brain disorders

So this week I've mostly learned about brain disorders, at least that's the only thing I can remember now, an hour before the weekly blog is due (good work Amanda!). My project was on Synesthesia,  a disorder that makes your senses completely cross wired. For example, you see a square and you smell raspberries. Or you eat chicken and see green. It's interesting that it's even called a disease, from what I've understand, people who have this wouldn't want to get rid of it and it actually seems sort of fun. They see life from a more vivid perspective. Other than Synesthesia, we've talked about Alzheimer's, autism and Parkinson.

To live with a brain disorder must be one of the hardest thing to do, there is really no room in society for people with extra need. They have to go through every day and dealing with all these different problems that for people without a disorder can't eve imagine. What's scary about them is that there is no cure and there is not enough research for something to change peoples lives yet.

Something I think is extra interesting is that autism is a spectrum disorder. How can you really now when someone is suffering from a brain disease? We all have faults, and not all of them are functional, I mean, I am just too shy and that makes me end up in situations that make my life harder than if I would just relax a bit more. My point is, we all have some faults and I'm sure that if someone really wanted to, then everyone could be diagnosed with something.

Can we trust ourselves?

So this week we talked a lot about memory. I think it's very interesting, because the brain is so complex but still very easy to trick. Something that really caught my attention is that we always change our memories. For example, I have a memory (that I first remembered a couple years ago); I must be around five years old and my parents are going to a wedding, it's my mom's cousin Peter's wedding. They drop me off in the woods, which I know is the wood you pass by when you go through our relatives cottage, and then they leave me there, crying. I think I am meeting up with my grandparents, but I can't remember if I ever met them or not. This of course is not true, my parents would never just leave me in the woods like that and they would not leave me crying either. Also, another proof that this is incorrect is that my brother is not even in this memory, and by the age of five and three we would definitely be at the same place.However, they did go to this wedding and I weren't allowed to come and as I said, the forest isn't something I've made up because it's something I have seen for real when we go to our relatives.

My theory is that I was disappointed that I was not allowed to come to the wedding, but then I forgot about it. Later on something in my mind must have triggered this memory. I then think that I dreamt about this, and had a very vivid dream. Sometimes I have a hard time to remember if it was a dream or if it was reality. So, by dreaming this and getting this image in my unconscious I started to believe that this was actually reality. I guess it's like using imagination inflation, but using it on a feeling that I already had and just made up the memory around it.

But even know, when I know that this memory is not real, it doesn't change the fact that I still see this as a memory. It is so clear and vivid to my that it can't just be something I made up because my mind really thinks that I did experience it. So whit that pointed out, how can we know what's real and what's not? How much can we really trust our memories? I guess, with the way science is going, in a few years we will have the answer to that in a few years.