A second language - and a third one!

  One and a half year ago I wanted to comment an article about a second language. Sometimes people are having hard time learning new things, and it's not just their fault, it could be literally an anomaly in the brain structure or it could be related to the level of complication of the language someone chose to learn.
  To a personal background level, I believe I used to be a polyglot, a linguist if you will. I loved to learn new languages, I started English as a second language at the age of 9 (I think), all thanks to my wish to understand how to interact with the computer and read foreign literature. From there, I followed English until the GCE O'Level certificate. In the meantime, I began French for fun, having nothing to do during long summer days. The intensive 5-hour lessons proved to be a really attractive language and I continued learning for 3 consecutive years (during July/August). Then came preparation for the medical schools, which put a stop to all my other activities. Perhaps it was my teen-hormone years or my own free will that did not pursuit my love for new languages. Nevertheless, I've learned basic Latin and still continue to perfect my knowledge in Serbian language during my medical school years - I guess I still have a crave for languages deep down under the wish for wearing a white robe. :)
  No hard feelings to anyone, but I've recently compared the Serbian language to the German. Not that I know much about the German language, but I've noticed that in German there is the possibility to mix multiple words into one. Really cool once you get to know the basics of the language, but sometimes it is really hard for new learners. Basically, the grammar and the word pronounciation can be a reason for a person to pull back and not wanting to express themselves in that language. For example, Serbians from what I know have a hard time using "th" or "th"(d) - i.e. in the words "theatre" or "the" respectively - in English, which I think is one of the reasons they prefer not to use English at all.

  The fascinating thing as a child is that you can learn more stuff than an adult person, the so called "Tabula Rasa" thesis. My opinion is that gifted polyglots (people that speak a lot of languages) should nurture their languages by daily or weekly translating/reading text of headlines, otherwise the wealth of words and phrases of a language they might once perfectly knew will definitely decrease by time without giving it adequate practice. And it doesn't stop there, listening should adopt your hearing ability in order to rapidly process verbal requests or to better interact with other people. Remember, a dialogue needs "two to tango", so it might be better to find a partner for it. Exchanging opinions about your primary language for a secondary one through "The mixxer project" may prove really helpful. I haven't tried it yet, but some of the readers may have better solutions for this. I suppose that you'll have to make remarks about the difference in slang and normal language, so.. be very careful!
  Learning languages can be compared to other learning possibilities, such as playing the piano or the guitar or even writing code in various programming languages. There's a time when you might mix up words or phrases, but the brain learns to eventually adopt while multi-processing such requests - almost similar to other mechanical functions, like driving, eating a burger, talking to the phone and switching gears at the same time (not that I recommend it).
  To sum up, comparing time required, ability to learn and grace of use, as a child you'd have better results in learning a language, provided you often practice. And do practice, because in later years it will definitely prove worthy!

Medicine: The power of memories

Yesterday I tried to make a tuna fish salad again, but with minimal ingredients this time; I didn't have cucumbers nor peppers! Anyway, one of the most amazing things just happened while I was squeezing a lemon over the freshly cut onion - my nose caught the scent which reminded me of souvlakia-sheftalia (σουβλάκια-σιεφταλιά, ражњићи), which I haven't tasted for almost two years!
Souvlakia-sheftalia is a Greek/Cypriot traditional specialty usually served with salad or half an onion and half a lemon, all packed in a nice pocket-shaped bread (pitta - yes double 't'). Memories can be quite amazing sometimes.

Now on to the real part: Memories! Your memories aren't but chemicals, nicely organised in neuron, waiting to be released. When the human nose catches a familiar smell within a respected range, the smell could be connected to some old memories, in my case, FOOD! I believe the term for this occasion is "Olfaction memory". But how is this connected?

I won't go into many details, but here's a brief road-map: The human nervous system has been divided into two big parts, the central (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (here is a short summary of the NS stucture I made). CNS consists of the brain and the spinal cord.
Somewhere in your brain, there's a Hippocampus is one of the main parts of the Limbic System, controlling emotion expression and memory. The amygdala play a big role for the expression of emotions such as sadness, need to reward/congratulate or fear, anger, etc. Don't forget that emotions can often be triggered by a smell - like the sweet, sweet smell of souvlakia! Argh, now I'm hungry again.

