There are countless others. Becoming wealthy is neither easy nor hard. It isn’t more difficult than what you are doing now or more difficult than other goals that are worth aspiring toward. The difficult part is finding the gumption and motivation to change your life. That is what is really required of you: you must change your lifestyle and who you are in order to change your life for the better.

This is what most people fail to realize. Once you change the way you do things and get accustomed to doing them, things instantly become easier. The truth is that they were always easy — your mind was the one making everything seem so much more difficult. We are creatures of habit; it’s time to break those weighing us down and create the ones necessary for success and fortune.

Step one is breaking away from the average. You are what you do — so if you do average things, then you are, by definition, average. You must avoid falling into the trap of doing things simply because your friends are doing them. There is always time for play, but playtime isn’t all the time. Get your priorities straight and focus doing only those things that help further your cause.

Becoming a millionaire is more than just about getting the dough — it’s about molding yourself into the person that you want to be. If you are not happy with whom you are as a whole, if you have a list of faults that you wish to change about yourself, even if you were to win the lottery you would still be unhappy. Create a better you and money won’t be of issue.

There is nothing wrong with average if that is what you wish to be — but only if that is what you really wish to be. Each and every person has a different mindset, even if only slightly. We all want different things, different experiences and have different visions for our future. If you have yet to figure out what it is that you want out of life, don’t fret; very few have been able to do so.

Spend some time thinking about what it is that will make you happiest and then follow that dream. In our day and age, the chances are that your happiness has quite a bit to do with financial stability. Likewise, when dealing with others, come to understand that not everyone will think like you and not everyone will be as open-minded as you. Some will take pleasure in watching you fail.

Others will make it their job to watch your downfall. Many won’t give a shit and won’t pay you any attention. Don’t be distracted by their negativity or lack of support. You do you and eventually you will have what you desire. Haters gonna hate — that’s just the way the world works.

The life of a millionaire basically revolves around oneself; it is the epitome of human egocentricity. You must always focus on yourself first and foremost. I strongly believe that Generation-Y is filled with individuals who wish to help others and wish to make the world a better place for all. This is a great purpose to have in life, but you have to come to understand that the very best way of helping others is when you yourself are at your prime.

When you are your happiest and standing on the firmest ground, you will be capable of doing the most good. When your mind is at its sharpest and your skills are at their highest level, that is when you can make the greatest difference. This is not to say that you ought to ignore your fellow brothers and sisters with trivial tasks, but if you really want to make a big impact then you must be at the top of your game. Personally, I believe that the greatest way a person can make an impact is through a large piggybank.

There are of course many ways to help without having to whip out your checkbook — but kind words and Facebook shares won’t feed those starving children or help those being slaughtered. Big problems require big money to pacify. This is how I plan to create change in the world, but that is not to say that you cannot have your own way. Like I said before, we all must follow our own paths.

Happiness is very important to attaining success and wealth. You may think that once you get racks on racks that a smile will immediately appear on your face. Who am I kidding…it definitely will. But the truth is that those that make a fortune count their blessings way before they hit seven figures. You must surround yourself with positive, joyful thoughts and indulge in them.

You want to feel as if you are sitting on a cloud all-day and everyday. Negativity is what will kill all of your hopes and shatter your dreams. Negativity is like a disease or virus. It is contagious and it ruins your mood, distracts you, changes your mindset for the worse and makes you much less productive. There is always something to be proud of or happy about — focus on it and let that joy snowball until it engulfs you entirely.

Human beings are imperfect; we make mistakes. We cannot allow ourselves to be affected by our failures, but must keep running on course. Dwelling on our shortcomings creates negativity that will taint all that we do in a darker shade. No one is perfect and no one does amazing work the first time they attempt it. Practice is key — try and fail, try and fail and repeat.

Eventually you will get it right. It won’t be easy — nothing worth doing is. But with enough hard work, and most importantly perseverance, you are capable of doing anything. One of the most prominent differences between the average person and the millionaire is not that one is smarter than the other. It is not that one is more diligent than the other or that one is luckier than the other.

Much of the time it comes down to grit: who will last the longest? My friend was recently telling me about his business that he started three years ago. He told me that at first, he only had two clients in a certain city. There were a handful of other competitors and because all were offering similar products and services, it was very difficult to distinguish oneself.

