Drama

I don't know why, but sometimes I feel like I live for drama. In a sense I thrive off it.

Truly I feel as though I hate drama. However, I always want to be in on the gossip and the story telling.

Maybe it's the environment I grew up in, it just seems like a natural part of life. Fighting and bickering is never fun, but yet I always seem to end up in those situations. Sometimes though it's the best way to get out pent up feelings and aggressions. I'm usually afraid to confront people, and when a fight or drama starts up in is usually only resolved by getting those feelings out. Maybe it's the way I've learned to deal.

I hate being the center of attention, the one whispered about behind my back, but yet I seem to find myself acting in a way that I'm sure it causes such a response. This of course freaks me out and scares me, leaving me paranoid and afraid. I just can't seem to help it.

In the end it results from a lack of self-confidence I feel (listen to me, my psychology school must be paying off, right?). Why else would I subconsciously desire to be the "star." There's got to be some truth in all of Freud's writings.

I know half of this sounds like rambling and doesn't flow. I've got a lot of random thoughts running in my head. But, that's what this is for right?

Phantoms in the Brain--Chapter 2

This chapter focused on Phantom Limbs. This chapter continued to be interesting and made me more excited to read the book.

Phantoms in the Brain Ch. 2

Chapter two gives us a more in depth look at phantom limbs and what may cause them to occur. Ramachandran and others have done many studies on this out of the ordinary phenomena and come up with quite reasonable and understandable explanations. The chapter discusses phantom arms in detail, but gives a brief overview of other phantoms such as legs and feet, faces, genitalia, and breasts.

In chapter two we meet Tom, a 17 year old male who lost his arm in a bad car accident in which he was thrown from his car, ripping his left arm from his body. Dr. Ramachandran explains how his renewed interest in phantom limbs brought him in contact with Tom and then explains the simple, yet very educating experiment he then performed. Using a Q-Tip Ramachandran touched different areas on Tom’s face, to both of their surprise, Tom was able to pinpoint where each facial sensation was picked up on his phantom limb. Ramachandran was then able to do the same with the upper, still attached, part of Tom’s left arm.

This result uses Wilder Penfield’s “ homunculus” (now called the “sensory homunculus”) to describe such a unbelievable result. Penfield was known for being one of the first to map out the brain and which parts correlate to different areas of the body. He was able to map out a strip through the middle of the brain, on both sides, that corresponds with a different set of sensory nerves in the body such as the feet, hands, lips, and other limbs. In this homunculus we see that some areas, such as the lips, contain more of the brain than others, such as the knee. Also, we can also use this diagram to see what areas are next to each other in brain stimulation. In the homunculus the hand is surrounded by the face on one side and the arm on the other. Ramachandran used this to explain how sensations in the face and arm could be felt in the phantom limb. Our miraculous brain can rewire itself in a matter of hours (as short as a day!) and take over unused space. In Tom’s case (and the case of many other phantom limb patients) his brain use the area normally dedicated to the hand and allowed the face and arm to take up more space. The brain is used to receiving signals from the hand when the hand region of the brain fires, in the case of a phantom limb it still believes the hand is sending the signals even when these signals are coming from the face. This results in the patient feeling as though the sensations are coming from the hand because the brain is being tricked. This is the same explanation for other phantom limbs, the brain has taken over the “unused” areas from the amputated limb and the closest regions of the brain now use that area. This results in stimulation in phantom limbs when the stimulation is coming from elsewhere.

I thought it was interesting that these sensations not only occur in hands and feet, but can occur in a woman who has received a mastectomy, a man who has had his penis amputated, and even among women who have had a hysterectomy. The brain makes sure to use all of the space it has, but this can also result in some interesting sensations for the amputee.

Phantoms in the Brain

Look at this, another update. This semester I'm reading an educational book by the psychologist Dr. V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee as part of my Behavioral Neuroscience class. This class is requiring me to write summaries of the chapters I read, and I felt my fellow bloggers may be interested in the book as well. My summaries may include spoliers, but hopefully not too detailed. I hope that with these I can spark your interest and maybe you'll want to pick it up.

Phantoms in the Brain—Chapter 1

Chapter one of Phantoms in the Brain is a basic overview of what the book will contain. The book discusses Ramachandran’s views on neuroscience, scientific discovery, and brain abnormalities. He also does a great job of explaining the brain in a way to allow those who have no knowledge of the brain’s inner workings to understand his book.

The book begins with examples. He gives teasers of what we expect to be followed up in subsequent chapters about the affects of brain damage. We meet an athlete with a phantom limb, a nurse with visual hallucinations, a schoolteacher insistent she is not paralyzed, a librarian who died laughing, and Arthur who insists his parents are imposters. Ramachandran insures us these people are not crazy, and that they don’t belong under a psychiatrist’s careful care, but that they have completely understandable brain problems that just need a little digging to discover.

