Sleep

Sleep? Yes please! I know sleeping is what most college students never get when bombarded with work, going to class, doing various homework or projects, but it is very vital to our well being. Sleeping is great not only is sleeping relaxing it can also help us lose weight! Sleeping the wrong amount of hours or irregular amount of hours can reek havoc on out metabolism causing us to not lose the fat we have stored in our body. Lets not stop their sleep also helps build up our energy levels. Another weird fact about sleep is that scientists today still are not sure why we sleep. Other than for our nerve cells to rejuvenate we still are not sure why we need to sleep.

Here below are some very informative videos of why sleep is important:

How Sleep Works: Understanding the Restorative Process

 About:  Sleep is a vital part of our lives: "It's as important as air, water, or shelter over the top of our heads," says Carol Ash, DO, medical director of the Sleep for Life center in Hillsborough, N.J. In this video, Dr. Ash describes how the body cycles through REM and non-REM sleep, and how the process relates to problem solving.

 

 Our next video is nothing else but Ted Talks!

Jessa Gamble: Our natural sleep cycle

About:

In today's world, balancing school, work, kids and more, most of us can only hope for the recommended eight hours of sleep. Examining the science behind our body's internal clock, Jessa Gamble reveals the surprising and substantial program of rest we should be observing.

Jessa Gamble writes about sleep and time, showing how our internal body clock struggles against our always-on global culture

Sex

      Well the title says it all but I am pretty sure everyone that hears the word sex thinks about erections, ovulation, and naked women or naked men. but not many people think about what is behind the word sex or what happens after you have sex. I am also willing to bet that most people brag and boast of how much they know about sex but majority of them don't know jack squat about sex. Taking sex for granted is quite common for humans, very few people either know why we have sex or think that sex is a great way to know someone like reading someones Facebook profile. Sex is actually a fascinating subject like how a pregnancy or sperm decide what the gender of a fetus will be. Sex also plays a role in love. Yes I know love is hard to define and understand from a biological perspective , but in a Darwinian perspective it does have a purpose and that purpose was to have a connection so strong with someone that they would agree to procreate with each other and successfully raise the young.

     Anyway below is a couple of videos I found related and closely related to the subject of sex from a biological and psychological perception.

     The 1st video is from YouTube uploaded from Cambridge college talking about the principles of animal behavior, reproductive behaviors in humans and other animals in response to low-resource and high-mortality environments.


Ethology Principles of Animal Behavior



The next video is from yes you guessed it TED Talks!


Helen Fisher: Why we love, why we cheat
About: 

Anthropologist Helen Fisher takes on a tricky topic – love – and explains its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its social importance. She closes with a warning about the potential disaster inherent in antidepressant abuse.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher studies gender differences and the evolution of human emotions. She's best known as an expert on romantic love, and her beautifully penned books -- including Anatomy of Love and Why We Love -- lay bare the mysteries of our most treasured emotion.



 Her is also a quote from Helen fisher very interesting.

"There’s all kinds of reasons that you fall in love with one person rather than another: Timing is important. Proximity is important. Mystery is important. You fall in love with somebody who’s somewhat mysterious, in part because mystery elevates dopamine in the brain, probably pushes you over that threshold to fall in love.” (Helen Fisher)

Pain, Olfaction, Pheromones, and Synaesthesia

Pain, as much as we hate it we need it. Without pain we wouldn't be able to survive as long as we would. Our body uses pain sensors to warn us of pain. Over time our body goes through different levels of pain and adapts in different ways such as our brain tells us not to touch fire anymore or when getting hit with a thrown object causes you to learn the thrown object is a danger to you and to avoid it. Some people have an obsession of pain, in regards of stopping it. Lots of people want to avoid pain but can't, so to those people the easiest way to avoid pain is to use or abuse drugs legal or illegally. This obsession with relieving pain is very dangerous, and lots of entities exploit that obsession, like the promotion of cigarettes and alcohol.

Below are two videos that explain in greater detail of how pain works and how people experience pain.

The first video is about how pain relievers work.


How Do Pain Relievers Work? - George Zaidan

About: Some people take aspirin or ibuprofen to treat everyday aches and pains, but how exactly do the different classes of pain relievers work? Learn about the basic physiology of how humans experience pain, and the mechanics of the medicines we've invented to block or circumvent that discomfort.



 This upcoming video is of my favorite place to learn new information, TED Talks.


Elliot Krane: The mystery of chronic pain

About:

We think of pain as a symptom, but there are cases where the nervous system develops feedback loops and pain becomes a terrifying disease in itself. Starting with the story of a girl whose sprained wrist turned into a nightmare, Elliot Krane talks about the complex mystery of chronic pain, and reviews the facts we're just learning about how it works and how to treat it.

At the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, Elliot Krane works on the problem of treating pain in children.

Learning, Memory, and Amnesia

Memory is a very interesting part of human life. From birth to old age we have these things we like to call memories and experiences. For most of us we believe memory is best remembered by repeating it over and over again. We also believe that memory is more acute to when bad and good things happen to us. Contrary to the belief we remember most of our lives through bad events or rather selective memory. Strange to believe but hey when was that first time you ate your favorite ice cream? or that time somebody helped you in your time of need. Don't believe me when then I bet you still remember that moment when that guy cut you off in traffic or when you got that injury way back when. The fact is we learn from our mistakes and try two prevent them from happening again. I have found to very interesting videos relating to memory and how it works in our minds and what we do to control our memory from short term to long term.



How Nutrition and Biology Influence Mood Behavior, Attention and Memory - Mark Hyman, MD
About: 
     Mark Hyman, MD speaks on The Ultra-mind Solution: An Accidental Psychiatrists Discovery of How Nutrition and Biology Influence Mood Behavior, Attention and Memory at the 16th annual A4M conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. More: In systems biology and medicine, everything is connected in the body; thus the state of ones health and well-being is highly dependent on the interplay of ones genes, lifestyle, and environment. We review the core physiological dysfunctions that underlie changes in mood, memory and attention including stress response, identify medical factors and markers that contribute to these issues, and propose how to best develop an effective treatment plan to address brain dysfunction.






Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory
About: 
     Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness.
Widely regarded as the world's most influential living psychologist, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel in Economics for his pioneering work in behavioral economics -- exploring the irrational ways we make decisions about risk.

Brain Lateralization

As popular to the belief of how which side of the brain is more dominate and what side of the brain has strengths in certain areas. There has to come a little more of an explanation of what side specializes in what popular psychology deems it does. Many broad generalizations of left-sided means your more logical and right-sided means your more creative. In fact, both of these logical and creative exist on both sides of the brain. Experimental data has shown very little evidence of your more logical since you use your left part of your brain. Although you can be dominate on one side of your brain it doesn't means your more creative or not. Brain lateralization is present when it comes to left- handed right-handed as well as left or right ear preference.

I have decided to shown you 2 videos and a link to a very cool show back in 2010.

The 1st video is an optical illusion test to see if you are right brain or left brain dominate.


The Right Brain vs Left Brain test - Optical Illusion





Virtual Reality Lateralized Attention Test (VRLAT)





The video below is a recently made virtual reality Lateralization attention test or VRLAT
for people who have damage to any part of the brain.





below is a link to youtube  on a show that is 45 minutes long, and it isnt boring it an exciting show that tests your brains limits.

Brain Games - Pay Attention