At one point he considered leaving the city because after operating expenses he was only breaking even. Then, when he was just about ready to call it quits, his competition miraculously all gave up at once. He then found himself with not only his 2 clients, but with two clients form each of his 5 competitors that left the city. And what did he do to increase his business fivefold? Nothing. He just kept on going and waited for those weaker than he was to give up.

Millions are for the taking as long as we understand that it requires a certain type of lifestyle with certain habits and a certain mindset. The focus should never be on the money itself, but rather on you. If you improve your skills and habits, if you work hard and have a clear vision of what you wish to do, as long as you persevere, you will find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

You will fail and make mistakes — but sometimes the biggest mistakes reveal the greatest of opportunities. If it weren’t for a mistake I would not be in the process of taking over a company overseas as CEO. Mistakes are what you make of them. They can be failures or learning experiences — if not flipped into great successes. You have control of your life, you just haven’t realized it yet. Success only requires two things: action and inaction. You just need to figure out when to do which.

So anyways, I end school in two days, and those two days are early releases, so I’m pretty pumped for summer. In my family we do this thing where we dont go swimming until school ends, and we have this all out BBQ and we have a blast. So I cannot wait for that! We also have a summer pool party every year and invite all our friends, and have the best of times.

Another tradition is going to California, and last summer we didn’t get to go, because I was in Egypt, so this summer we plan on making the best of it! What I love about summer most, is the freedom.

I don’t really know why, but to me, summertime is a time where you can just be free, do what you want, have fun, and not worry about school or work for two to three months; Doesn’t that sound amazing!

Also, if you didn’t know, I help write the school newspaper at my school, and for our last issue, the features page (My Page) was all about summer, including what people are doing this, what activities are available, and so on. I came up with the idea, and I gotta say, it turned out pretty well, considering I thought of it while day dreaming about finishing school x) Hahaha.

Also, a thing I’ve been into is rearranging my room as the seasons change. In the winter i had a lot of warm and “winter-y” decorations and as spring came in I started making it more “flower-y” and now I’m making it more “summer-y”. LOL, sorry about all the “-y”s haha I’m not good at describing things… 

Anyways, I think my brain has finished coming up with summer-related topics I can talk about, so I’ll let this blog come to an end with a nice little quote: 

Summertime: “The days get longer, nights get shorter, hair gets lighter, water gets warmer, drinks get colder, and life gets better” ~Unknown

Here’s the reference foto:

Thanks for stopping by! God bless and prosper you always!

~ Selva Solimar ~

Glacier streams at Mt. Cook New Zealand.

Deep brain stimulation: a fix when the drugs don’t work

Artificial cardiac pacemakers are typically associated with controlling and resynchronising heartbeats by electrical stimulation of the heart muscle.

In a similar manner, DBS sends electrical impulses to specific parts of the brain that control discrete functions. This stimulation evokes control over the neural activity within these regions.

Prior to switching on the electrical stimulation, electrodes are surgically implanted within precise brain regions to control a specific function.

The neurosurgery is conducted under local anaesthetic to maintain consciousness in the patient. This ensures that the electrode does not damage critical brain regions.

The brain itself has no pain receptors so does not require anaesthetic.

…Drug therapy for Parkinson’s disease involves the use of levodopa (L-DOPA), a form of dopamine that can cross the blood brain barrier and then be synthesised into dopamine.

The administration of L-DOPA temporarily reduces the motor symptoms by increasing dopamine concentrations in the brain. However, side effects of this treatment include nausea and disordered movement.

DBS has been shown to provide relief from the motoric symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and essential tremors.

For the treatment of Parkinson’s disease electrodes are implanted into regions of the basal ganglia – the subthalamic nucleus or globus pallidus, to restore control of movement.

I practically grew up on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Suddenly, Last Summer. So I have a built in anxiety about anyone messing around with the brain. While some level of wariness is reasonable when considering brain altering treatment, modern medicine seems to be leaving the nightmarish Nurse Ratcheds behind.

I’m posting this in it’s entirety so you’ll have the background, What’s Next For Kaitlyn Hunt, The Teen Charged With A Felony For Same-Sex Relationship With Classmate.

On Friday night, 18-year-old Kaitlyn Hunt and her family went public with their story: Kaitlyn was charged with a felony stemming from a relationship she had with a 15-year-old girl at her high school. The response in the 48-hours that followed, Kaitlyn’s father Steven Hunt told ThinkProgress in an interview, was “extraordinary.”

