Interesting Mind Dysfunctions

SPEECH

Aphasias Discorders of speech production and understanding. Severe aphasia is when the LH frontal lobe in the motor cortex region is damaged, because it’s a crucial area for control of motor actions. The flow of information goes from the primary visual area > Wernicke’s area > Broca’s area.

i. Broca’s Aphasia Speech lacks gramattical structure and functional words such as “and”, “in”, “here”. Almost entirely concrete nouns and verbs. Eg. ‘pot … stand… fall down… table… light … open’. Damage limited to Broca’s area is relatively mild unless it extends to the neo-cortex to include sub-cortical structures which coordinate speech. Verbs are harder to say because they’re stored in the same cortical area as the area of controlling actions.

ii. Wernicke’s Aphasia Damage centres on the Temporal Lob area and like Broca’s aphasia the damage is mild unless it enters neighbouring areas. Speak fluently in well-formed and properly intoned sentences with proper linguistic conventionsl ike body language and turn-taking in conversation, but what they say lacks meaning and contains wrong/nonsense words. Eg. ‘Well this is… mother is away here working her work out a here to get her better, but when she’s looking, the two boys looking in the other part. One their small tile into her time here. She’s working another time because she’s getting to. So two boys work together and one is sneaking around here, making his work”. Have lost comprehension, understanding neither what the say nor hear.

iii. Anomic Aphasia Follows damage to frontal regions involved in the control of action. Damage to temporal lobe often results in anomia of nouns, so naming objects seems next to the region that recognises them, and inability to name colours follow damage to the posterior left temporal lobe near the occipital lobe which specialises in perception of colorus.  Has reasonable grammatical sentences but has difficult in finding words, hesitating and using indefinite nouns such as ‘thing’ and lose names for categories like fruits, animals and colours. Eg. ‘This is a boy and that’sa boy and that’s a thing. And this is going ot pretty soon. This is… a place that is mostly in’. It’s worse when naming out of usual context. So they might not say ’pen’ on its own but when shown a pad they’ll say ‘I don’t know what that is but you write on it with a pen’, and they might not know ‘pad’ but shown a pen they might say ‘you write on a pad with that thing’.

Wernicke’s aphasia The person cannot translate between thought and language. They can talk because Broca’s area still works, but what they say is meaningless. On the other hand, damage to Broca’s area causes speech loss, but Wernicke’s area of understanding remains.

Movement

Movement can be fully-automated (eg. heart pumping), semi-automated (eg. breathing), or manual (eg. writing letters).

Basal Ganglia One theory is that the BG is responsible for the force, direction, extent and duration of movement. Dysfunction in calculating the force needed to make a movement can result in failure to initialise (Parkinsonism), excessive initiation or overcompensation (showing grotesque facial agitation).

Primary Motor Cortex The highest motor sensor. Damage results in loss of skilled and delicate movements, because the pyramidal fibres controlling the hands originate in the motor cortex. But learning and memory of motor sequences are essentially unaffected by motor cortex damage, though a bit more clumsy.

Spinal Chord Covers reflexes like knee jerks, maintains muscle tone and posture, upright walking.

Hypothalamus If this is damaged, a mouse’s heart rate will no longer shoot up when it hears a sound of impending electric shock. But it still won’t press the lever that induces the shock. The lesion abolishes one reaction of learnt fear but not the other. If the shock then occurs without the sound, it goes back to high blood pulse.

Limbic System The ‘emotional brain’. Creates the experience and expression of emotions. Originally evolved to evaluate smells. Major elements include the thalamus, cerebral cortex, amygdala, hypothalamus, olfactory bulb and hippocampus.

 

*Emotions are involuntary

Sensory information travels first to the thalamus > cortext > amygdala. But there’s also a direct route from the thamalus > amygdala. The amygdala (which is part of the lymbic or ‘emotional resopnse’ system) responds emotionally to objects before the cortext has even experienced or recognised them, causing reactions like Figh or Flight Response (heart rate and blood pressure increase. Large muscled prepare for quick attention. Adrenaline). The thalamus

* Fact Of The Left-Hemisphere (LH) & Right-Hemisphere (RH)

Neo-cortext consciously thinks through a turn of events or conversation. The RH is specialised for facial processing. Your judgment is thus derived more from the left side of an image than its right.

LH is connected with more positive emotions. With RH is damaged, the person is prone to manic cheerfulness. RH is more prone to negative emotions. With LH damage, the person tends to develop depression. This is accentuating the true nature of either hemisphere.

LH is active for speech and comprehension.

RH damage results in repetitions of in speech, emotionless monotone speech, inability to understand less obvious features of language..

BEHAVIOURAL DYSYFUNCTION

LH/RH RH plays main role in perceiving others’ emotion. LH plays main role in interpreting logic. Damage to LH allows even greater perception of others’ emotions, even though they don’t understand what’s being said.

Ideomotor Apraxia Damage to the left parietal obe causes difficulty in making movements and gestures. It’s less severe when a tangible object’s present and the person’s required to use it, and most severe for symbolic gestures like greeting and saluting, and even more so when outside of the normal social context. So they’re not able to do voluntary movements that are unprompted by the environment.

MEMORY DYSFUNCTION

Amnesia From damage to the rhinal cortex in both hemispheres. Retrograde amnesia fogets everything after the accident. Amnesics view an abstract image and form a meaning of it. Later on, they’ll form the same way which means they remember “how to do it”, but deny having ever seen the picture before. Amnesics learn new how-to/procedural skills like typing as good as regular people. Seems the rhenal cortex processes memory for new episodes of experience but not memory for new know-how procedures.

