Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is the split between the emotional and intellectual aspects of experiences. There are disconnected with reality. Schizophrenics will experience all or some of these symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized behavior, absent emotion, inability to speak, and are unsociable. This disorder is very complex and determining where it comes from is very difficult. There are so many theories and they seem to all touch on just about everything. So what is it really? Is it due to the viruses a mother is exposed to while their child is in the womb, between 15 different genes mutations, a mother who doesn't eat enough fish, a parasite from cats, Rh differences  drugs, little glutamate, or too much dopamine synapse activity? I am really confused and concerned. Why is it so hard to determine? I feel very bad for those who have to go through this terrifying experience and I hope that people with schizophrenia aren't shunned away because they were born that way. I think schizophrenia is better explained from people who actually have it so here are some more videos.

The Rise of Depression

After learning about the symptoms of major depression I began to wonder if depression has increased since the past. I haven't really heard of many people being diagnosed as depressed in the past even through events such as the Great depression and WWII.

There are studies that show a steady increase in depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders among children and adolescents over the past fifty to seventy years. There were tests giving to young adults that date back to 1938 and it seems that young college students are more depressed now than in the past.
It is suggested that the increase is due to the fact that today's society is more worried about extrinsic goals rather than finding our internal value. This means that we are more concerned with the judgment of other people and material objects rather than being content in trying to develop our own meaning of life. As a result of the increased importance of being rich, looking attractive, and having a good job; people feel that they have no control over their lives.

Furthermore, it is suggested that this lack of control is due to the fact that children and young adults do not have enough free time. The duration of school has increased and control over students by teachers, grades, and rules has diminished their sense of self control and abilities to explore their own opportunities. We are taught at an early age that whatever we do or say is wrong. As students we were constantly supervised and directed by adults. This sends a message of incompetence, which can make a child or teen very sad and disappointment.

It is sad to hear that students are lacking this sense of control because of the over guidance of instructors and that this is causing more anxiety and mental disorders.

Moebius Syndrome

When telling a joke or a crazy story people usually look for your reaction, a facial expression to determine if you understand or like what they are telling you or not. If you look like your really not interested people might perceive you as not caring about what they say or that they aren't that good at story telling. It is a natural thing to look at the eyes and mouth to determine whether someone is sad, angry, surprised, happy, or afraid. For people with Moebius syndrome, making friends can be difficult. 

Moebius syndrome is a rare condition where a person is unable to move their facial muscles to make a smile. Apparently, studies have shown that people who smile feel happier than people who do not smile or laugh at a something. However people with this syndrome experience happiness just as anyone else. After hearing about this condition I wanted to hear about it from a person who is living with this rare syndrome.

As you can see in the video, Alonso is laughing and acting like a normal teenage girl but while laughing, is unable to move her mouth to show smiling.  Because Moebius does not allow facial movements, Alonso has a hard time pronouncing words that have to do with the lips. She seems to be able to move her tongue but I have heard from other videos of people speaking about their condition, that they can not move their tongue so speaking is even more difficult. Some surgeries have been done to help the people express emotion on their face, such as, taking muscles from other parts of the body and putting it in the face.
I am glad that this individual is able to overcome the bullying that comes to her way because of her condition. Thanks to Alonso sharing her experience of Moebius syndrome, I better understand what it is about.