Already, nearly 40,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Assistant State Attorney, Brian Workman, to drop the case. On Facebook, more than 13,000 people have joined a group — Free Kate — in support of the family.

Last week, her father said, Workman offered Kaitlyn a plea bargain. She could plead guilty to child abuse, a felony, and spend two years under house arrest. The judge would determine if she would have to register as a sex offender. They were given a deadline of May 24th to accept the offer or face trial.

Kaitlyn’s father suggests his daughters arrest — and the substantial sentence sought by the prosecutor — are motivated by anti-gay bias. He told ThinkProgress that the younger girl’s parents have told teachers at the high school that “their daughter will NOT be gay.”

So what’s next for Kaitlyn?

The family is hoping that public pressure will improve the offer from the State Attorney. Her father said Kaitlyn would be willing to plead to a misdemeanor, but not a felony. If the position of the State Attorney does not change, Kaitlyn and her family are prepared to go to trial.

The family’s attorney, Julia Graves, has assembled a table of experienced defense lawyers that will convene next week to discuss Kaitlyn’s legal options. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn is scheduled to appear in court again on June 20. At that time, if a plea agreement is not reached, the judge could set a date for trial.

We dangerously close to returning to the worse of American historical traditions, with attitudes that resemble those of those Salem witch-hunters. Two teens having a relationships. Oh the horror. That has never happened before, someone must be punished. Criminal laws are supposed to be about protecting victims from abusive and violent behavior, negligence by individuals and corporations, not enforcing the twisted 17th century moral sensibilities of local inquisitors.

A new health care innovation (from the USA)!

Optiberry™ is a standardized, multiple berry anthocyanin extract formulated and tested for optimum safety, bioavailability, antioxidant and anti-angiogenic activity.

Optiberry™ contains a unique, proprietary blend of wild blueberry, strawberry, cranberry, wild bilberry, elderberry and raspberry extracts (patent-pending), which are known for their health-promoting properties due to their high content of anthocyanins.

Benefits:

• Improve healthy BRAIN FUNCTION and MENTAL CLARITY
• Improve healthy VISION
• Improve CARDIOVASCULAR health
• Improve healthy SKIN
• Improve URINARY TRACT health
• Improve healthy BLOOD SUGAR levels
• Helps prevent the effects of PREMATURE AGING

An extraction from:

1. Wild Blueberry
2. Wild Bilberry
3. Cranberry
4. Elderberry
5. Raspberry Seed
6. Strawberry

Properties of Optiberry:

1. Antioxidant activity
2. Cardiovascular protection
3. Blood sugar support
4. Brains Function & Mental Clarity
5. Anti aging properties
6. Urinary tract health
7. Healthy vision
8. Skin health

All we really perceive is metaphor. Every state of consciousness is altered or in other words, we are always and all the time hypnotized. What was the greatest devil’s achievement? The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. The same is with science, any religion or our beliefs about how this blue-green marble spins around. Red line is claiming that ‘absolute’ exists. It exists in past, as it exists in future, but yet, the only constant is change. What should I swallow? The red or the blue pill? As human, I’ll choose that road, that doesn’t exists. Yet. But the marvelous thing is if it is not yet in your frame of perception, it can become your centre. Not by faith. Not by destiny. But because of our magical brains and its creation.  Some say that we always have and use free-will to choose something, but I’m pretty sure, that this concept is at least overestimated.

How many of you are prepared to accept the truth, that you’re not always behind the wheel of your own life? How many of you believe that you choose deliberately a product, let’s say a toothpaste, from shelf in a store? I guess you’re pretty sure at this moment, that this question is pretty stupid. Well, actually is a milestone of different thinking about how we perceive this world. I can even prove this.

1. First step: make a list of products that you buy because your mom or dad was buying it when you were a child.

2. Second step: make a list of products you buy because some friend recommended it.

3. Third step: make a list of products you buy because commercial is good.

4. Fourth step: make a list of products that you bought for the first time and you never heard for them before.

5. Fifth step: from the list pick data and examine, how many times you have bought completely deliberately any of product.

What you see as a result is only information or data. It shouldn’t scare you or make you think you’ve been manipulated. If you posses such a belief, get rid of it asap! We are not born guilty or bad. We are all born with a mission! 

What you see is what you get. And then… Words. Words makes it big, tasty, colorful, deep, sensitive, emotional, straight, bolded, organized, bestvalued… You become a painter, photographer or movie maker in your mind and what you do is construct a “mental picture”, with all the feelings you can attach to any human being. So, at the bottom line, all we are doing is connecting mental pictures, experiences and emotions attached to them. And that is what we call “A STORY”.