Alzheimer’s Cell death primarily in rhinal cortex, but also temporal and parietal degeneration. Life exhibits symptoms of amnesic syndrome and other memory problems.

VISUAL DYSFUNCTION

Achromatopsis V4 is damaged so vision becomes monochrome. All memory and imagining of colour is lost as well, as colour no longer exists as a category of experience. If only one hemisphere suffers damage (unilateral damage), half the world appears in colour and half in monochrome.

Motion Blindness Damage to V5 causes seeing moving objects as a series of sill photos with discreet jumps (Like being high on ganja).

Object Agnosia Several types, eg. form agnosia, where the person sees colour, depth and contour but perceives only parts (eg. only top quarter and lower quarter of a bottle), not whole objects.

Simultagnosia Objects are perceived and recognised only one at a time. 

The Weirdest, Unscientific & Immoral Teachings of Today’s Major Religions

Christianity & Judaism

Lot, Abraham and the gang-rape of ‘their’ women

Lot wanted to hand over his two virgin daughters to be raped by a mob in place of the two male angels the mob asked to rape instead. Lot and his family left the city, his wife turning into a pillar of salt for looking at the city on exit, even though god told her not to and knew in advance that this would happen anyway. On the mountain after leaving Sodom & Gemmorah, Lot got drunk by his daughters and his two daughters then took turns at having sex with him.  He impregnated both daughters (Gen 19:31-36).  This is echoed in Chapter 19 of the book of Judges: An unarmed Levite (priest) travels with his concubine Gibeah. They spent the night at a man’s house. Men come to the door, demanding the old man hand over the male guest ‘so that we may know him’. In almost identical words of Lot, ‘Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you; but unto this man do not so vile a thing’ (Judges 19:23-4).

‘Huble ye them’ is chilling. Enjoy yourselves humiliating and raping my daughter and the concubine. So they’re handed over to the mob, who gang rape the women all night. ‘They knew her and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go. Then came  the woman in dawning of the day, and fell at the door of the man’s house where the lord was, till it was light’ (Judges 19:25-6). ‘Up, and let us be going’. But she was dead. So he cut her into 12 pieces and sent her parts around Israel (19:29). Then everyone got mad and 60,000 men were killed in the tribe of Benjamin. Abraham was Lot’s uncle.

Abraham lends his wife to numerous men

Abraham went to Egypt in famine. Gave his wife to Pharoah, but didn’t mention they were married. Abraham becomes rich, god disapproves and sends plagues on Phaorh and his house. Pharoah wants to know why he wasn’t told she wasn’t Abraham’s wife rather than sister? He hands her back and they’re kicked out of Egypt (Gen 12:18). They pull the same stunt again, with Abimelech the King of Gerar. He’s induced to marry Sarah just as Pharoah did for thinking she was Abraham’s sister (Genesis 20:2-5). He too expressed indignation, in almost identical terms to Pharoah’s.

Jewish intolerance of their neighbours

Do Jews view Palestinians like Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites & Jebusites? “Ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves. For though shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealosu, is a jealous God. Lest though make a covenant wit hthe inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and though eat of his sacrifice; and though take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. Though shalt make thee no molten gods (exodus 24:13-17)

A proper circumsion involves a rabbi using sucking off the foreskin with his mouth

Several babies in New York were infected with viruses and died as a result.

Islam

Do Christians & Jews go to heaven?

One verse says Christians and Jews who believe in god and do good works go to heaven. Another verse says Christians and Jews go to eternal hell for the worst crime of not believing. Muslims still haven’t figured this contradiction out, insisting it’s no contradiction and interpreting it in various contradictory ways.

What does the Quran say the trinity is made up of?

Father, Mother and Son.

The Quran says Jews worship Ezra as the Son of God?

Yes. It says the Christians worship Jesus as a god and the Jews worship Ezra as a god. Even more disastrous is that this is mentioned as a juxtaposition using identical grammar, so it can’t be said it’s out of conext. Some apologists say this refers only to a small heretical band of Jews, but the ayat says “the Jews” which refers to all. 

The moon split in two and came back together 1,400 years ago?

Yes. NASA’s aware of this fact and involved in a big conspiracy to cover it up.

Sperm forms into a fetus? With no ovary?

No mention of the ovary in embrylogy. The sperm turns into a fetus, even though it dies inside the ovum.

Divide the inheritence, but the maths don’t add up?

The maths don’t work.

Use the hadiths, but quran forgot to mention them?

No mention of hadiths as a source of learning in quran. No mention of sunnah. Ambiguously says to “follow the prophet”, which is ambiguous for a book that calls itself ‘clear’.

Pay zakat, but quran forgot how much to pay?

No reference at all on how much to pay. Mentions the maths of inheritence and the 20% khums from the war spoils, so no reason maths was forgotten here.

Widows should re-marry because it’s unnatural to remain single, except for Mohammed’s wives?

The wives of the prophet are mothers of the believers. Kind of strange that they’re forced to remain widows when other women are required to re-marry.

Mohammed will divorce you for better wives if you don’t apologise?

He’s perfect, so you can’t disagree with him. If you don’t apologise Allah will swap you for better wives.

 

Buddhism

Buddha said meditators are able to fly through the air and to walk through walls. Most Buddhist monks and laypeople actually believe this too.

Buddha said thoughts and emotions come from a cavity within the heart. This was a common belief throughout the world during this time.

Buddhism teaches you’ll get less bad karma by murdering a child than to punch a Buddha in the nose with a drop of blood coming out. Buddha doesn’t even experience pain, making it even more ridiculous if viewed from the consequentalist school of morality.