Narcolepsy

WHAT IS NARCOLEPSY?

Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder. This is when the brain cannot regulate sleep and wake cycles normally. At various times throughout the day, people with narcolepsy experience urges to sleep. If the urge becomes overwhelming, individuals will fall asleep for periods lasting from a few seconds to several minutes. 


SYMPTOMS OF NARCOLEPSY

• Excessive day time sleepiness
• The sudden loss of voluntary muscle tone 
• Vivid hallucinations during sleep onset or upon awakening
• Brief episodes of total paralysis at the beginning or end of sleep.

A PERSON LIVING WITH NARCOLEPSY


A person with Narcolepsy may experience difficulty in their everyday lives. They may have trouble just heading out towards the supermarket because they might doze off in the middle of the street. Also, for example Mohamed in the video "My day out with Narcolepsy" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2x14qETS7E He sees going to a museum as a goal. This is because falling asleep is usually associated with emotions. Mohamed also used protection to his head when going to the kitchen because if he falls asleep he might hurt himself. Living with this condition is not easy. Many people when they see Mohamed they believe that he is drunk. For Mohamed every minute of his life is a battle  to stay awake. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2x14qETS7E

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/narcolepsy

http://t3.gstatic.com/imagesq=tbn:ANd9GcRwyQ7QnSr21LxrZDocXWURTlRSykiaExOyQGJbErwAHp9XM3fK&t=1

The Mystery Behind Dreams

Where do our dreams come from? Do they have a meaning? Can we use our dreams? 

Throughout human history there have always been big ideas about the origins of dreams. Dreams have been responsible for 2 Nobel Prizes, for the invention of a couple of mayor drugs, other scientific discoveries, huge works of art, several important political events, inspiration to novels and films,etc. 

Scientists have found out that while you sleep your brain goes through different stages. Your most vivid dreams appear in the stage called REM (rapid eye movement).

REM sleep disorder: is when you act out the dreams that you have during the REM stage. It could be dangerous for the partner as well as the dreamer. This is caused by a gradual destruction of a part of the brain stem. Usually during REM your muscles are paralyzed, but this disorder is when your brain does not paralyze your muscles and you act out your dream.

Scientists believe that dreams are made in the Parietal Lobe, that is why people with brain damage in that lobe stop dreaming.People that don't dream usually wake up in the middle of REM so scientists have suggested that dreaming is a way of keeping us asleep. 

Do our dreams mean anything? 

People intuitively know that something about their dreams is meaningful, this belief is essential to many cultures. Some people say that sharing dreams is like medicine to them. Many people thought that dreams were a symbol of the unconscious mind that needed to be interpreted. Some scientists think that dreams are the brains way to prepare us for the future day, it also helps sort out your emotions, and it can tell you much about the person.

Can you train your dreams?

There is a clear link to dreams and memory. A theory is that when you dream you are learning what you did in the day and processing the information so that you won’t make the same mistakes s before.

Some people are lucid dreamers which are that they control what happens in their dreams; they can extend control of their consciousness in their dreams. This is an ability that you have to train your brain to do.

Why do we have bad dreams?

The theory is that they prepare you for any bad situations. When you are conscious you do not think about you r mother’s death or being chased by wolves, so when you are dreaming the brain is preparing itself to withstand any harmful situations. They are a good thing because they force us to be prepared for the next day. Without the bad dreams human kind would not be here. 

Synesthesia

1. SYNESTHESIA

The word "synesthesia" comes directly from the Greek (syn-) "union", and (aísthesis) "sensation", thus meaning something akin to "a union of the senses". Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which otherwise normal people experience the blending of two or more senses.  Synesthesia is additive; that is, it adds to the initial (primary) sensory perception, rather than replacing one perceptual mode for another.

http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/index.html

2. GRAPHEME-COLOR SYNESTHESIA

The most common form of synesthesia is the association of specific colors with each letter or numerical digit; this is known as grapheme-color synesthesia. For example, someone with grapheme-color synesthesia might always perceive the number ‘2’ as being a “red number.”

http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/UBNRP/gcsynesthesia/introduction.html

3. ORDINAL-LINGUISTIC PERSONIFICATION

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

http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Ordinal_linguistic_personification#CITEREFSimnerHubbard2006

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. In particular, it has been suggested that number-forms are a result of "cross-activation" between regions of the parietal lobe that are involved in numerical cognition and spatial cognition

http://www.synesthesiaweb.com/synesthesia_-_Various_forms_-_Number_form_synesthesia.htm

5. SOUND-COLOR SYNESTHESIA

This type of synesthesia is when individuals experience colors as a response to hearing music or sounds. 