Tell me something, on what basis you have “chosen” your love? Can u feel it?

5-a-side football for the blind – Photo Credit: Marcello Casal Jr/ABr

There are some people that can respond to visual stimuli even though they are blind. They can’t consciously see, yet they can unconsciously avoid obstacles. This phenomenon is called blindsight. The people who have it have had lesions to their primary visual cortex, rendering them blind. However, even though they can’t see, they can guess what it’s in front of them at a much higher accuracy than chance.

Lab Monkeys

This phenomenon was first observed in monkeys. Even though they were missing their primary visual cortex their pupils dilated and their eyes blinked when there were threats to their eyes. They could not consciously see the threat, but their body gave an automated response. One particular monkey was also able to distinguish objects and shapes and colours.

“In the 8 years between the operation and her death in 1973 this monkey slowly recovered the use of her eyes, emerging from virtual sightlessness to a state of visual competence where she was able to move deftly through a room full of obstacles and could reach out and catch a passing fly” (Humphrey, 1974).

Causes

Even though the main pathway of visual signals is through the primary cortex, the eye does send visual information to other parts of the brain.

Basically, it is hypothesised that mammals have two ‘brain systems’. The first is quite primitive and similar to that of fish or reptiles. The second is much more complex and exclusive to mammals. It is this second system that gives us consciousness. In patients that have blindsight, the second system is disrupted, but the first one is still intact. Which is why they can still react to visual stimuli even though they can’t consciously see. It is the first system that guides them past objects.

Avoiding obstacles you can’t see

TN was a famous case study. His visual cortex had been damaged by two strokes. Researchers had him walk down a corridor filled with obstacles but did not tell him that the obstacles were there. The man easily avoided the obstacles and at some point even squeezed in between a trash can and the wall. When asked about it afterwards he said he was not even aware that the obstacles were there. In his mind, all he did was walk down an empty corridor. Because it was his non-conscious brain guiding him, he was simply not aware of it. You can see him in the video below:

TN was also able to recognise facial expressions. Brain scans showed increased amygdala activity when he was presented with faces with various emotions.

Surprisingly, while some people with blindsight can recognise emotions, they can’t recognise the person or the gender of the person.

Another patient, in a recent study, was able to grasp different sized objects in front of her, adjusting her grip every time. However, when asked, she was not aware of how big the objects were.

Thinking you can see

Blindsight could also be thought of as the opposite of Anton-Babinski syndrome. Patients who have it are blind, but think they can see. No matter how much proof there is that they can’t see, they will still adamantly affirm that they can. It can be caused by a stroke, like blindsight. We are not certain why patients cannot admit that they can’t see. An hypothesis is that the link between the speech-areas of the brain and the, damaged, visual cortex  is broken. The visual information is received but cannot be interpreted by the brain, so it makes it up.

-Francesco

More Neurology from Pie Cubed

• Mapping the Brain
• How fast do you think – The two systems that define us

References

• Humphrey, N. (1974). Vision in a monkey without striate cortex: A case study. Perception
• Whitwell RL, Striemer CL, Nicolle DA, Goodale MA. (2011). “Grasping the non-conscious: preserved grip scaling to unseen objects for immediate but not delayed grasping following a unilateral lesion to primary visual cortex.”. Vision Res. 51 (8): 908–24. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2011.02.005. PMID 21324336
• Blind man ‘sees’ his way past obstacles – New Scientist
• Blindsight: Seeing without knowing it – Scientific American
• Prigatano, George P.; Schacter, Daniel L (1991). Awareness of deficit after brain injury: clinical and theoretical issues
• Blindsight – Scholarpedia

along my landscaped paths. No more do trees
stand tall and still and issue their decrees
of strength. I cannot count on daffodils
to decorate around the edges, frills

that lace delight with nature’s bounty store.
I spiral down, feel less, want more and more,
and through this endless whirling spiral hall
I hurtle. Where’s the end? How far the fall?

So here I am trying to explain to aura how the fact that I forget and then still remember I have forgotten something works in the same way a black hole does.

Well I’m gonna give it a shot and ask if you understand.

So I imagined that I forget stuff because I have a sort of black holes in my mind. Places where the information I just assembled (thoughts) gets sucked in to the mind black holes (from now on I am gonna mention them as MBH) just as matter (which can be quantified as information in Physics) is sucked into a real black hole (RBH).

