain, therefore, is responsible for most of the communication between the two hemispheres. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-corpus-callosum.htm

6. What is epilepsy and how might it affect your brain's abilities?

 Epilepsy is a neurological condition in which a person has seizures starting in the brain; it can cause memory loss or anterograde amnesia. http://www.articlesbase.com/diseases-and-conditions-articles/

7. What is autism?

 Autism is a complex developmental disability which is the result of a neurological disorder. It affects brain functions such as the development of the person's communication and social interaction skills. People with autism usually have issues with non verbal communication and social interactions, its as if these kids lived in a different world. http://kidshealth.org/kid/health_problems/brain/autism.html

8. What is Asperger's Syndrome?

AS is a neurobiological disorder that is part of a group of conditions called autism spectrum disorders which refers to a range of developmental disabilities that includes autism as well. AS is characterized by poor social interactions, obsessions, odd speech patterns, and other peculiar mannerisms similar to those kids with high functioning autism. Kids with AS often have few facial expressions and have difficulty reading the body language of others. http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/brain/asperger.html

DEFINITIONS

 Synesthesia: Synesthesia is an involuntary condition in which the information of one sense is perceived at the same time as if by one or more additional senses, it can be described as the senses being cross wired. http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/syne.html

grapheme-color synesthesia: The condition in which on perceives a color while looking at a letter, a word, or a number. Tests made on patients with this type of synesthesia show extra activations in the fusiform gyrus, which is known to be involved in color and word processing. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19302164

ordinal-linguistic personification: An automatic tendency to attribute animate-like qualities, such as personality and gender, to sequential linguistic units such as days, letters, months, numerals, etc. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1245903

 
number-form synesthesia: The condition in which a mental map of numbers appears whenever the person is thinking about numbers, its believed this is a result of “cross-activation” between some parts of the parietal lobe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_form

 
sound-color synesthesia: In thus type of synesthesia, patients experience color as a response to music, when the music plays, colors relative to the tones or instruments appear. Patients are also able to see color from ordinary sounds such as the chirp of a bird.

http://undacovabear.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/sound-colour-synesthesia/

lexical-gustatory synesthesia: When the patient can actually taste a word by saying it or thinking about it; each word has a unique taste just like food. http://alifeinpages.blogspot.com/2006/12/lexical-gustatory-synaeshesia.html

ACCIDENTAL GENIUS (savants) video

A savant is a person with an overall ability level extremely low but who excels in one specific area, for example memorizing populations of cities by simply reading them once but otherwise, mentally impaired. We saw examples of savants like George who can calculate the day of the week of any date in seconds; he is a prodigious savant who knows things they have never learned, his brain works completely different than ours. The different types of savants are gifted and prodigious. Kim, the most famous savant in whom the movie rain man was based, has memorized nine thousand books. This is amazing, most people can’t even read 9 thousand books but he memorized them. All the information that goes inside his brain stays there. Kim reads this fast because one eye reads one page whiles the other eye reads the next one. It may be that some savants are not able to tie their shoes or even talk, but these persons have amazing brains with amazing abilities that no one else could even imagine to have.

MADE GENIUS video

Even though many “genius” who excel tremendously in an area are born this way, it doesn’t mean that one can’t be created. For example, in the video we saw the story of this woman called Susan who is extraordinary playing chess. Her father began teacher her how to play since she was just a little girl and with so much practice, she became the first female chess master at a very young age; beating even men. In a test made to understand how Susan’s brain functioned while playing chess, scientists realized Susan could recognize a chess game in almost as little time as one recognizes a familiar face. In my opinion the crucial thing for one to be made into a genius at something is to love the thing you are doing. If you do, time stops to exist and everything comes easily.

BORN GENIUS video

Of all the kids in the world, no one can accurately say some are the same as others because all of them are different in their own way. Even though, some kids might be even more different than the others, having remarkable traits that no other person has demonstrated. For example, a kid might be born with skills that have never been taught to him before such as knowing how to play the piano by only hearing the melody of a song. In my opinion these are gifts with which some kids are born with and eventually learn to love. The part of their brains which they use while exercising these traits grow bigger than usual. I believe having a kid with a genius mind like the Chinese kid in the video is a blessing, but at the same time it may be hard for the kid to fit in with the rest of the children of his same age since others’ brains may not be as developed or their interests will probably be completely different.

The question regarding why homosexuals exist, either made by nature or transformed after born, has still one of the most intriguing unknown answers of humanity. Life constantly throws at us thousands of questions, many of which humans can’t find an answer to. Nevertheless, one always ends up choosing a theory, although not perfectly accurate, to believe in. This video contains studies of cases of child-gender-non-conformity, which means a person of a given gender is interested and has behaviors of the opposite sex. One of the cases was about twin brothers with exactly the same genetic makeup, except one of them was gay and the other one straight. If gay people are born this way, why aren’t twin brothers or twin sisters both gay and both lesbian? On the other hand, why would a normal person decide to be gay? In my opinion, the decision of either being gay or not is SOMETIMES optional. Like the 18 month old boy who picks up a Barbie instead of a toy soldier, their makeup pushes them towards things they like, not things they are supposed to choose because of their sex. At this small age the child doesn’t even know what being gay or straight even is. Sometimes, this only means the boy is feminine, but not necessarily gay. Although, feminine boys most of the time turn out being homosexuals. After a kid is born if she or he has a psychological trauma like getting raped by a person of their opposite sex, might probably look for a partner of their same sex because of fear. In conclusion, a person cannot be judged because of their sexual orientation; after all, the important thing is to accept a person by who they really are, not by whether you understand their decisions or not. “Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?” –Ernest Gaines. I believe this is probably because people in the world rather see and do murders than accept change and difference. I believe these people are too close minded to open up their hearts to something dissimilar to what they see every day in the mirror.  

