Narcolepsy Video

 It is a cold morning,
six in the morning and you have to go to school, and  all you want to do is to sleep. However, we
have to be careful with what we wish for, because everything in excess is
bad.  The video we watched today has made
me reflex about how people with sleeping disorders live through real difficult
situations. Now, I am much more thankful for my healthiness, the people diagnosed
with narcolepsy truly suffer in life. If I had to be in the shoes of a narcoleptic
person, I would be extremely depressed. Having an estimated amount of sixty
attacks per day is repugnant.  To be
honest, I would rather have a killing disease such as aids or cancer, rather
than narcolepsy, because even though I would live less time, I would live
better and with a more qualitative life experience. I really feel bad for
narcoleptic patients, they are going through so much, very few people would
voluntarily help in attending them. I consider that, scientists should really
make a serious effort to prevent this from happening in people, perhaps
discovering or creating a cure for this horrific disorder. We have to be
optimistic, and even though it’s hard, we should look forward for a cure.

Dreaming

It is amazing how our mind can take us to living impossible things, moments we wish to live, or others that we have aversion to, that outstanding way of imagination and visualization is dreaming.  Movies and fictional films tend to talk a about how people “magically” control their dreams, this theory of controlling dreams did not have credence at all, until a few years ago it has become a debatable aspect.  Dreaming control has definitely awaken scientist’s  curiosity, they have proposed to make deep studies on this extremely controversial topic. It is said that once a particular person sleeps and begins dreaming he/she is able to manage their dream in the way  they want. Now, the question is, how? Before the person being tested, completely sleeps, a mask is attached to his/her face , this face will activate  a red light when the person has lost consciousness. The purpose of this red light is to notify the person sleeping that, he/she is indeed sleeping, this will make them reflex and be able to take their visualizations and dreams to anywhere they want, obviously this performance takes lots of practice, due to its high level of difficulty. It is very interesting how technology and complex ways of thinking have driven us to understanding new possibilities that we had never imagined, we live with the hope, that these theories are proved right.

Brain Connections

It is amazing how the lack of use in brain can cause it’ neurons and connections to die slowly.  As known, it is essential for life to have a minimum amount of brain activity. In our daily life, in work, in school, or even by playing games and simple entertainment we use connections in our brain, when we perform hose connections we grow our brain in a way which is definitely necessary. Some people, however, are restricted to these activities due to vandalism, or other crimes. Yes, I am talking about prisoners, it is amazing how they can withstand being in between four walls most, or even all of their lives. It is due to this curiosity that we have, that scientists decided to perform a volunteered experiment, by locking the volunteers in a small and dark room, with only a bed and a bathroom for forty-eight hours. The objective for this was to discover if mental connections would disappear or remain stable after the experiment had finished. Some people passed it, and others actually became insane and could not stand it, they were freed. However, after this experience we have concluded that a person loses his/her connections when restricting neuronal activity.

 

Synesthesia and Savant Syndrome questions.

Synesthesia

1. Synesthesia is a neurological disorder in which one particular aspect or action involuntary causes the sensation or reminds of another.

2. Grapheme-Color-Synesthesia is one of the main types of the neurologic disorder; it is when a person reminds him/herself of letters in relation to their experience with colors.

3. Ordinal-Linguistic is a type of Synesthesia in which the person remembers particular dates, month, days, letters, and numbers by relating them to personalities.

4. Number-Form is a type of Synesthesia in which a person creates a mental map of numbers while performing any mathematical exercise.

5. Sound-Color is a kind of Synesthesia in which a person is reminded by a color by a particular sound.

6. Lexical- Gustatory Synesthesia is a mental disorder in which a person feels a particular taste while reading or being reminded of a particular word.

.                                     Savant Syndrome

1. Savant Syndrome is a mental disorder in which a person lack on most basic abilities, but is extremely outstanding on one or few of them, half of the people with the Savant Syndrome have autism, and most of them lack on social abilities.

2. A Genius is a person which has high intellectual capability in relation to the majority of IQ levels. The difference between a Genius and a Savant, is that a Savant lacks on most abilities however is extremely good at others, while a Genius is very good in most or all of them, however does not emphasize in a specific area such as Savants do.

3. A stroke is a cerebral accident which causes damage and provokes lack of blood flow on the  brain, this may affect the victim of the accident with taking away basic speech abilities, remembering important aspects of his/her daily life, it can even cause death.

4. Functional MRI is today, one of the most modern brain scans,  it provides us information by detecting the change of blood flow of a particular person’s brain.

5. The Corpus Callosum is a bundle of fiber which helps to connect the right brain with the left brain, it is truly essential for life.

6. Epilepsy is a brain disorder in which a person suffers from high neuronal activity. It’s changes may produce sleepiness, and change of mood.

7. Autism is a neurological disorder in which a person suffers from social interaction, he/she basically lives in his/her own world. The ability of brain processing, lacks in a victim  of  autism.

8. Asperger’s Syndrome is a type of autism in which a person does not have cognitive development, social interaction, and suffers from negative and repetitive patterns in relation to behavior.

 

Savants

Very few, however some of the abilities we currently have, are developed during our life process, and not obtained by birth. There are many things that can happen to our brains, we may suffer from chemical alterations which provoke and cause drastic changes in our personality and behavior.

This video teaches and informs us about a woman who was having twins, and unfortunately for her, one of the twins died. This mental and physical suffering, provided a big change on her mind, to the point that she began committing weird and unexpected actions, such as writing obsessions. During the night she woke up and started writing on the walls of her house, describing non-sense aspects, and things which were impossible to understand.  With time she overcame this situation, however, scientists took, the time and effort to study what had happened to her. It is a cerebral chemical change, which made her do these illogical actions. The same thing happened to another man, which suffered a violent accident, and as a result his mental effects changed, in the way that his artistic and right brained part became more powerful thasn his left, therefore his artistic abilities improved immensely.  It is very interesting how we can learn new things every day, the hard effort and time that scientists are dedicating to the investigation of such important aspects is and should by all means be recognizable, we should thank them for such unique studies and discoveries.

Genius

During our lives, many strange things may happen, however, there are people who go through phenomenon situations in their brain. During the documentary we have studied how a simple and normal woman, created mental puzzles of the board game chess, in order to defeat any person who plays with her. She began playing since a very early age; it is due to her genius and her practice that she is the chess world champion. It is amazing how her brain works, she defeated the U.S. Chess Champion in one minute, the ability she contains to do perfect and intelligent moves is so powerful that she does it like she is breathing.  As well as positive abnormal circumstances may occur, negative ones also do. We learned about a woman which suffers a disease of forgetting people’s faces, she cannot remember one single face, it is a memory disease that she is going through, it is incurable. It is unbelievable how unpredictable the effects of the human brain may react, it is a true wonder.

Genius

It is truly incredible how, we as human beings, may overcome our weak points, by being supernaturally strong on other areas. Some humans, very few of them, have the ability to excel in a particular area, they outstand only in one area,  in the rest they have low intelligence. It is curious to learn and scientifically understand how the human brain works on this particular cases, in order to make an individual who is generally lacking on basic skills, make a big difference in a particular sport or other activity.

An evident example is a young Chinese kid, who definitely is beyond the normal level while playing piano. He contains the necessary skill to be a great musician, to the point that he actually is better than many professionals.  I also learned about how important it is to keep the brain actively working on a daily basis. In the United States, authorities found a case of a girl which was locked in a dark room for twelve years, this traumatic situation stopped her from making connections and learning fundamental concepts of the outside world. She was abused,  she now finds herself in a hard situation, in which it is technically impossible for her to become a socialy normal person.