So if I think about something and then forget about it I usually still remember that I did forget what I thought. That can be described as Hawkins radiation that is emanated by a RBH when it sucks is the matter. A part of the matter comes back in the form of the Hawkins radiation. Now if we were to try and reassemble the matter from the Hawkins radiation (which is still information and information is matter) we would not be able to reconstruct the matter as it first went in the black hole due to the fact that it is too scrambled and a lot of it is missing. In order to understand how information and matter is related let’s take a simple example. Fill up a sink with water, take some ink and start dripping it into the water (let’s say 3 times). Let it stay like that for about 15 minutes and then take another look. You will see that the ink has dissolved into the water and the entire water is now blue. There aren’t any clues that would say you dropped 3 drops of ink and not 4 or 5 or 10. But, down at the molecular level the information is still there. If we would have been able to record every movement of every particle in the water we would be able to revert back this tape and see that 3 drops of ink actually landed in the water.

Does that make any sense?

Dr. Ducke/Flickr

Dorian Rolston reveals the delicate balance of the brain’s chemistry and how it can go askew overnight after using hallucinogens. The article describes people whose perceptual senses went permanently awry in a somewhat subtle but rather maddening way:

“H.P.P.D. does not generate hallucinations, technically speaking. Sufferers can appreciate that their perceptual aberrations are unreal—that their surroundings only appear blurred by afterimages (palinopsia) and trails (akinetopsia); shimmered by sparkles and flashed by bright bolts of light; interrupted by transparent blobs of color floating around; electrified by visual snow; magnified or shrunk by “Alice-in-Wonderland” symptoms; adorned by halos around objects, around people’s heads. The pseudo-hallucinations are ultimately unconvincing, if deeply unsettling.”

As illustrated by the self-reported experience of a college student the day after he took a mind-altering drug before a party:

“When he shifted his gaze from a page he was reading, a ghostly afterimage of the text materialized in the air, hanging legibly for a few moments. When he turned a page, a long cascading series of replicas trailed behind, like a stroboscopic photograph.”

Rolston summarizes the effects of what is known in psychiatry as hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (H.P.P.D):

“A chronic and debilitating condition, H.P.P.D. warps the perceptual faculties: the external senses are marred by a constellation of mostly visual distortions, while the internal ones are paralyzed by a concoction of dissociative symptoms, panic attacks, and depression. The doors of perception are not so much cleansed, as Aldous Huxley famously found after his first experience on mescaline, as they are cracked open and left askew.”

More than just a cautionary tale against using hallucinogens, the story is a good illustration of how subtle and vulnerable the brain chemistry is. This is particularly true for children and adolescents, whose brains are in active process of growing and shaping themselves, and establishing the balance between the different cognitive systems.

So dim, the eyes; fogged, stained windows
Face down in moors and slough
Wire-sprout snakes emanate – snape
From his skull bones
When he spake, harsh discordant sounds
Abraded the ears
Until connected with others infected
With veins of wires

Beautiful man – once beautiful man
When once of Dandelion
Now skin of grey and dark bumped wrists
Serve as great Orion
Fair game – all; ’twas even of then
Ripe for this disease
Once blood-filled veins now flow silicone alone
This man is extinct

A heavy  bout of drinking affects nearly every system of the body for up to 24 hours . A look at the body’s reaction to a large dose of alcohol:

Throat and mouth feel dry and scratchy because of dehydration.

Brain’s blood vessels dilate causing a throbbing headache. Dehydration can cause the brain to pull from it’s lining, intensifying the pain.

Pituitary gland releases impromper amounts of several hormones, distrupting the brain’s circadian rhythm ( which makes sleep feel less restful) and interfering with normal kidney function.

Central nervous system becomes chemically overexciled, causing sweating, tremors and sensitivity to light, sound and touch.

Muscles become weak from dehydration and low blood sugar levels.

Pancreas increases production of digestive chemicals, causing pain, nausea, and vomiting.

Heart can become inflamed, start beating with an abnormal rhythm, or even stop beating.

Liver builds up fatly and lactic acids, impairing the body’s ability to metabolize sugar. The resulting low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) can cause weakness and mood disturbances.

Kidneys fail to reabsorb water, causing increased urination and dehydration.

Stomach lining becomes inflamed, delaying digest; on excess gastric acid  contributes to nausea.