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

6. LEXICAL-GUSTATORY SYNESTHESIA

People who experience this have a rare condition known every word comes with an appended taste. For some, even when the exact word cannot be recalled, the taste of the word is there. It tends to experience the same taste for words with similar sounds.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10644-think-of-a-concept-taste-it-on-your-tongue.html

Mental Abilities: Genius, Savants

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 perhaps one of the most fascinating phenomena in the study of human differences and cognitive psychology. It is often claimed that, because of the extraordinary abilities involved, we will never truly understand human memory and cognition until we understand the savant. Savant syndrome is exceedingly rare, but a remarkable condition in which persons with autism, or other serious mental handicaps, or major mental illness, have 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. 

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

2. What does genius mean?  Explain the difference between genius and savant.
“An exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially asshown in creative and original work in science, art, music a person  having  such  capacity a  person  having  an  extraordinarily  high intelligence rating on apsychological test, as an IQ above 140.”

www.dictionary.com

The difference between a genius and a savant is that a savant lacks basic skills and is just superior in one aspect, while a genius is outstanding in everything. A savant usually has an IQ of less than 70 while a genius has about 140.

3. What is a stroke and how could it affect your mental functioning?
“A stroke or "brain attack" occurs when a blood clot blocks an artery or a blood vessel breaks, interrupting blood flow to an area of the brain.  When either of these things happen, brain cells begin to die and brain damage occurs. When brain cells die during a stroke, abilities controlled by that area of the brain are lost.  These abilities include speech, movement and memory.  How a stroke patient is affected depends on where the stroke occurs in the brain and how much the brain is damaged.”

http://www.stroke.org/site/PageServer?pagename=stroke

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

FMRI is a device used by doctors to map brain activity. It stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging. The fat the beginning of fMRI is not capitalized unless at the beginning of a sentence.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-fmri.htm

There are no machine that comes close to perfectly simulating the human brain, the level of fine control and data yielded makes Connectionism a very effective way to learn more about the consequences of brain injuries. Also, disorders like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or depression can be observed in brain scans. These observations can help researchers to learn more about how these disorders work, and how they may best be treated.

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

There are three parts of corpus

1.     callosum: genu (the front part),

2.     splenium (the bottom part) and

3.     truncus (located between these two parts).

The essential assignment of corpus callosum is to allow the two hemispheres to communicate. Because the two hemispheres have completely different functions, they have to have something that will join these functions together, so that our brain could function properly as one organ.

The corpus callosum is actually connecting these functions into one, carrying information from one hemisphere to another and vice versa. It is also responsible for lateralization of the brain, which means that it determines which side of the body will be preferred. Eye movements are regulated and coherent due to fast action of corpus callosum. 

If corpus callosum is accidentally injured or harmed in any way, it can cause serious consequences to our body functions. Depending on what part of corpus callosum is affected, we can expect different consequences.

http://www.steadyhealth.com/about/corpus_callosum_function.html 

6. What is epilepsy and how might it affect your brain's abilities?
Epilepsy is a neurological condition that makes people susceptible to seizures. Epilepsy usually does not get worse with time. Most adults who have epilepsy can expect to live a normal life span. A seizure is a sudden surge of electrical activity in the brain that affects how a person feels or acts for a short time. Seizures are a symptom of many different disorders that can affect the brain.

http://www.mamashealth.com/head/epilepsy.asp

Epilepsy affects the brain because of the seizures, with constant seizures you may have severe brain damage and during a seizure many of your brain cells die.

