Insomnia!

Sleep disorders such as insomnia, is where the individual does not have the adequate amount of sleep one is 

supposed to have, (7.5 to 8 hrs) in fact they do even sleep at all. The causes for insomnia can be due to 

anxiety, stress, pain, diet or even medication or even external factors, such as street noises. The experience 

of having insomnia is not fun, I've experienced it for a couple of weeks in the summer and had insufficient amounts of sleep. Days were a drag and I never had much energy, and when the night time arrived I suppose I stressed myself by already worrying that I would not fall asleep. It took me a while to get back into my normal sleep cycle and I'm glad I was able to sleep like a normal person again. 

Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows interesting statistics on how many people are actually affected by the amount of sleep an individual does or does not get.  Additional information is presented on how age, gender, employment and even economic social status does to our sleeping habits.  

Intersexes / Sexual Orientation

Gender identity is how we define ourselves sexually  and what we call ourselves, either as a female or male & with our sexual orientation whether we are heterosexual, homosexual, or even bisexual. Everyone will eventually come to understand themselves and how they want to be sexually with either the opposite or same sexes. 

Unfortunately not every person as it as simple to figure our their own gender identity. Some people have both female and male body parts and find it difficult to how they identity themselves at. An estimation of 1 in 100 children are born intersex in the United States. When these children are born it would be easier to do surgery and rear the child as a girl.  These people would be called hermaphrodites.

I was able to find this video from 20/20 that documents an intersex female and talks about her experiences while growing up. She also speaks up about whether surgery should be done on babies to remove or reduce the genital ambiguity. 

Pain

Pain is never a feeling people want to experience but it makes us aware of what is harming our body or not.  The most excruciating pain I've ever experienced was during my junior year in high school when I was in a basketball gain & I sprained my ankle. I felt this intense sharp pain and heard a loud pop, it hurt like hell and quickly started swelling. While reading the material in the text I replayed this experience in my head as how the pain travels. If I felt a sharp pain , I know that thick and faster axons were conveying this pain along with neurotransmitters such as glutamate and substance.. Even after about an hour after my incident even the slightest touch would hurt my ankle and foot, I didnt even want to move it. I felt sharp pains throughout the whole night on  my ankle that it felt like little needles were poking at me . I felt like my endorphins never kicked in because it felt as if the pain never went away, not even for a bit.

Memory and Amnesia

It definitely is a gift to have the memory that most of us have, from our short term, long term to our working memory. Short term of course being something that includes what we have just learned and once it has been interrupted it and not rehearsed as much it can be lost forever. Long term has a lot of capacity to retain material even if it has been years. and has been rehearsed or heard of many times.

It really amazes me how far back our long term memory can remember things we are given a hint about something or shown pictures of our childhood. I experienced this a couple weeks ago actually as I was looking through some childhood pictures when I was about 4 yrs old and the things that I was doing in the picture took me back to that day. It's a crazy feeling when you actually think about it. It would be even better if we could actually develop memories from when we are in the womb or even as infants. Now that would really be something.

Its definitely a disappointment when we know that our  working memory will disintegrate as we approach old age, because our prefrontal cortex will have declining activity as it changes.

Split Brain Studies

Split brain means that when the corpus callosum is damaged it does not allow the right and left hemisphere to exchange information. Even though the corpus callosum is damaged small amounts of information still travel between the hemispheres thru several smaller commissures.

 For people who do have sever epilepsies having a brain split procedure done will help prevent the epilepsies because the right and left hemispheres would not be crossing information that may cause the epilepsy from happening.

If patients with split brains' are shown a picture to his/her left visual field will be unable to say what they see but would be able to draw it out, as shown in the picture below.  And if shown to his/her right visual field the patient would be able to announce what he says, particularly because for most people the left hemisphere is language dominance.  

Michael Gazzaniga  has conducted experiments and studies for more than 50 yrs with patients who have  split-brain. Heres a video from early research on animals with split brain and how the brain works. 

On a final note, its still incredible how the brain works and is still able to change in a few ways to make life easier for us, even after people with epilepsy have had split brain surgery,  and there are not large amounts of  information exchanging, other forms of axons adapt to ways to send smaller messages through the brain and to the rest of our body.