Sexsomnia

This week I was really interested in sleep disorders. One new condition that got my attention was Sexsomnia. I had never heard of this condition until now and after doing some research I found that it has recently been accepted as a legal defense in some rape cases. Sexsomnia is a condition where a person who is asleep engages in sexual behavior, either with a partner or by masturbating, and do not know they are doing it. The reason they might not remember is because it occurs during non-REM sleep after dreaming about a sex in REM sleep. So as they drift out of REM sleep into the time where no dreams are happening, and that is where the sexual behavior occurs.
Sexsomnia or "sleep sex" usually involves another person who is unaware that the person is asleep and sometimes engage in sex willingly with them however, people who are simple sleeping next a person with this condition can end up being forced to have sex with them. People who have this will wake up in the middle of the night and find themselves having sex unknowingly and be ashamed, embarrassed,  and tend to have difficulty keeping relationships. Men are more likely to try an have sex while women tend to masturbate and moan. 
This condition is apparently more common than previously believed to be. And even though it is said to be more common in children, the reason might be that adults are more sexual and therefore, not reported as often.
After hearing about this I was afraid that it will come to be used often as a fake excuse to not be sent to prison for rape but the article that I got my information from says that by using a Polysomnograph to measure brain waves, they can determine if a person is prone to episodes of sexsomnia.
There is still a lot about this new condition that is unknown but most say that this condition could be caused by stress as well as other triggers like: sleep deprivation, alcohol, and other drugs. Some say that even taking medication for other sleeping disorders like sleep apnea can cause someone to get sexsomnia.  I hope that more research is done on this condition so that it isn't falsely diagnosed in sexual abuse cases.

Oxytocin

Sometimes referred to as the “Trust Hormone”, oxytocin helps mothers bond with their child, reduce social fears, creates sexual arousal, makes people more generous, and relieves stress and pain. Wow, doesn’t that sound awesome?! If you are wondering how to gain such pleasurable experiences, look no further than your own body. This hormone is in all of us and all we need to do is simply shake someone’s hand because body contact releases low levels of oxytocin. If you want to release high levels, physically interacting with the ones you love will do so.

Oxytocin is released during and after birth. When you see a mother bonding with her child by hugging and gazing after birth, oxytocin is also being released. Orgasm and the relaxed feeling after sex is another result of this hormone being released.

So I would say this is a very pleasurable and loving hormone.

When released, the hormone gives individuals more confidence in interacting with other people because of the reduction in anxiety.

After reading about this hormone I began to wonder if it had been used to help people with social disorders.

Because oxytocin helps with heightened social interaction, scientist conducted studies to see whether increasing this hormone would help cure autism. Autistic people have a hard time making social bonds because they cannot seem to recognize social cues or facial expression. After presenting this hormone in a tablet or nasal spray to these autistic children, they are better able to recognize social expression, which leads to a more pleasant social experience. 

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a rare condition where some people may be able to taste colors, hear visual material, or associate color with numbers and letters. The reason this disorder exists is because the brain was somehow rewired wrong. The senses cross wired and now combine with each other to form a new way of seeing things. There are many variations of this disorder and is still being studied today. This phenomenon is very interesting and got me thinking about how I see things.

I remember being physically nauseous whenever I saw the color sea green in my crayon box at school. Something about that color just didn't sit right with me. After reading about this condition I began to wonder if it was possible to have a mild version of synesthesia.

If we look at the definition of synesthesia is would seem that there is no such thing as mild synesthesia and that only those who were born with the cross wiring of senses had it. However, there is something that some call “multimodal processing”, which may explain my experience with the sea green color crayon.

This multimodal process is a voluntary function where we associate different senses so that we are able to process an experience better. I guess that combination of the smell of crayons, the name of the color, and my uneasy feeling of being on a boat may have contributed to me feeling “sea sick”. I associated the color to the actual sea and my experience of being on a boat.

People with synesthesia do not experience the same thing. The experiences happen within the individual without any ability to control what they experience mentally. They will see, hear, smell, etc. what everyone else does but will have a “feeling” of it being of another sense. For example, They can see a black letter like other may but get this feeling that the letter's personality is giving off a sense of "blue"  I like to think of this phenomenon has kind of resembling how some people claim to see different shades of people’s Auras. It is an essence that comes off of objects or sounds that synesthetes experience. 

Check out this guys experience with synesthesia.

Semantic Demantia

Semantic Dementia is a very rare disease and is closely related to Alzheimer’s disease. People with this disease have an impaired ability to understand the meaning of words. They have a hard time putting together or understanding a full concept. This disorder is caused by the shrinking of the frontal and temporal lobes in the brain. This disease is really rare because it is a result of damage to the temporal cortex in both hemispheres and not just one.

