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.