N is for Narcolepsy

Have you ever pulled two all nighters in a row? If you have, then you know that afterwards, during the day, you drift off to sleep very easily. You feel physically and mentally exhausted and your body tells you that you need to rest. This is a normal reaction by the body to the lack of sleep. This however, is something that people suffering from narcolepsy must deal with on a daily basis even when they have had a full night’s sleep. Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder in which the brain does not regulate sleep-wake cycles as it should. Overwhelming daytime sleepiness occurs many times during the day, causing disruptions in daily activities. The most common symptom is excessive daytime sleepiness. Other symptoms of narcolepsy may include sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations.

Now, imagine you are in a boring lecture and you start to drift to sleep, usually you can manage to force yourself to wake up. This may be common occurrence, but try to imagine falling asleep while driving or walking. These situations seem rarer. A narcoleptic’s body doesn’t care what it is doing when it goes into these paralyzed sleeping episodes. The sudden overwhelming feeling drives a person with narcolepsy to fall asleep.

In narcolepsy, sleep episodes can occur at any time. People may unwillingly fall asleep while at work or at school, when having a conversation, playing a game, eating a meal, or, most dangerously, when driving an automobile or operating other types of machinery. In addition to daytime sleepiness, other major symptoms include catalepsy (a sudden loss of voluntary muscle tone that may be triggered by strong emotions), vivid dream-like images or hallucinations during sleep onset or when waking, and brief episodes of total paralysis, also during sleep onset or when waking.

The video below demonstrated an individual that suffers from narcolepsy. Nicole describes how this disorder has affected her life and how she has managed to overcome some situations. At various moments throughout the day, Nicole experiences sudden urges to sleep. If the urge becomes overwhelming, she may do so for periods lasting from a few seconds to several minutes. The condition is profoundly disabling, interrupting their basic day to day activities, including working, driving, even conversing with others.

Living with a Secret: Gender Identity

Gender is all around us. It is actually taught to us, from the moment we are born. Gender expectations and messages bombard us constantly. Upbringing, culture, peers, community, media, and religion, are some of the many influences that shape our understanding of this core aspect of identity. How you learned and interacted with gender as a young child directly influences how you view the world today. Gendered interaction between parent and child begin as soon as the sex of the baby is known. In short, gender is a socially constructed concept.

Gender identity refers to “one’s sense of oneself as male, female or transgender.” When one’s gender identity and biological sex are not congruent, the individual may identify as transsexual or as another transgender category. The word transgender was first coined as a way of distinguishing gender benders with no desire for surgery or hormones from transsexuals, those who desired to legally and medically change their sex. More recently transgender and/or trans has become an umbrella term that is popularly used to include all people who transgress dominant conceptions of gender, or at least all people who identify themselves as doing so.

In college, one of my friends announced he was gay. I honestly thought he was going through a phase, but instead Robert began to dress in women clothes and bind his genitals. On his Facebook profile, he announced he’d changed his name to Kendra. Today my friend “Kendra” has undergone surgery to remove her male genitals. She now lives in a safer environment and seems a lot happier.  If you were to talk to her she would more than likely tell you how her life has improved and the differences she has made in life. I am so happy that she made this choice because if she didn’t her life would had not been the same as today.

Every year hundreds and thousands of beauty pageants have stage the world.  Millions of women compete to be crown as Miss America, but when 6’1 Jenna Talackova enters into the competition, she was not able to compete because she was not born as a “natural women”. She was transgender. This video below demonstrates how Jenna Talackova's life as transgender and how it affected her career. Many people have gone through many difficult situations and have managed to overcome difficult obstacles similar to Jenna’s.

 

 

The Smell of Love

Forget the expensive French perfumes. If a woman really wants to reel a man in, all she needs to do is dab a dose of odorless pheromones strategically to her pulse points, and men will shower her with affection. At least that's what the results of one small study show.  When it comes to sexual attraction, many scientist's believe that our nose knows what’s best for us. However, how exactly does our nose relate to sexual attraction? From the nose, the pheromone travels to a part of the brain involved in emotions and sex drive.  Pheromones are chemicals that are secreted in our sweat (and other bodily fluids) that are believed to release neurotransmitters that directly modify the behavior of the opposite sex, such as triggering sexual excitement. The behavior effects of pheromones apparently occur unconsciously. That is, people respond behaviorally to certain chemicals in human skins even though they describe them as odorless.

Exposure to these chemicals, especially chemicals from opposite sex, alters skin temperature and other autonomic responses and increase activity in the hypothalamus. For example, “the smell of woman’s sweat-especially if the woman was near her time of ovulation-increases a man’s testosterone secretion.”  Armpit sweat broken down by bacteria may not sound very appealing, but that's the origin of pheromones, those elusive, odorless chemicals given off in response to sexual stimulation or even romantic fantasy. In animals including mice, dogs, and insects, these chemicals attract the opposite sex and initiate mating behavior. 