.. Zen painting has a lot of randomness and spontaneity to it. These forms are really preserved across different scales, and the behavior of growing processes in the brain (the branching of neurons) is very similar in the way a branch grows or a lightning bolt comes. They take the path of least resistance. In the case of a lightning bolt, there is all sorts of temperature fluctuations and molecular movements. And the electricity will want to come down and hit the earth in the easiest way possible. It is going to at every point find the path of least resistance. And this is happening on the molecular level too.

-Greg Dunn in an interview with the Huffington Post

A while back, I stumbled onto these incredibly beautiful pieces by neuroscientist, Greg Dunn, whose work recreates the random intricacy of neural networks on gold leaf scrolls. But you’re definitely going to want to see for yourself.

Glial Flare (2012) by Greg Dunn

Hippocampus II (2010) by Greg Dunn

1. Use the prompt in the way it’s intended (starting a sentence, the title of the piece, theme, etc)

2. You may write in any format you see fit (fiction, non-fiction, poem, song, script, etc.)

3. Post your piece of writing in the comments section of the website to be considered for the ‘Best Of’ section.

People are often asked about what three items they would have with them if they were to be lost on a deserted island, but no one asks how they got there, or didn’t lose those three items along the way.

Your prompt for today:

How did you end up on the deserted island in the first place, and how did you keep those three items safe while getting there? Give us the story.

the BIG question!

the Cine scan…

the diagnostic answer!

The Chiari Malformation.

the indisputable facts

The side effects:

• headaches
• back of head pain
• neck pain
• shoulder pain
• sleeping problems due to pain
• numbness in lower Right Leg
• tingling in hands and feet
• Back pain
• Exhaustion
• Slurred Speech
• Dizziness
• Hearing Loss
• Face drrops on one side
• Heavy Arms
• Weakness in legs
• Wieght gain

The issue:

Will neuro surgery help – and it is a fairly big procedure.

it seems this cine scan, monitors your HEART while doing an MRI.

The heart beat corresponds directly in som every specific way, to the NORMAL flow of CSF at any given time.

So by monitoing output and travel of spinal fluid, they can say HOW OBSTRUCTED the flow of spinal fluid is by the CHIARI MALFORMATION.

yes it may seem a tad irrelevant, but my little lession – or supposed arachnoid cyst is also obviously affecting flow…but they do NOT want to touch that.

Why not?

i have NO IDEA!

the next step:

the appointment is tomorrow.

Am Bringing my Bach CD for the MRI scanner.

decision?

i dont expect to see the neurosurgeon tomorrow.

but to be honest, I don’t know.

but as he put it…

“we do the dynamic scan and then we talk”.

so do i need brain surgery??? I dunno!!!

h

no grace or blessing is truly ours

till we are aware

that God has blessed

someone else with it through us.”

- Phillips Brooks - 

Psalm 51:16-18

New International Version (NIV)

A drawing by Nadia, an autistic girl, when she was only 5 years of age.

Exceptional talents have been reported in a minority of developmentally delayed institutionalized patients. Arguably the incidence may be as high as 10 percent in some series of autistic individuals (Miller, 1999). Recent postmortem studies indicate the presence of a disturbance in the modular elements of the cerebral cortex (so-called minicolumns) of autistic individuals (see my previous blog at http://corticalchauvinism.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/the-cerebral-cortex-and-autism/). Minicolumns appear to be smaller and more numerous in the brains of autistic individuals. Furthermore the surrounding cells that serve to insulate transmission of signals along minicolumns is abnormal. This means that signals are able to cross over to adjacent minicolumns in a cascading fashion.

According to Gustafsson smaller minicolumns predispose autistic patients to a bias in their information processing capacity, favoring the amplification of incoming signals and their discrimination from background noise (Gustafsson, 1997). Variations in the organization of minicolumns and corresponding information processing may therefore underlie some of the outstanding abilities observed in certain autistic individuals.

Several years ago I had the opportunity to examine the brains of 3 distinguished neuroscientists along with a number of age sex-matched neurotypicals from an established brain collection. We used the same computer methods that had been reported in the study of autistic individuals.

The figure illustrates how a computer program is able to identify minicolumns in the cerebral cortex that would otherwise be difficult to discern with the human eye.

