Narcolepsy

We saw a video from a guy with narcolepsy. It seems horrible to have narcolepsy. The guy suddenly just fell out of nothing and went asleep. Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder that affects the control of sleep and wakefulness.  It occurs in  sudden sleep attacks, and it usually begins between the ages of 15 and 25. The causes for narcolepsy are unknown, but some think it is due to genes and or biological reasons. Someone with narcolepsy is like a little child because it needs someone to take care of him. They have a very differrent life than the rest of us. He/she would have different jobs, and will be treated differently. Imagine yourself to have sudden sleep attacks. You won't be able to control yourself. Just think of the dangers you have in life. A lot of jobs for example car racing, involve full attention and you would die if you fell asleep. Also simple activities as driving, or going out to the street a normal day would be dangerous. If you have narcolepsy you run serious danger and would need someone to take care of you all the time. The guy we say in the video even used a helmet, and his mother took care of him the whole day. Something amazing he did was going to a place long from his home which is a challange for him.

Sleep and Dreams

Sleeping is very important, and dreaming plays a pretty important role while we sleep. Sleeping helps us do the following: recharge our brain, and to shut down and repair our neurons. Sleep also lower's a person's metabolic rate and energy consumption. The cardiovascular system gets a break. Also growth hormones are released during deep sleep for kids and young adults. In this video we learned about dreams in REM sleep and in Non REM. Rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep) is a normal stage of sleep characterized by the rapid movement of the eyes. Some experiments were done and when the subjects were woken in REM sleep they wrote more positive words given the first letter. Supposedly REM sleep causes negative emotions because of a part of the brain called the amygdala. I find very interesting what is done during our sleep and for what is it. It is a area of knowledge not fully explored. It is very exciting what we dream and it is for. Some scientists are trying to find what dreams mean. Some say that we have dreams to know how to react to specific situations in real life. One thing I find pretty interesting is lucid dreaming, in which you are aware you are in a dream. Imagine taking control of your dream and being able to do what you want, even things that won't happen in real life!

Sensory Deprivation and It's Effect on the Brain - Controversial Tests

This video shows some examples of sensory deprivation done on 6 volunteers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Sensory deprivation is a process by which someone is deprived of normal external stimuli such as sight and sound for an extended period of time. They experimented on these people by taking them, isolating them and cutting their senses. This seems like a horrible experience and something very cruel. I think this shouldn't be done on a human being because it is not ethic. Before the first volunteers enter they do some tests. Then they are deprived for 48 hours. At the beginning some start to get a bit scared, and a man starts to speak alone. Then a second group of subjects were going to enter with harsher conditions. Before they enter they also do a language and a memory test. Some of them start to hallucinate. When they all come out the subjects repeat the tests and a reduction on suggestibility, verbal fluency, and other stuff is noticed. This happens becuase we need to have activity and stimulation.When they get out to nature again they are very happy. Again I repeat, I consider this a very harsh punishment even for people that have done bad things. I would never like to do something like that.

Synesthesia

1. Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

2. grapheme-color synesthesia

Grapheme → color synesthesia is a form of synesthesia in which an individual's perception of numbers and letters is associated with the experience of colors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme-color_synesthesia

3. ordinal-linguistic personification   

Ordinal-linguistic personification is a form of synesthesia in which ordered sequences, such as ordinal numbers, days, months and letters are associated with personalities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_linguistic_personification

4. number-form synesthesia

A number form is a mental map of numbers, which automatically and involuntarily appears whenever someone who experiences number-forms thinks of numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_form

5. sound-color synesthesia

In sound–>colour synesthesia, individuals experience colors as a response to music/sounds. Sound–>colour synesthesia can be further broken down into two categories, “Narrow band” and “Broad band” sound->colour synesthesia.

Narrow band AKA music–>colour synesthesia – When music elicit different shades, hues brightness of colours relative to the tones, notes or even instrument played. Some examples would be, a note of a higher pitch would evoke brighter colours,  and music played from a harp could make an individual see gold.

Broad band synesthesia – Besides music, individuals will be able to see colours from hearing sounds of the ordinary (ringing of alarm clocks, people walking, construction, birds flying).

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

6. lexical-gustatory synesthesia

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical-gustatory_synesthesia

Mental Abilities: Genius, Savant, and Autism

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

Savants are people who despite serious mental or physical disability have quite remarkable, and sometimes spectacular, talents.