Pheromones are linked to some of the most crucial stages in our lives. The best-documented effect of a human pheromone relates to the timing of women’s menstrual cycle. Women who spend much time together find that their menstrual cycle becomes more synchronized, unless they are taking birth control pill. In the animal world, pheromones are individual scent "prints" found in urine or sweat that dictate sexual behavior and attract the opposite sex. They help animals identify each other and choose a mate with an immune system different enough from their own to ensure healthy offspring. They have a special organ in their noses called the vomeronasal organ (VNO) that detects this odorless chemical.

The video below describes what are pheromones and what exactly causes the humans to be attracted to the opposite sex. It explains a study how people that use certain pheromones such as perfumes, help humans become more attracted to other people. It also explains the differences between the pheromones of humans and animals. 

When the Mind Says Goodbye

 

 

Imagine living in a world where you tend to forget the date, the people you love or even where you live. As we grow older our body and brain change drastically. The way we think, perform, solve problems and analyze things change as well. Many of the times, these changes also bring with them a common disease we know as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, even the ability to carry out the simplest tasks of daily living. In most people with AD, symptoms first appear after age 60. AD is also the most common cause of dementia among older people.

Alzheimer’s disease begins slowly. It first involves the parts of the brain that control thought, memory and language. People with AD may have trouble remembering things that happened recently or names of people they know. A related problem, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), causes more memory problems than normal for people of the same age. Many, but not all, people with MCI will develop AD. Overtime, symptoms get worse. People may not recognize family members or have trouble speaking, reading or writing. They may forget how to brush their teeth or comb their hair. Later on, they may become anxious or aggressive, or wander away from home.  A person with the disease may not recognize that anything is wrong, even when changes are noticeable to their family members, very close friends and co-workers.

During the preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s disease, people are free of symptoms but toxic changes are taking place in the brain. Abnormal deposits of proteins form amyloid plaques and tau tangles throughout the brain, and once-healthy neurons begin to work less efficiently. Over time, neurons lose their ability to function and communicate with each other, and eventually they die. Before long, the damage spreads to a nearby structure in the brain called the hippocampus, which is essential in forming memories. As more neurons die, affected brain regions begin to shrink. By the final stage of Alzheimer’s, damage is widespread, and brain tissue has shrunk significantly.

 

Although there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, there are treatments that prolong the individual’s awareness and memory. Their medications can be taken in the early stages to minimize memory loss that the patient is experiencing. One drug that has a positive effect is tacrine, a drug that is used to increase acetylcholine, which helps to improve memory. Although extensive research has been done on Alzheimer’s disease, much still remains unknown about the destructive illness.

 

The video below is a story of a spouse trying to cope with her husbands loss of mind and spirit while still relishing in the brief moments of clarity that they share together.

 

Making Sense with Nouns

Language is much more than words. It involves our ability to recognize and use words and sentences. Much of this capability resides in the left hemisphere of the brain. When a person has a stroke or other injury that affects the left side of the brain, it typically disrupts their ability to use language. Through language, we communicate our inner thoughts, desires, intentions and motivations, understand what others say to us, listen, speak, write, read, comment and interchange among people.  People who suffer with brain damage suffer impaired language production, also known as Broca’s aphasia or nonfluent aphasia.

Aphasia is caused by damage to one or more of the language areas of the brain. Many times, the cause of the brain injury is a stroke. A stroke occurs when blood is unable to reach a part of the brain. Brain cells die when they do not receive their normal supply of blood, which carries oxygen and important nutrients. Other causes of brain injury are severe blows to the head, brain tumors, brain infections, and other conditions that affect the brain. Men and women are equally affected. According to the  National Aphasia Association, approximately 80,000 individuals acquire aphasia each year from strokes. About one million people in the United States currently have aphasia.

Aphasia can have tragic consequences. People who suffer from Broca’s Aphasia usually have comprehension deficits when the meaning of the sentence depends on prepositions, word endings, or unusual word order. Agrammatic, or telegraphic, speech means that the person with aphasia speaks mostly in nouns, and produces only a few words at a time. An example would be, “Well…..cat and…..up……..um, well, um…forget it”. The communication is non-fluent, meaning that their average sentences are five or fewer real words. This may be compounded by apraxia. Writing is typically similarly affected, and reading may be reduced.

For example, imagine going to a foreign country and hearing people speaking all around you. You would know they were using words and sentences. You might even have an elemental knowledge of that language, allowing you to recognize words here and there, but you would not have command of the language and couldn’t follow most conversation. This is what life is like for people with comprehension problems.

This video below shows the conditions that Aphasia patients suffer. At the age of 18, Sarah had a stroke which lead her to have Broca’s Aphasia. In this video you would see how Sarah struggles to complete sentences, pronounce certain words, and struggles to remember words and even her name.