A stranger in half your body An amazing study has just been published online in Consciousness and Cognition about a patient with epilepsy who felt the left half of his body was being “invaded by a stranger” when he had a seizure. As a result, he felt he existed in one side of his body only. The research is from the same Swiss team who made headlines with their study that used virtual reality to make participants feel they were in someone else’s body, and one where brain stimulation triggered the sensation of having an offset ‘shadow body’ in patients undergoing neurosurgery. The researchers suggest that having an integrated sense of our own bodies involves three types of perception: self-location – the area where we experience the self to be located; first-person perspective – the perceived centre of the conscious experience; and self-identification – the degree to which we identify sensations with our own bodies. Patient 1 is a 55 year old, left-handed male patient suffering from epilepsy since the age of 14 years.
Student Nurse - A&P Anatomy and Sectional Terminology It sounds silly, but you learn as many new words in an A&P course as you do a beginning foreign language course. Really --there's been research to prove it! Links here are for general A & P resources. 120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power - StumbleUpon Here are 120 things you can do starting today to help you think faster, improve memory, comprehend information better and unleash your brain’s full potential. Solve puzzles and brainteasers.Cultivate ambidexterity. Use your non-dominant hand to brush your teeth, comb your hair or use the mouse. Write with both hands simultaneously. Readers’ Contributions Dance! Contribute your own tip! There are many, many ways to keep our brains sharp.
Dyslexia Dyslexia, or developmental reading disorder,[1] is characterized by difficulty with learning to read fluently and with accurate comprehension despite normal or above-average intelligence.[2][3][4] This includes difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, processing speed, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, language skills/verbal comprehension, and/or rapid naming.[5][6][7] Dyslexia is the most common learning difficulty[8] and most recognized reading disorder. There are other reading difficulties that are unrelated to dyslexia. Classification[edit] Internationally, dyslexia has no single definition; more than 70 names are used to describe its manifestations, characterizations or causes. Numerous symptom-based definitions of dyslexia suggest neurological approaches. Signs and symptoms[edit] Language[edit] Associated conditions[edit] Causes[edit] Neuroanatomy[edit] Genetics[edit] Gene-environment interaction[edit] Management[edit] Epidemiology[edit] History[edit]
Liver Function, Location & Anatomy The liver is the largest glandular organ in the body and performs many vital functions to keep the body pure of toxins and harmful substances. It is a vital organ that supports nearly every organ in the body in some facet. Without a healthy liver, a person cannot survive. An average adult liver weighs about three pounds. Located in the upper-right portion of the abdominal cavity under the diaphragm, the liver consists of four lobes. The liver is considered a gland—an organ that secretes chemicals—because it produces bile, a substance needed to digest fats. In addition to producing bile, the liver: Detoxifies the blood to rid it of harmful substances such as alcohol and drugsStores some vitamins and ironStores the simple sugar glucoseConverts stored sugar to usable sugar when the body’s sugar (glucose) levels fall below normal.Breaks down hemoglobin as well as insulin and other hormonesConverts ammonia to urea, which is vital in metabolismDestroys old red blood cells
Coloured hearing in Williams syndrome The idea that our genes can affect many of the traits that define us as individuals, including our personality, intelligence, talents and interests is one that some people find hard to accept. That this is the case is very clearly and dramatically demonstrated, however, by a number of genetic conditions, which have characteristic profiles of psychological traits. Genetic effects include influences on perception, sometimes quite profound, and other times remarkably selective. A recent study suggests that differences in perception in two conditions, synaesthesia and Williams syndrome, may share some unexpected similarities. Williams syndrome is a genomic disorder caused by deletion of a specific segment of chromosome 7. Due to the presence of a number of repeated sequences, this region is prone to errors during replication that can result in deletion of the intervening stretch of the chromosome, which contains approximately 28 genes.
Ancient origins of the cerebral cortex Just how special is the human brain? Compared to other mammals, the thing that stands out most is the size of the cerebral cortex – the thick sheet of cells on the outside of the brain, which is so expanded in humans that it has to be folded in on itself in order to fit inside the skull. The cortex is the seat of higher brain functions, the bit of the brain we see with, hear with, think with. All mammals have a cortex and it generally increases in size over evolution. Expansion is coupled with an increase in the complexity of the cortex, as defined by the number of distinct cortical areas. But when in evolution did the cortex actually evolve? Whether particular brain structures in different species are related to each other (i.e., whether they diverged from a single structure in a common ancestor) is often a subject of debate and controversy. Tomer R, Denes AS, Tessmar-Raible K, & Arendt D (2010).
Sexual & Reproductive Health - Sex Education - Planned Parenthood