Ramachandran spends most of this chapter explaining how he views being a medical scientist as being a skilled detective, out to piece together the clues to solve the mystery. Throughout his studies this is exactly what he’s done; uncover mysteries of the brain by piecing together the scientific evidence. I think the most interesting piece of this chapter was when he discussed his teacher, Dr. K.V. Thiruvengadam. The idea that many serious diseases have distinct smells, or even slight physical evidence hardly noticed, is simply amazing. I think it takes a skilled and well-trained doctor to be able to not only know that this type of identification exists, but use it in practice. However, if my doctor were to come into the examination room, sniff me, and tell me that my break smelled like nail polish and therefore I must have diabetic ketosis, I might find him a little crazy.

Our author understands that not every reader is a psychologist and that sometimes science terminology can get scary. I think it’s great that he spends a few pages showing diagrams and explaining the main parts of the brain that he’ll be covering and what their functions are. He also presents it in a manner that is user friendly and doesn’t make the reader feel like they’re reading a textbook.

This chapter left me wanting to know more and continue reading. It also is a fairly fast read, due to its interesting nature and every-day language, for the most part. Chapter one was the enticing introduction it needed to be to get a reader hooked. I am looking forward to the next eleven chapters.

Two in One Day!

Another thing I've been wanting to share on my blog is this crazy video I watched in my Behavioral Neuroscience (AND my Physiological Psychology) class. Chapter one in both books covers the idea of Lobotomies. The idea of taking brain matter, or severing brain tissue in the frontal lobe of the brain to cure severe mental diseases, such as Schizophrenia. To me, it's a horrible procedure, and watching this video twice slightly disgusted me. It's so crazy to me that a man would think that randomly affecting someone's brain the way Walter Freeman did was the right way to cure a disease. However, as was pointed out in another class, sometimes what we think is right at the time, and the best treatment, will be seen as unethical and ridiculous in the future. We'll see what the future brings for the severing of the Corpus Collosum, the area in your brain that connects the two hemispheres, in epilepsy patients.

Enjoy the video. Post your comments! How do you feel about this?

Seems about time...

I've been wanting for some time now to actually get on here and update, but it seems like my crazy hectic life prevents me from doing anything not already ingrained into my normal routine. Maybe I can practice my Psychological skills and create this into a habit...how long does it take? 21 Days? I should know this seeing as I'm slowly becoming an "expert" on the brain and behavior. I have to say that I really do enjoy it however. It's fascinating to go to class every day and learn something new and exciting about how my body really works to perform different functions. Learning that, yes, I really do use 100% of my brain and it does miraculous things! (PS-Don't believe Pierre Flourens, you use all of your brain, not just 10%, silly man)

This semester I seem to be really getting into what being a Psychologist is all about, the brain and behavior. I'm finally starting to feel that when I leave this Tech savvy institute I really will know something about Psychology. Last semester I learned about all the ways we as humans can be messed up and "crazy" by learning about Abnormal disorders of the body. Depression, sleep disorders, sexual disorders to name a few mild ones. Then Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar Disorder, and different personality disorders. It's all such a fascinating subject. And then there was my class on all these famous men (and a few women) who made Psych what it is today: a fastly growing science. So many of these people did things I consider incredible. Some of these people were not only noted Philosophers, but Mathematicians, Physicists, and even map-makers. Talk about busy lives! Most of them were bi-lingual, and had received multiple degrees.

However, now it's getting down to the science of Psychology, and it's really what I love. How our neurons work inside our body to fire messages back and forth to tell my body to do something. How complex it really is to learn and remember facts and all the different aspects of my nervous system working together so that I can see this computer screen and remember where the keys are to type. Did you know it's actually harder to think than it is to see? Our brain is so complex, but yet it's not wired for the task of thinking! It's set to memorize, not to think, which is why it's easier to do math when you've memorize your multiplication tables than to start fresh every time. Your brain takes much longer to contemplate answers when it doesn't have memory to backup it's ideas. However, in a sense seeing is more complicated! But, your brain is wired to help you see. All the neurons in your head fire to send that image from your retina to the exact center in your brain where it will read the information before sending it to another area to tell you what you're seeing. This occurs in a matter of seconds! But we can't program computers to do it for us, because it's too complex for them! Seeing, moving, hearing, all these mental processes take complex strategies that sometimes change, and you can't program a robot to contemplate a situation and decide what angle is best for it to paint a car part at (which is why they arrive at the painter in the same position every time), or if there is an error in the part it's seeing. This is why humans are still around in these processes.

It really is fascinating what the brain can do!