Criminal Minds Video

Recent studies made on patients who have committed terrible crimes show that most of these criminals have something wrong going on in their brains. Many years ago, before these studies had been made, people usually believed that murderers or rapists followed the devil or did these things out of pure evil boiling inside them. Dr. Louis is a famous psychiatrist who has met the most terrifying criminals out there and her studies have proven that all of them have a cause to the effect of their behavior. Whether mistreated, abused, or exposed to harmful deeds since childhood, or by suffering brain damage, the delinquents have an explanation. In the video we saw the story of a man named Terrance who killed his whole family simply because of a small fight with his spouse. When interviewed, he made jokes about the murder. This means that his brain does not know how to react to the situation at hand; it doesn’t know how serious or grave the circumstances are. It was later on figured that Terrance, before the murder, had a serious case of bipolar disorder and depression. As a child, his mother used to hit him with telephone cords and belts. When a child is raised in a violent home, just like Terrance did, they will probably grow up to be brutally aggressive without understanding why this is wrong. The video portrayed another situation in which a rapist and murderer of 11 women had suffered sexual abuse as a child. As a result, we can now understand these people are not born being criminals, they are created because of the type of environment they live at home. So before judging them depending on their acts, one must understand the life they had to endure with before exploding.

Brain Damage Video

It is unbelievable how a simple mistake can change someone’s life so much they no longer will recognize any aspect of it. Out of a simple fight or an accidental car crash a bang in the head can hurt the brain and therefore take our lives, as we know them, away, giving us in return a new way of life that we can do nothing but deal with. The various examples we saw from the Brain Damage video showed us the three possible injuries on the brain; contusion of the brain, axonal injury, and hematoma. Whichever one of these, horrible consequences follow. These horrible consequences in which the people who suffer from brain injuries are doomed to live with include the way other people will look at them. In other words, it alters the society’s acceptance because these people never saw the injured patients as the humans they used to be, they can’t see past the injuries; these become their focal points. I think this is probably one of the hardest parts of the patients; feeling the stares of shock from society. They may look in the mirror and find deep inside a shadow of what they used to be but since the accident, since their brains suffered the damage, nothing is the same.

Mind Reading Video Response

The only things we can really keep to ourselves are those which we don’t speak, those which we lock up inside our minds with ball and chain so as for no one else to reach. But what if someone, or something for that matter, is able to attain all the thoughts inside our heads and truly read out minds? In the Mind Reading video we saw machines that could know if a person had been in places shown by the computer because of their brain activity. During another type of test a person is shown images and the computer is able to attain the name of the object being shown in the image by reading the person’s brain. Who would imagine a computer being able to extract information from our minds without us even realizing how it’s capable of doing it? And to what extend is this even legal? It’s predicted by scientists that in about 5 years a machine perfectly able to read minds will be completed. Although these machines could actually help detectives solving crimes, I personally stand behind the ideal that every human being has the right to keep their thoughts to themselves. If not, it’d be the brutal eradication of freedom of rights. Reading minds may be cool but it can also be considered an illegal invasion of personal space.

Inside the Teenage Brain: Video Response

Living with a teenager may become a tiring burden, but believe me; it’s not as difficult as actually being the teenager. Throughout the video, the whole class found themselves nodding and agreeing with the examples presented. In most cases when we fight with our parents, it’s because they don’t understand us and vice versa. Adults and teenagers have very different stages of brain development and therefore, they can’t expect us to identify with their behaviors, just as we must not expect them to comprehend us all the time.

When a situation presents itself in our faces and we as teenagers don’t know how to react to it, many times the decision we take is to lock up and don’t let anyone in, why would we? No one seems to understand. And of course they don’t understand, how could they? We are not even capable of finding logical reasoning to the erupting feelings and sudden reactions. Sometimes all we need is being alone with no parents or friends, just by ourselves trying to understand and arrange all the pieces of the puzzle that life throws at us with no warning. This doesn’t mean we don’t find comfort in the arms of our mom or dad or that we don’t need friends, it just means teenagers need time to think things through with no one to be questioning their motivations and moods.

Other times, we just want to scream out the problems and insult the world for putting us in troubling circumstances. There are times where we need someone to talk to, to hold us and say everything will be alright, even if it’s just a lie.

Although we pretend we are strong enough and fix fake smiles upon our faces, no teenager could ever go through life pretending they can do it alone without parents or brothers or friends, no matter how much we can fight or disagree with them. There comes a moment every now and then where in the darkness of our rooms we snuggle up in bed, hugging ourselves, making believe that just for a few instants, we are children again.