How will Brain Science be used in the future?

We can use brain science to perform neurosurgeries on patients by finding out which brain structure is which. For example, the amygdala is associated with mood/anger so an extremely angry person can have their amygdala removed (idk if this is even possible.) The hippocampus is used for memory, Broca's area for forming speech, Wernicke's area for understanding speech. Angular gyrus for converting images into audio, like if we see a trumpet we'd associate it with music. Also, association areas make us smarter than most animals. Neurons can be computed into a microchip to fly an autopilot airplane. Drug patients can be understood why they act drunk/depressed/hyper because some alcohol/meth can mimic dopamine and seratonin pathways. Also, split brain patients can use their left hand to draw what they see on the right. The left brain's plasticity will fill in the functions of what the right brain would do.

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TroopTube: A YouTube for the Military

After banning YouTube, the military launches its own network.

Pay-by-Phone Parking System Launched

Paying for parking by cell means no more fumbling for change.

1,200-year-old Church Uncovered in Syria

Archaeologists unearth ruins of ancient church, largest found in Mideast country.

Why a Speeding Shark is Like a Golf Ball

Sharks have mini scales like sandpaper to reduce drags as they move along the water, like how a golf ball has dimples to help speed up the ball.

Mysterious Light Show Seen at Saturn
from Global Warming, Global Warming News, Effects Of Global Warming at ...
Cassini spacecraft photographs new aurora at Saturn's pole.



WATCHING DEATH!

Scientists think death is the end of personal consciousness. Religious people think that their spirits and souls live on. Near-death-experience people claim that they "travel down a long tunnel of light, looking down their body." These are caused by disorganized brain signals while on the verge of dying. The most important experiment that’s never been done is to take fMRI or PET scans of people as they die.

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.

Videos & Outside readings

http://www.blogger.com/www.learner.org/resources/series150.html The Mind

What I found: The brain's natural Morphine, or pain reliever, is Endorphins. Those soldiers during the Vietnam War used heroin because they were under a lot of stress during battle. This relieved them of emotional pain as well as physical pain when they got injuries and there were no hospitals near by. Sometimes when you get cuts and bruises you don't notice them instantly because endorphins is also released out at the same time to ease the pain. A while later you will notice the pain after the endorphins calm down. I also get cuts and bruises that I don't notice until later a sharp pain kicks in. One example of this is when I cut my knee on a glass table I didn't feel the pain. A moment later I noticed the blood trickling down, that's when I began to cry/scream/bawl (I was 9.) Maybe the image of blood made me think of pain or the pain itself, I'm not sure. Morphine can replace endorphins and vice versa. Therefore, people who use heroin will stop their process of making endorphins in the brain, so if they stop using heroin they will feel pain.

Understanding the Brain Through Epilepsy

The boy's brain neurons switch on and off uncontrollably, resulting in seizures, or spasms of muscles. Patients with seizures often forget what they recently did when asked. I saw the doctors performing a brain surgery (which is pretty gross...). They can remove a part of the brain that causes Ashley's seizures, cool :).

Brain to Muscle Link in the Monkey http://www.blogger.com/scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2008/10/brain_to_muscle_link_in_the_mo.php

Even without access to the wrist, the monkey still responds to the game that involves his wrist by using brain neurons. One neuron can connect to other specific parts and muscles of the monkey's body to make them work. Therefore, the monkey can use that one neuron to move his wrist without actually using his wrist. Other neurons overtime can copy that action and move his wrist also, not just that one neuron. This could be useful for making synthetic limbs when one person damages a neuron, the doctor can replace that neuron with another neuron that does the same job.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-mirror-neuron-revolut (idk how to hyperlink)

The Mirror Neuron Revolution: Explaining What Makes Humans Social

Mirror neurons are located in the premotor cortex and inferior parietal cortex in the brain. They both activate when an action takes place. Mirror neurons can mimic action of another person or recognizing our own. For example, someone smiles at you, you smile back. People with autism process other people's emotions much slower. Therefore, they have a hard time to be sociable. Social people are the ones who respond to another's feelings and emotions (otherwise they're antisocial.) Mirror neurons are also important in language because we mimic our mother's sound and voice and try to repeat back the words we hear. This is why children need to stay in school so that they can learn positive things from their elders. Also, Lehrer shows that we can mimic other people's actions through movies and music, so bad movies and bad music can influence gang activities and violence in youth.

Chapt 18

What I can do with this chapter is that I can show altruism through donating quarters for leukemia and not expecting anything in return (maybe a cure.) I can use aggression when needed to confront a conflict. I can also use cognitive disonance to decide which college is right for me, like tuition cost and location by that I have to conform my ideas in order to reach a right decision. I can also see prejudice in today's presidential election where they would prefer a Caucasian man over an African American man, or vice versa that the people prefer Obama just because he's black, not looking into both people's talents. America's superiority (just-world phenomenon) declines once they turn to other countries to help for economic crisis.

Aggression, Attraction, Conflict, Altruism

Agression: Sometimes when I did something I was told to do and people said I didn't do it so I put up an argument against them. For example, when I took out the laundry from the dryer, my mom thought it was still down the basement so I got angry and showed here that I already took the laundry out. Also, I can't stand loud people talking over my shoulders when I'm waiting in a line (like at Seabreeze). I wanted to turn around and say "shut up" but that would make all other people stare at me and I'm usually a nice person. This led to my frustration-agression principle, since I couldn't walk away nor yell things back at people. Also, ingroup bias is present in this case, because those loud people wouldn't let other people in their conversation but they just talk among themselves.

Conflict: I usually have conflicts with my older sister. Sometimes she wants me to take AP classes either to torture me or to help me going to a good college... Whenever I'm watching a TV show I like, she comes up and changes the channel. This is called a social trap since she wants to watch something against my liking for her own benefit. My sister complains when I spent like 10$ on a shirt while she spends 300$ on a new lap top and that's ok since it's for school work and hw :D. This just-world phenomenon leads to me believing that there's only some justice in the world.

New drawings I made

Just thought I'd share with people on here.

http://tropicorn.deviantart.com/art/Mermaid-Seashell-100010226