Savant syndrome is exceedingly rare, but a remarkable condition in which persons with autism, or other serious mental handicaps, or major mental illness, has astonishing islands of ability or brilliance that stand out in stark contrast to their overall disability. The condition can be congenital or be acquired by an otherwise normal individual following CNS injury or disease. It occurs in males more frequently than in females in an approximate ratio of 6 to 1. The skills can appear suddenly, without explanation, and have been reported as sometimes disappearing just as suddenly. It is useful to put these special skills into the following three categories: Splinter Skills where the individual possesses specific skills that stand in contrast to their overall level of functioning, Talented Savants where the individual displays a high level of ability that is in contrast to their disability, and Prodigious Savants which involves a much rarer form of the condition, where the ability or brilliance is not only spectacular in contrast to the disability, but would be spectacular even if viewed in a non-disabled person. It is very likely that many savants do go unnoticed, and depending upon whether the three categories above are recognized, estimates of the incidence of savant syndrome can vary widely. In the case of prodigious savants it has been estimated that there may be fewer than 100 cases reported in the world literature in the past 100 years.

http://www.psy.dmu.ac.uk/drhiles/Savant%20Syndrome.htm 

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

Genius is something or someone embodying exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of unprecedented insight.

The difference between a genius and a savant is that a genius is not handicapped. A savant has talents in a particular area, but they have mental or physical disabilities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius

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

A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident (CVA), is the rapidly developing loss of brain function(s) due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia (lack of blood flow) caused by blockage (thrombosis, arterial embolism), or a hemorrhage (leakage of blood).

 As a result, the affected area of the brain is unable to function, leading to inability to move one or more limbs on one side of the body, inability to understand or formulate speech, or an inability to see one side of the visual field. A stroke is a medical emergency and can cause permanent neurological damage, complications, and lead to death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke 

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

Functional MRI or functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) is a type of specialized MRI scan. It measures the hemodynamic response (change in blood flow) related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. It is one of the most recently developed forms of neuroimaging. Since the early 1990s, fMRI has come to dominate the brain mapping field due to its relatively low invasiveness, absence of radiation exposure, and relatively wide availability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging

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

The corpus callosum, is a wide, flat bundle of neural fibers beneath thecortex in the eutherian brain at the longitudinal fissure. It connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres and facilitates the communication between them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosum


6. What is epilepsy and how might it affect your brain's abilities?
Epilepsy is a brain disorder involving repeated, spontaneous seizures of any type. Seizures  are episodes of disturbed brain function that cause changes in attention or behavior. They are caused by abnormally excited electrical signals in the brain.
It might affect brain abilities causing difficulty learning and permanent brain damage (stroke or other damage).


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001714/


7. What is autism?
Autism is a developmental disorder that appears in the first 3 years of life, and affects the brain's normal development of social and communication skills.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002494/


8. What is Asperger's Syndrome?
Asperger's syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. 


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome

Video Response #8: Accidental Genius

          We saw a video about people who are gifted with special abilities.  They have this abilities due to some accident or somehting that happened in their lifes. A man that can know what day of the week is of any day in history. This is pretty amazing. The numbers are his friends. He was diagnosed with a form of autism. He can be an example of a savant. An idiot savant is a person who is considered to be mentally handicapped but displays brilliance in a specific area. We also saw about another savant who can memmorize books. He could read a page with one eye and the other with the other eye. Another guy can play a song after hearing just once. The calendar man uses different machinery (parts of the brain) for everyday stuff, different than normal people. In general we are a left brain society, with logic and resoning. Savants, in the other hand, have a left brain that gets messed up. A girl was a great painter when she was two, but when she grew (and learned language) she couldn't paint well any more. This shows that we are creative when we are born. Also in this video we heard about a man called Tommy McHugh. He had a brain injury, and after that he felt the necessity to make paintings, he make great paintings. At the end we saw about a teacher who wants to give savant skills to a student and is using him as his guinea pig. In his experiment he is going to turn of part of his brain. A good percentage has shown that after turning of one part of the brain a test is done better than before. This is shown by about 40% percent. This University teacher will like to one day make a thinking cap, this will be pretty amazing and of great use if it is done. What all these savants can do is purely unbelievable and if someday we can get this abilities without being handicapped it will be amazing.

Video Response #7: Made Genius

     A study was made in a maze were young kids were taken to a maze and they needed to find their way out. The results were that boys make a mental map of the maze and that girls try to solve the maze in a more logical way using landmarks. We have a left and a right brain. The male has the cortex thicker in the right brain, and the female's corpus collusum (which connects the two parts of the brain) is more developed. Susan Polga is a chess master. She has become one of the best in the world. This is amazing, also because she is a woman and fewer women compared to man have been at this level. Susan begins beating men at chess seen little. Susan lived in Budapest, she had lots of chess books and catalogs. She studied a lot of ours a day with these. A psychologist said that specialized training is more important than natural talent. Chess players rely on intuition, and after heavily studying tactics and combination they just know what they have to do. Susan can put the chess pieces exactly as they were after seeing a poster by three seconds. She can do it in her and doesn't need to see the chess board, she does it by memory. Susan can copy a whole chess board. Some people do this by "chunking," just the way she does it.  This is taking chunks of information as one peace of information. These can help you memorize something better. This is a nice trick I didn't know before. Trying to memorize random chess pieces is more difficult. I can conclude from this that geniuses can be made with practice. This was also a theory that Susan's dad had.