Vilayanur Ramachandran explains what actually happens in the brain and it’s actually easy enough to understand. And he’s quite humorous too. I wish my science lecturers are half as entertaining.
In a wide-ranging talk, Vilayanur Ramachandran explores how brain damage can reveal the connection between the internal structures of the brain and the corresponding functions of the mind. He talks about phantom limb pain, synesthesia (when people hear color or smell sounds), and the Capgras delusion, when brain-damaged people believe their closest friends and family have been replaced with imposters.
Vilayanur Ramachandran: A journey to the center of your mind
About Vilayanur Ramachandran
Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran looks deep into the brainâs most basic mechanisms. By working with those who have very specific mental disabilities caused by brain injury or stroke, he can map functions of the mind to physical structures of the brain.
3. Women use more of their brains when they think.
4. Men’s brains contain roughly 6.5 times the amount of grey matter related to general intelligence as women’s brains, while women’s brains contain about 10 times as much white matter related to general intelligence as men’s. Researchers point to this finding to explain the controversial belief that in general, men may naturally excel at math while women tend to excel in areas like language.
9. A 20-second hug will trigger the release of oxytocin in a woman’s brain. The effect of this chemical will often give the woman a feeling of trust in the person hugging her.
Maybe you can take a look at this quiz if you guys are free. I lost the site that I found this link unfortunately.
Test your senses here - The Sense Challenge - by the BBC guys, whose expertise are with news that don’t made much sense to me. [That's just because I'm too ignorant on politics.]
On Thursday’s Today newspaper, the excerpt writes the following.
The guys on _Project Superstar_ may lack the X chromosome - but not the X-factor
Source: TODAY (Singapore) newspaper, published on Thursday, June 2, 2005.
I pitied the men who lost their X chromosome due to the reporters failure to do a little bit more research. At least the men themselves are truly wonderous since they manage to survive till this date with just a Y chromosome.
[While women has 2 X chromosomes in each cell in normal conditions, men has an X and a Y chromosome.]
This is sad — I actually have to go to work today (a beautiful, rainy, gone-is-the-haze Saturday) as I can’t finish my report.
I need to hand in a report on coming Monday. I work on reports too slowly I guess. I wish I can write these stuff faster.
One portion of my introduction is to be axed. I wasn’t please about it because I like that portion of the introduction. I’ll post it online for memory’s sake. Damn, I thought that was good.
Enzymes and metabolism
Life is a chemical process involving thousands of different reactions occurring in an organized manner. These are called metabolic reactions and collectively known as metabolism.
The products of metabolism are called metabolites. Metabolites are usually small molecules or protein ligands. Such metabolites can be catalyzed by enzymes. An enzyme is a compound which brings about one particular chemical reaction but itself remains unchanged at the end of the reaction. Enzymes are the mediators of metabolism, responsible for virtually every reaction that occurs in the cell. Without enzymes, metabolic reactions would proceed so slowly as to be imperceptible.
Upon food intake, the body breaks it down into carbohydrates, and then glucose. Glucose then undergoes a metabolic pathway called glycolysis . In glycolysis, enzymes are present to break down glucose into smaller units.
That’s like my favorite section and it has got to be axed due to un-necessity.
Anyway, my internship is ending. I really got to rush already. I wish to complete my discussion by today and work on my methods section of the report. I am worried that I can’t finish, at the same time, I am lazy to do it. I am in a state where I have ideas of doing blogging, reading, listening to music, going out and more constantly. It’s hard to concentrate this way. And my deadline is near. (more…)
Yesterday, I participated in a symposium, it’s like the one I went previously, just that this time - I actually participated…
…As the usher.
Not that usher that sings, I’m that usher that hands out programme sheets.
It turns out that being the usher isn’t that bad. I get 30 people to thank me for distributing them the programme sheet. It felt good to be thanked even though it’s just a simple act of handing them the programme sheet.
Well, I am bored while waiting. I walked around the 4th floor of Matrix building. I paced to the lift and stared at the digital display. And when I see a lift is preparing to go up to the 4th floor, I went back to the door and prepare. And chances are high that people would come to the symposium.
I was helping out my supervisor to usher a symposium that he organized. It’s a biomarkers discovery symposium and it’s more like an interactive session. The lipoprotein part is very informative - at least to me - and I jotted down quite a lot of things that may be relevant to my report.
I thought his talk is a little rough in the beginning, but it gets much better at the lipoprotein section. It’s well delivered in the end and I hope he can get interested parties to collaborate with him. His project is worth to be collaborated with in my opinion. It’s about verifying if phosphofructokinase is the rate limiting step in glycolysis. That may just be incorrect and may be changed in all biochemistry textbooks.
I am feeling down for about an hour. My industrial training program (ITP) is ending. I am not sad for that, nor am I happy. It’s okay that it is ending.
I need to submit a report at the end of this ITP. I have been working on lipoprotein metabolism. I don’t understand most parts of it. I am doing the manual work type of things. Basically, I’ll take the values and play around until the model predicts the right result.
It seemed like an easy job. But it takes a lot of time. My only regret through this project is that I made poor use of time. I have a lot of extra time. I use it on the wrong things. I have read many articles. I could have selected them better.
Let me give you an example.
As you know, I am working on lipoprotein. I use FORTRAN to aid in the testing of the models. Instead of reading more about lipoprotein, I spend time learning FORTRAN and reading articles related to FORTRAN. And I over-read it. That is unnecessary and I suffer with the problem that I don’t know much things about the relations of high density lipoprotein with - say - insulin resistance now.
What I am supposed to do a to tweak the variables and attempt to archieve a better fit for the lipoprotein subfractions HDL3, HDL2, VLDL1, VLDL2, LDL-I and LCL-III that can correspond to that of a normal human being. After archieving that, I am to tweak specific variables that I don’t remember to archieve a good fit that represents an insulin-resistance patient.
My problem is with the report. I don’t know how to start it. At the end of the first half of the day, I typed less than five hundred words. I look at the monitor and the monitor just stares back into my tired eyes.
It’s just not working out right. I need to do the report badly. I have no idea how to start.
[By the way, this is not a secret project or anything and I have consulted my supervisor regarding this. I can speak to anyone regarding what I do for this project. No IP involved.]