It is quite an interesting disease because the person can understand what is being talked about or can recognize someone but will not be able to verbalize what it is. In other words they have lost the connection between the words and the object. Some people cannot remember what they have learned and therefore don’t understand what it is they are seeing or hearing. For example they my see a skirt and when asked to pick out a skirt they may pick out a pair of pants. The word meaning is lost. Some other symptoms include loss of muscle control, inability to show empathy because of lack of conscious control, and the repeating of words from memory. Unfortunately like Alzheimer’s, there is no cure for semantic dementia but some suggest taking anti-depressants to minimize the aggressiveness of the disease.

It must be very frustrating to not be able to hand someone what they ask for because you don’t know what the word attached to the object is. It’s kind of like being asked to get something for someone who is speaking a language you do not know. You must used context clues or see where they are pointing or staring to try to understand the word meanings but sometimes it isn't enough. 

more split brain info

I am so interested in the topic in the previous post, I decided to share some more information on it. Click here

Two Minds, One Brain

Some people with a split-brain experience problems of the two hemispheres competing for attention. They seem to have two different minds. The left is responsible for details, language, and logical reasoning. The right is responsible for spatial processing, emotions and face recognition, and music. Since what we see in the right eye is processed in the left hemisphere the patient isn't able to recognize what they saw on the left. But when asked to draw with their left hand, which is processed by the right, they can draw what is in the field of view but don’t know where it came from. If really fascinating how the person can’t state what is going on but it is still processed into the brain so the patient can retrieve it and does unconsciously know what was seen in the left visual field. Many studies have been conducted on these individuals and some have found that a split brain person’s “two minds” compete at times. One lady described taking 3 hours to get dressed just because the left side of her brain was competing on what to wear with the right. The reason they compete is because the two hemispheres see differently. They grasp the world around them differently. Without the two sides being able to communicate with each other through the corpus callosum, they can’t decide on one thing. Learning about these people and their brain functions has really got me more interested in the brain. I always knew of the differences the hemispheres had but reading about this helped me grasp more of our brain’s capacity. It is so amazing how our brain is able to register things we didn't even notice. Thanks right half, for giving the big picture and capturing my surrounding, and thanks left half, for giving me the ability to put it all together and keep it organized. 

Why Physical Activity is Good for the Brain

Axons and dendrites continue to modify their structure throughout your life. When we are learning, more and more neurons grow. Physical Activity can enhance the growth of more neurons. How? Well many researchers have had a hard time pin pointing the reason as to how this works at a cellular level. However, there have been many studies on rats. In one recent study scientist manipulated the bone-morphogenetic protein or BMP in the brains of these lab rats by reducing it. These proteins, inhibited by Noggin, allowed for more stem cells become more active and divide. Stem cells division is important especially in old age because when they are inactive the brain process become slower. They suggest that during exercise the process of enhanced stem cell division is acquiring in the brain giving us enhanced learning and memory processes. I do have a problem with remembering little things here and there so after reading this part of the article I thought to myself, if this is true I need to become more active. It later states that doing any kind of minimal activity is good for the growth of new neurons, but the results were from the activity of rats. 

I want to know the certain exercises that can improve them even more. I have always been told that exercise was good for the brain because it gives more oxygen to to the blood vessels in the brain, but what I’ve learned today doesn’t even seem close to that. Why has it been so hard to find the reason physical activity increases learning? 

Marijuana

Marijuana has been a drug widely discussed because of the chemical that it contains. THC and other related chemicals in this plant can help reduce pain and nausea, to fight glaucoma, and increase appetite. At the same time it can impair memory and learning, as well as emotional processes. There have been many debates across the nation of the legalization of this drug because some argue that it is helpful and that it is a plant grown from the earth so it must be okay. In the video shown above I learned that there are built in receptors in our brain that the cannibinoids (marijuana chemicals) attach to, giving people the high feeling. It was very interesting to find that these receptors were in our brains and that the reason for this receptor being present in the brain is for neuroprotection. For example, when there is a brain injury the brain chemicals anandamide and 2-AG attach to this receptor to reduce the damage to the brain. So some how long ago this receptor was implanted in our brains so that it could protect us. This system is involved in almost all physiological processes so it is now being used to test other drugs/medication. As stated in the video a company in Europe has developed an antagonist to the cannibinoids to decrease appetite and increase metabolism for people struggling with weight. This was also interesting to hear that marijuana could be changed to produce the opposite affects that it normally generates. Unlike other drugs marijuana in large doses will not kill someone. So since we now know it can be altered for good health reasons and has already been used by cancer patients, why can’t the bad affects like harm to memory and learning be altered and removed from the drug?