The focus of our research was the implementation of a new paradigm in the study of intellectual achievements: variations in the shape and organization of minicolumns. Although none of the reported scientists manifested autistic-like symptomatology, their minicolumnar profiles offered similarities to those previously reported in autism. In effect, the minicolumnar width in our neuroscientists were markedly reduced as compared to the group of controls.

Both comparison and subject cases were derived from the Yakovlev–Haleem collection of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). Subjects included scientists who died at 58, 84, and 89 years of age. Comparison participants consisted of six subjects aged 44, 50, 71, 72, 86, and 98 years. Although personal history and interviews with those who knew these scientists emphasize their wide range of knowledge (polymaths) and divergent thinking, no claim is presently made regarding their intelligence or creativity. Pathological examination was negative with the exception of degenerative changes consistent with aging in the brains of our oldest scientist and comparison participants. Just as in autistic individuals, computerized image analysis showed significant reductions of minicolumnar width in all areas of the brain examined (Casanova et al., 2002).

Computer modeling suggests the adaptive nature ingrained in having smaller minicolumns. According to these studies, narrower columns favor discrimination. In other words, the information processing system that weighs signal and noise has been tweaked in favor of the signal (Gustafsson, 1997). Focused attention and obsessive preoccupation may lead to rote practice and development of specific talents typically related to superior memory or speed of processing. A minicolumnar phenotype that provides for discrimination and/or focused attention may help explain the savant abilities observed in the intellectually gifted.

The medical literature draws many suggestive links between the intellectually gifted and the mentally marginalized individual. It has been claimed, but not proven, that savant skills are seen in approximately one of every 10 people with autism. Of the known savants with developmental disorders, half have autism. Unsurprisingly, the ‘weak central coherence’ characteristic of autistic perception and cognition allows for unusual and unexpected associations. The resultant ability to manipulate highly organized domain-specific data offers parallels to field independent and divergent thinking that characterizes the originality of autistic thinking and that of the savant. It is this close juxtaposition of signs and symptoms that Andreasen has labeled as ‘living on the edge of chaos’ (2005, p. 31). In this regard we may fittingly conclude that, ‘One of the most important lessons to be learned from the genetic study of many diseases in recent years has been that the paradoxically high frequency of certain conditions is explained by the fact that the important advantages conferred on those who carry the predisposition to these conditions may outweigh the obvious dramatic disadvantages’ (Geschwind as quoted by West, 1997, p. 20).[As an side, I am tempted to disclose that one of the subjects within our study was Norman Geschwind himself]

References

Andreasen NC. The Creating Brain. NewYork: Dana, 2005.

Casanova MF, Buxhoeveden D, Switala A, Roy E. Minicolumnar pathology in autism. Neurology, 58:428-432, 2002.

Casanova MF, Switala AE, Trippe J, Fitzgerald M. Comparative minicolumnar morphometry of three distinguished scientists. Autism 11(6): 557-569, 2007.

Casanova MF, Trippe J. Radial cytoarchitecture and patterns of cortical connectivity in autism. Proceedings of the Royal Society 364: 1433-1436, 2009. Another useful article of interest in regards to splinter and savant skills and their putative explanation through the organization of the cerebral cortex.

Gustafson L. Inadequate Cortical Feature Maps: A Neural Circuit Theory of Autism, Biological Psychiatry 42: 1138–47, 1997.

Miller LK. The Savant Syndrome: Intellectual Impairment and Exceptional Skill’, Psychological Bulletin 125: 31–46, 1999.

Temple Grandin’s perspective on my article: http://autismdigest.com/brain-cortex-structure-similar-in-brilliant-scientists-and-autism/

West TG. In the Mind’s Eye. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.

Nice discussions on the savant syndrome in autism appear in the following 2 books:

Darold A. Treddert. Islands of Genius: the Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired, and Sudden Savant. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2011.

Lynn Waterhouse. Rethinking Autism: Variation and Complexity. Academic Press, 2012.

While seemingly innocent, this loss of mental focus can potentially have a detrimental impact on our professional, social, and personal well-being.

It happens to most of us, but is it inevitable? 

Neuroscientists are increasingly showing that there’s actually a lot that can be done.  It turns that the brain needs exercise in much the same way our muscles do, and the right mental workouts can significantly improve our basic cognitive functions.  Thinking is essentially a process of making neural connections in the brain.  To a certain extent, our ability to excel in making the neural connections that drive intelligence is inherited.  However, because these connections are made through effort and practice, scientists believe that intelligence can expand and fluctuate according to mental effort.

