VORB video & reading

Mouse Party

It surprised me to see a bunch of mice injected with all sorts of drugs to keep them high (hence mouse party, haha.) I selected the mouse with cocaine in it and put it in a centrifuge machine thing. The machine shows the dopamine inside the mouse's brain. Dopamine is responsible for movement, emotion, and attention. With cocaine inside the mouse's body, it blocks the dopamine transporters from receiving dopamine to the neuron. Lacking of dopamine, a person can get Parkinson's disease this way. The mouse's brain is also similar to a human's brain, so if a person consumes cocaine they will not get enough dopamine inside the brain to their body. Also, a person with cocaine cannot control their movements, so they will not stay still.

Heroine mouse: Body's natural opiate blocks the inhibitory receptor so that dopamine can get out freely. This acts as a natural mood-enhancer like sudden overwhelm of happiness or natural painkiller. Heroin users can feel "good" when the heroin mimics natural opiates, making dopamine to flow out and makes a person feel better when in their down times or has an injury. Although frequent use of heroin will lead to depression if not enough dopamines can get out anymore without the heroin's aid.

Meth mouse: Meth mimics dopamine, can get in the neurons. Meth will force dopamines to get out of their vesicles. Excess dopamine are trapped in the synapses. Therefore, those dopamines will overstimulate the cell, making the person feel intense pleasure.

Your iBrain: How Technology Changes the Way We Think

The brain is adapted to change within the environment. An older person might think of newspaper and jazz or R&B music, while a hip and younger person might think of techno, rap and computer. Therefore, the brain only processes what the person has been exposed to the most (mere exposure can work here too.) Also, younger generations have better experience with computers than older generations because they grow up exposed to these sorts of information that older people don't have back then. For example, taking notes can never be easier with advanced electronic notepads. Whereas taking notes the old fashion way on paper might deem useful decades ago, but not anymore. However, a lady with an old, ragged notebook might have a better chance of keeping it longer than a man with his Blackberry phone which one day he will eventually drop and ruin it. Also, the brain has this plasticity that allows it to change information at will to adapt to different environments. For example, a boy who lives on a farm will eventually adapt to the city life, but it takes time.