Soooo Geniuses have More Calcium in their Brains?!

This week my fascination is about Glial cells in the brain. These cells are what I like to think of as neurons’ little helpers. They are important to the brain signaling system, as they aid in the neuronal activity. There are so many different kinds of glia cells like Microglia that remove waste material, and Schwann cells that build myelin sheaths around the axon. These are important functions of some glia but the ones I focused on the most were astrocytes. These cells help harmonize activity between axons and send messages in calcium waves. Why is that important? Well from an article, The Root OfThought, the author says these cells are enhancing our brain activity, creating deep thought. The article states, “Astrocytes can induce neurons to fire. Therefore, astrocytes improve neuron behavior...The fact that humans have the largest astrocytes of any animal and we are capable of creativity and imagination also justifies this theory.” He believes the calcium waves generated by astrocytes are our "thinking" mind. Without these waves neuronal transmittion would just generate reflex, making us just simple animals. Astrocytes also help bring more nutrients to areas in the brain that have more activity by dialating blood vessals.Glial cells are very important for the human brain. They protect, enhance, and guide neurons. I also saw a video where a scientist talks about how the genius Albert Einstein had a lot of astrocytes in his brain. 
So the more glia, the closer you are to genius. I know of the helping functions of glia but I was surprised to find out that this certain kind of glial cell could solely end up being our thoughts and imagination.I mean to suggest that without glia the neuron activity in the brain would just produce reflexes is pretty crazy.At the same time, there are more glia cells than neurons.
 So the question now is, how many of those glia cells are astrocytes? Is this what I need more of to be a genius like Einstein? 
Is it the quality or quantity of glia/astrocytes that made Albert a genius?

The Mind-Brain Problem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADchGO-0kGo&feature=BFa&list=PLE3048008DAA29B0A

The video above shows the relationship between experience and brain activity. It was fascinating to see the way certain injuries to the brain can have a person behaving differently. Especially at 3:24. This part of the video showed a man who was blind but was still able to recognize the direction of a light was moving because his brain still had visual.

Part of the readings that I was really interested in were the hard problem, mind-body problem, and brain stimulation. The paragraph on Transcranial magnetic stimulation describes a study where the stimulation temporarily silenced the visual cortex so they had no conscious perception of sight but could still direct their eye movement toward the light. That sentence stated almost exactly what 3:24 part of the video shown above.  What I was more interested in was finding out how our awareness could be shut off by stimulation. In the clip in my earlier post it talks about consciousness. It only left me with more questions but I know that consciousness can only be described at the moment by synonyms like awareness, self-awareness, feelings, etc. Consciousness is what makes us unique from others. It is our perceptions, our opinions, and intentions. Without consciousness we would be robots. So, if we could temporarily turn off our awareness, how is it we haven’t found out what consciousness consists of? Is there a way of recreating it?

So, right now my only explanation is that this mysterious part of the human mind has to be the workings of the main man above, God. In my philosophy class, when we discussed whether the egg or chicken came first, I learned of the “Old Earth” creationist view. It is the belief that God set up the bang for the universe to be created. Science exists because God put it here and He only gave us the ability to understand so much because I believe the closer we come to massive amounts of genius, the closer we come to destroying ourselves.

I saw a video and 2:30 minutes in a man explained a theory of what consciousness is and I had no idea what he was talking about but what I did hear was that consciousness was a series of several collapses. Click here for the video.

What is Consciousness? by Vsause

The video above is from one of my favorite channels on Youtube ->Vsause. It answers a lot of great questions and leaves you wanting to answer more. Check it out!

Samantha Here!!!

Hey everyone!This is my first blog post. Happy to be on board ;) .Love and Peace,-Samunique