Sleep, everyone needs it and some of us don't get enough of it. And yet our body is very determined to let us know when we should be doing it even when there isn't any indication of time of day. I've never wondered how a person who has an inability to see knows when to wake up or go to sleep. In some cases a person would using a different need to set a circadian rhythm meaning that they'll use meals, noise, or temperature to tell them when to wake up and go to sleep. In other cases however when a person is not sensitive to meal times, or other time indicators they will have a day longer than twenty four hours causing insomnia and sleepiness. There is another mechanism by which some people who are blind can tell when to go to sleep. The suprachiasmatic nucleus or SCN which has its own little system on responding to an overall average of light rather than an instant reaction to when light becomes apparent or ceases.
People who are blind can actually sync their sleeping and waking pattern to a local pattern of sunlight, and interestingly enough the SCN can also aggravate a migraine in a person who is blind because of the light. Meaning that even without being able to see people can still have light sensitive excitation. Its interesting to learn that even when our body feels inhibited there are mechanisms that are still at work to compensate for what we feel we no longer have.
I find it interesting that there are so many aspects to becoming a gender, when you're little everyone is either a boy or girl, you don't know why you just know thats they way it is. And until studying this topic a little more, I never knew how little information I did know about the development of how people become who they are. In the beginning everyone is literally all the same, all the right parts and the right hormones to become either gender. It all just depends on whats more prominent, and what hormones a mother is exposed to while pregnant. Many illegal drugs can actually feminize a fetus during early development and even something as simple as aspirin can have an affect on gender development. So with all these outside influences how are gender and gender roles affected during a persons life. In children socialization is not the only reason certain genders only play with certain toys. Some research has shown that injecting or exposing women to certain hormones while they're pregnant can cause the child to show a certain preference to toys or items they are interested in. However it is a combination of both socialization and hormonal influences that affect behavior and preference.
What would it be like if we could hear colors, taste sound, see music come to life, literally. Synesthesia gives people the mixing of their senses, and whats really interesting is no two people with this abnormality have it exactly the same. Some will hear a taste, but they each hear a different taste, or see the music but the colors will different for everyone based on the note. While this is considered to suggest genetic predisposition, people aren't born with this because children have to learn what numbers, letters, and having a knowledge of the realization that they're senses aren't going together with the right action. So this mixing of the senses continues to develop over time, but is it really a "mix of the senses." In actuality these "mixing of the senses" is an illusion, meaning that a person is having the experience because they think that hearing color was the stimulus they had, but that is not actually the stimulus they are getting. One possibility about why this happens is that, some of the axons from one cortical area branch into another cortical area.
What is interesting is that these crossing of senses only happen one directionally and there isn't any thought that goes into it, people just already as a response have synesthetic qualities. Strangely enough although words may sound the same some people with synesthesia will taste or see different thing when word that sounds the same is spelled differently. I can't even image how overwhelming this situation with be when a word might evoke a disgusting taste or smell? How do you handle having a sense connected to a different response?
Alzheimers is a very interesting disease that hits very close to home, because rather than learning it in a text book I see it everyday in my little grandmother. The thing is while being around it my family can of course see the signs and her progressively getting worse, but I guess I never really understood what it meant for her brain and what is happening chemically. It was as if the only important information was that she had it and that there isn't anything anyone could do about it except "slow it down". I never understood what that meant till now,simplified when a person has alzheimers amyloid accumulates both inside and outside the neurons which damages dendritic spines, decreases synaptic input and decreases plasticity. This all causes plaque to build up which cause major parts of the brain to waste away. And if that wasn't enough the amyloid also cause more phosphate groups to attach attach to tau proteins, meaning they can't attach to their usual targets within axons. "Slowing it down" would most likely refer to giving my grandmother medication that stimulate her acetylcholine receptors.
But when I look at my grandmother I don't see whats happening to her brain but her behavior and her inability to remember what our family did last easter. I see the look on my family's faces when they have to answer the same question five different times, or when she does the same action over and over again because she is sure she didn't just wash that dish. Or the feeling I get when she looks at me and can't remember if I am me or my aunt. And knowing that its going to get worse, and "slowing it down" won't be an option anymore, its waiting game of how long she can hold onto what little memory she has left.
When I first started reading about the left and right hemisphere it just reinforced the idea of how complicated the brain really is for me. Our brain is separate but connected and without a nice balance it can throw a persons hole thinking process off. In a video I viewed I was very affected in hearing about this experience Dr. Taylor had while having a stroke and how it was almost impossible for her to be able to focus enough to get herself help while she was having a stroke. And while I know that strokes are horrific, I never really understood what was taking place, what does it mean for someone to have a stroke? I'd always been told about the paralysis and the loss of speech bet never really whats happening in your body. It seems such a simple and horrifying experience, a blood vessel bursting is all it takes and without rhyme or reason. The worst part is that anyone can have one, and while there are health factors that do cause an increase in possibility such as smoking, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, a previous stroke...etc. And while maintaining you're body and making sure to be aware of these factors is no guarantee by any means that a stroke won't occur in a persons lifetime.
I find it interesting that there are so many aspects to becoming a gender, when you're little everyone is either a boy or girl, you don't know why you just know thats they way it is. And until studying this topic a little more, I never knew how little information I did know about the development of how people become who they are. In the beginning everyone is literally all the same, all the right parts and the right hormones to become either gender. It all just depends on whats more prominent, and what hormones a mother is exposed to while pregnant. Many illegal drugs can actually feminize a fetus during early development and even something as simple as aspirin can have an affect on gender development. So with all these outside influences how are gender and gender roles affected during a persons life. In children socialization is not the only reason certain genders only play with certain toys. Some research has shown that injecting or exposing women to certain hormones while they're pregnant can cause the child to show a certain preference to toys or items they are interested in. However it is a combination of both socialization and hormonal influences that affect behavior and preference.
