Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy is a dieses in which the victim is affected by suddenly falling asleep at any time of the day as many times as the brain orders. This disease is very dangerous because the person can be walking in the street, cooking, driving or doing anything else that might cause a sudden death due to the brain responding to their tiredness. On the video that we watched in class we saw how an elderly man named Mohamed suffered this sickness. He tries to live as normal as he can but he knows its nearly impossible, his wife needs to be with him at all times taking care of him and picking him up whenever he falls asleep. We were able to see how Mohamed fell asleep suddenly in the street. Mohamed and his wife need to live with the constant humiliation of him falling asleep in public places and people misunderstanding him and believing he is a drug addict or an alcoholic. During his daily routing Mohamed need to wear a special security hat to protect himself from getting hurt all around to house especially when he is helping his wife in the kitchen washing the dishes or something else. Having this perculiar dieses must be very uncomfortable and annoying. 

Synesthesia

1. Synesthesia: synesthesia is a condition in which one sense (for example, hearing) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses such as sight. Another form of synesthesia joins objects such as letters, shapes, numbers or people's names with a sensory perception such as smell, color or flavor. The word synesthesia comes from two Greek words, syn (together) and aisthesis (perception). (http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/syne.html )

2. 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. Like all forms of synesthesia, grapheme → color synesthesia is involuntary, consistent, and memorable.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme–color_synesthesia )

3. ordinal-linguistic personification : is a form of synesthesia in which ordered sequences, such as ordinal numbers, days, months and letters are associated with personalities (Simner & Hubbard 2006). ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_linguistic_personification )

4. number-form synesthesia: 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: ndividuals experience colours as a response to music/sounds. Sound–>colour synesthesia can be further broken down into two categories, “Narrow band” and“Broad band”. ( http://undacovabear.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/sound-colour-synesthesia/)

6. 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 abbilities

1. Explain in detail what "savant syndrome" means.
-is a rare condition in which people with developmental disorders have one or more areas of expertise, ability, or brilliance that are in contrast with the individual's overall limitations. Although not a recognized medical diagnosis, researcher Darold Treffert says the condition may be either genetic or acquireded

2. What does genius mean?  Explain the difference between genius and savant.
- a genius is someone embodying exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of unprecedented insight. A savant is someone who someone who has a very strong memory in a specific area. These people usually suffer of a very severe brain inujury that has changed completely the way their brain works.

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

-a stroke is a rapidly loss of brain functuing.

-the affected area of the barin ins unable to respond or work after this has happened.

-after this has happened it is very possible that the victim will not be able to move one part of his or hers body.

- the person might ass well have problmes understanding language or using it.

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

-Functional MRI is based on the increase in blood flow to the local vasculature that accompanies neural activity in the brain. The FMRI helps us with new insights into physiological bases for disfunction. It measures the hemodynamic response (change in blood flow) related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. One powerful approach is to examine brain regions whose activity changes when people are asked to (i)  process different kinds of information (for example, words, pictures, sounds, letters, images);

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

- The corpus callosum (Latin: tough body), also known as the colossal commissure, is a wide, flat bundle of neural fibers beneath the cortex in the eutherian brain at the longitudinal fissure.
The corpus callosum is the major neural pathway that connects homologous cortical areas of the two cerebral hemispheres.
6. What is epilepsy and how might it affect your brain's abilities?

- Epilepsy is currently defined as a tendency to have recurrent seizures (sometimes called fits). A seizure is caused by a sudden burst of excess electrical activity in the brain, causing a temporary disruption in the normal message passing between brain cells. epilepsy can cause memory loss, specifically about the events that occurred during the time period involving the seizure. There is no clear cause to this condition.

7. What is autism?

- Autism is known as a complex developmental disability. Experts believe that Autism presents itself during the first three years of a person's life.

8. What is Asperger's Syndrome?

- Asperger's syndrome, also called Asperger's disorder, is a type of pervasive development disorder (PDD). PDDs are a group of conditions that involve delays in the development of many basic skills, most notably the ability to socialize with others, to communicate, and to use imagination.

Accidental genius

A savant person is a person that may have e very low intelligence percentage but is extremely intelligent in a certain area. In this video we could see how a man could say any day of the week of any year even 2,000 yeas ago. All this man needs is to make the calculation in his  head and within seconds this man is telling you the day of the week. Another example f this is a girl that can memorize 5 books at the same time. This girl can even reed 200 pages in a hour and memorize very word in it. All this people are victims of brain injury, their brain injury has made them into a autism victim which at the same time has made them in to very intelligent people.

Make me a genius

Susan has proven to as that any kid can be made into a genius. When she was a little girl Susan’s father taught how to play chess. As she was growing up she started to fall in love in chess and become into one of the worlds best chess players. Ever since she was a little girl she was been beating older man at chess. Susan now has a photographic memory, she is able to play 5 chess games at the same time and even play chess without seeing the chessboard. It is very impressive how Susan is able to win without any hesitation, all Susan needs is the chessboard in her mind and picture all the moves she and her opponent are doing. 

GIFTED CHILDREN

Its is very interesting how a few kids in the words are born with extra abilities that make them more intelligent or capable of doing things that kids their own age are not able to do. Mark is a perfect example for this. Ever since mark was a very little boy he has been able to play more than 40 classical (hard) piano compositions. His ability to play so good and extraordinary has given him the chance to play side by side with one of his favorites piano players. If mark continues to practice the same way when he is much older he is going to be one of the most famous and talented musicians that has ever existed. Early brain stimulation is very good and will certainly help the child a lot when he or she grows up, but at the same time it might affected him or her because the brain might concentrate more in some areas and top using others, so when the brain needs those areas that the kid didn’t used so much before the brain will have forgotten how to use them. 

nature VS nuture

Homosexuality has been questioned for many years, are we all born with out sexual orientation or do we start to learn and acquire it as we start to grow up and find who we really are and realize if we are straight (being attracted by the opposite sex) or gay (liking the same sex). I have always believed even after watching this video that to two theories about sexual orientation are true. One theory being the one that each person is born with its own likes, and the other being that as the years go by the person might start to realize what she or he really likes. A person might be born straight, but maybe as the years go by that person may go through a lot of traumatizing events that might confuse the person and force him or her to change all of his or hers perspective of life. In this video we could see how twin who have identical genetics can be very different in their way of sexual orientation, both being male. While one of them has a very masculine bedroom, decorated with army toys, soccer balls, and dark colors the other twin has a room, which would be classified, as a typical girly room. Pink walls, stuffed animals, white horses are found in his room. Pink nail polish is displayed in his hands. Girls who prefer to play with soccer balls and spend time with other boys (tom boys) are more likely to like women when the grow up, form the fact that they have spend so many time pretending to be a boy that they eventually start to think as a boy.  All around the world these people are being victims of racisms, it is my personal opinion that these people should be treated as equals, it is very true that its not right nor normal for them to be attracted to the same sex but is not their fault. It is also true that some of these people lose their minds and start changing there outside appearances as well (travesties); this might be one of the reasons why people don’t like them.