7. What is autism?

Autism is a developmental disorder that affects the brain's normal development of social and communication skills.

Autism usually appears in the first 3 years of life. In the general population, autism affects about 1 in 250 births. There are about 1.5 million Americans that have some form of autism.

Autism affects boys 3 to 4 times more often than girls. It was first described by Dr. Leo Kanner in 1943.

Children with autism may need therapy and special tutors.

http://www.mamashealth.com/mental/autism.asp

Sensory Deprivation and Its Effects on the Brain

Imagine that all your 5 senses were taken away from you; what would you do?! Sensory deprivation us just that, when you are not allowed to use any of your senses. When the brain is deprived of stimulation it is torture some say. Some countries used it to brain wash people, and others used as an interrogation method. When studying the effects of sensory deprivation, six volunteers were placed in a test concerning sensory deprivation. They were isolated for 48 hours, to test the effects on their brains. All of them were made simple questions before the experiment. Then, the examiners covered the subjects’ eyes, ears, and hands, and the volunteers were locked in small, dark rooms.  After 24 hours, the volunteers were extremely bored. They were walking endlessly back and forth, talked alone, and had hallucinations. After 48 hours, the volunteers had finished the experiment, and were completely paralyzed when hearing a voice from the speaker telling them that the experiment had finished due to the fact that they had gotten used to the silence. They were given a second test after the experiment. The tests before the experiment were way better than the tests after the experiment. The lack of stimulation had negatively affected their brains. Sensory deprivation is definitely a mental torture; the degree of boredom is intolerable. The human brain needs stimulation to become healthy. People exposed to sensory deprivation can be traumatized and can suffer from anxiety and hallucinations. Brain connections are lost and one can surely end up crazy.

Accidental Genius

A savant is somebody that has a very special ability, but they are impaired in basic areas. There are three types of savant:

1.Talented/gifted savant: has a useful skill

2. Predigious Savant: a child prodigy fewer than 100 in the world, the one who knows things that he has never learned

3. General Savant: a person with a gift but that is not useful

      For example, there is a prodigious savant who is physically and mentally disabled, but has memorized 90,000 books, and is able to read 500 pages an hour. He reads two pages at the same time, one with one eye and the other page with the other eye.

     Another person that is a prodigious savant is George Widner, when he was brain scanned it showed that his brain uses different neurocircuits that we usually use for different tasks.

A savant can be born or created.

                 In the brain the Left hemisphere controls logic, and Right hemisphere controls creativity: the left hemisphere usually dominates, but in savants the right hemisphere dominates. This is probably because in the fetus the left hemisphere is probably damaged in formation because of the flood of testosterone.

Nadia is an autistic three year old she can draw beautifully, but when she learned language her ability was lost. These abilities may come back is there is brain damage, but they naturally will not come back.

Tommy Maccue had brain damage when two arteries in his brain collapsed and provoked hemorrhaged. This incident upset his frontal and temporal lobes which gave him creativity. He urges to paint all the time, and he writes poetry since the incident.

                 All of these are leading to new discoveries, for example an experiment was done that by using magnetic waves it slows down the left side of the brain which gives the person a chance to think without logic, so scientist can see that the person has a more aprochable abilities to the ones of the savants. 

Make me a Genius

Susan Polgar has challenged society’s views on women. When she was a young girl society though that only men could play chess, but Susan shoed them otherwise. Susan Polgar was born in 1969, and currently lives in New York. She has become the best chess player in the world, at 21 years of age she was the number one chess player between 600 male players. She developed her extraordinary brain when she was a young girl. Her father wanted her to excel in mathematics, but when she accidentally found chess she found, her father fomented her with everything he could. When she was young she practices 6 hours a day memorizing strategies and games, it became her obsession. Her constant practice made new connections in her brain. When Susan’s brain was scanned it showed that when she plays chess she uses the same area the brain responsible for face recognition, she recognizes chess as fast and accurate as she can remember a face. Susan beat an US world champion in 60 seconds. She uses intuition during the games; she trusts her experience and her learned abilities.   A person can become a genius with determination and lots of practice.