Now, a new San Francisco Web-based company has taken it a step further and developed the first “brain training program” designed to actually help people improve and regain their mental sharpness.  Called Lumosity, it was designed by some of the leading experts in neuroscience and cognitive psychology from Stanford University.

Lumosity, is far more than an online place to exercise your mental skills.  That’s because they have integrated these exercises into a Web-based program that allows you to systematically improve your memory and attention skills.  The program keeps track of your progress and provides detailed feedback on your performance and improvement.  Most importantly, it constantly modifies and enhances the games you play to build on the strengths you are developing–much like an effective exercise routine requires you to increase resistance and vary your muscle use.

Does it work?

Apparently it does. In randomized, controlled clinical trials, Lumosity was shown to significantly improve basic cognitive functions. One study showed students improved their scores on math tests by 34 percent after using Lumosity for six weeks, significantly greater gains than those made by other students in the same class, who were not training with the Lumosity program.

The company says its users have reported clearer and quicker thinking, improved memory for names, numbers, directions, increased alertness and awareness, elevated mood, and better concentration at work or while driving.

While many of the games at Lumosity are free, a modest subscription fee is required to use the full program over the long term.

However, Lumosity is currently offering a free trial of their program to new users so that you can see how well it works before you decide to subscribe.  The trial is completely free (no credit card required) and the company believes the results will speak for themselves.

Source : http://www.howlifeworks.com

 I. THE PROLOGUE

Patting good-bye, doubtless they told the lad
He’d always show the Hun a brave man’s face;
Father would sooner him dead than in disgrace, -
Was proud to see him going, aye, and glad.
Perhaps his mother whimpered how she’d fret
Until he got a nice safe wound to nurse.
Sisters would wish girls too could shoot, charge, curse…
Brothers – would send his favourite cigarette.
Each week, month after month, they wrote the same,
Thinking him sheltered in some Y.M. Hut,
Because he said so, writing on his butt
Where once an hour a bullet missed its aim
And misses teased the hunger of his brain.
His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand
Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand
From the best sand-bags after years of rain.
But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock,
Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld
For torture of lying machinally shelled,
At the pleasure of this world’s Powers who’d run amok.

He’d seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol.
Their people never knew. Yet they were vile.
‘Death sooner than dishonour, that’s the style!’
So Father said.

                                   II. THE ACTION

                              One dawn, our wire patrol
Carried him. This time, Death had not missed.
We could do nothing but wipe his bleeding cough.
Could it be accident? – Rifles go off…
Not sniped? No. (Later they found the English ball.)

                                   III. THE POEM

It was the reasoned crisis of his soul
Against more days of inescapable thrall,
Against infrangibly wired and blind trench wall
Curtained with fire, roofed in with creeping fire,
Slow grazing fire, that would not burn him whole
But kept him for death’s promises and scoff,
And life’s half-promising, and both their riling.

                                   IV. THE EPILOGUE

With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed,
And truthfully wrote the Mother, ‘Tim died smiling’.

What is a stroke?

A stroke is when a clogged or burst artery interrupts blood flow to the brain. This interruption of blood flow deprives the brain of needed oxygen and causes the affected brain cells to die. When brain cells die, function of the body parts they control is impaired or lost.

A stroke can cause paralysis or muscle weakness, loss of feeling, speech and language problems, memory and reasoning problems, swallowing difficulties, problems of vision and visual perception, coma, and even death.

The National Stroke Association is another great resource.  This is from their web-site…

Use FAST to remember the warning signs:

 NOTE THE TIME WHEN ANY SYMPTOMS FIRST APPEAR. If given within three hours of the first symptom, there is an FDA-approved clot-buster medication that may reduce long-term disability for the most common type of stroke. There are also two other types of stroke treatment available that might help reduce the effects of stroke. Read more about stroke treatment.

Strokes are serious and deserve prompt medical attention.  My grandfather had many strokes during his latter years of life.  Each one took away a piece of him.  Ultimately he died in a nursing home.  Recently, a high school friend of mine posted a story on Facebook about a friend of hers our age (early 30s) who had a stroke in an airport.  She was traveling alone with her children.  She thought it was a migraine.  It was a stroke.  She is still in recovery. 

Please take the time to educate yourself about strokes, empathize with those who lives are touched directly or indirectly by a stroke, and celebrate the gift of a brain that works.  God gives us one brain.  Let us be thankful, wise, and healthy.