Anyway, the memory part is controlled mainly by hippocampus (thank God there's Wikipedia to show where it is, so I'll be able to keep this short). Its name is given from its shape - in greek (or latin for that matter), ιππόκαμπος means sea-horse. If you damage this baby you'll end up either losing your ability to memorise new things (anterograde amnesia) and probably access to memory before the damage (retrograde amnesia). At patients that suffer from Alzheimer's disease, the hippocampus is probably one of the primary parts of the brain that is damaged.
Before you start nagging that this is a huge and boring post, there is one more thing I'd like you to see, the rhinencephalon and the olfactory tract. Some thousands (correct me if I'm wrong) of olfactory neurons, that hang on the top border of your nose (ethmoid bone), send signals through the olfactory tract all the way to the olfactory or piriform cortex. As you can see, it is tightly connected to the Limbic system, hence the connection between the senses and emotion expression or memory recall. Each sniff you take is "encoded" to several bits of local depolarisations, if they're enough they're added up and create an action potential and finally sent towards your brain, an impulse to the limbic system in our case. Although the neurons between the limbic system parts go into an loop, the system has several cut-points, points where the axons are connected with other neurons, therefore points where new signals take place in the loop. From there, the amygdala send direct orders to the brain to bring me a sense of euphoria or satisfaction and the hippocampus retrieves the information from the long-term memory "database" about the specific smell.

Imagine this post as a backstage pass; not to a Madonna concert, but to one of your many body functions :-)
You disagree on anything of the above? State your opinion by writing a comment.

Health: Work hours affect your sleep

Remember the two parts of the post Operation Sleepwalk? The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (catchy name!) have concluded, after thorough researches, that work time is a mega factor related to your sleep time:

Sleep time was minimal while work time was maximal in the age group 45-54 years, and sleep time increased both with lower and higher age.(1)

The weird thing is that if you watch a lot of TV you get more eye-shut time:

Except for time spent watching TV, which increased with longer sleep times, all waking activities decreased with increasing sleep time.(2)

Come to think of it, it's not that weird. Your eyes get tired, your eyesight deteriorates, you become a couch potato, need I continue? It's the same thing with gamers. The difference between gamers and TV viewers is the amount of adrenaline - Usually (and you didn't hear this from me) epinephrine (another geeky name for adrenaline) is more or less a deluge to persons that play action games, or games on which they get addicted. It's not bad, but too much is bad.

Keep your gaming skills sharp, your window to the world open (*hint hint* television), but don't stand/sit in front of a computer or a TV all day long!

Operation Sleepwalk (Part II)

Resuming from this article...

Relaxation - How relaxed are you? Were you feeling comfortable lying all day in bed? Well, studies have shown that relaxation level does not provide a good sleep. And this does not include yoga, since stretching your legs to a perfect 180 degree or curling it around your neck is actually a (painful at start?) form of exercise

Working out - Your body begs for attention, as does your brain. And I'm surely not recommending working out 10 consecutive hours. That is called exhaustion which further causes debilitation, not exercise! (double click for word definition) I personally have to say that my sleep is better after a 1km walk, 2x1=2km in total if you consider going back to your original starting point (For the American readers: 2 km is about a mile).

Computer gaze - As much as I hate to say it, hours you spend in front of your computer deteriorate your eyesight, make you fatigue (especially programmers gamers and article readers/researchers) and above all gazing at a computer all day can really worsen and aggrevate your sleep. Shut down your computer and take a look outside - there's a whole new world out there just waiting to be explored! You do not need Blizzard to make you a knight with +1 brain skill!

Well this article has come to an end. I hope you liked all the recommendations and suggestions pinpointing problems in sleep and sleepwalking (I might concentrate in insomnia next time). I also believe that after this article you will reconsider at least once before taking medicaments called sedatives :)

Medicine: Operation Sleepwalk

Sleepwalking (somnambulism or noctambulism)is a serious sleeping disorder, which can be caused by a number of reasons, all building up together to the event of sleepwalk. Sleepwalking does not necessary imply just 'walking', the persons who suffer from this usually begin activities that are normally associated with or supposed to be done while awake, but instead they occur while asleep or in a sleeplike state.
Sleepwalkers can remember several stuff that happened, but not everything, just like when a person tries to remember their younger years and all they get is just bits of memory (leftovers as I like to call them). On the other hand, they could also not remember anything.

What can cause it? I can name a million reasons, but let's be more specific for the real world:

• Smoking - Nicotine, one of the chief ingredients of cigarettes and a poisonous alkaloid (C10H14 N2), and the number of cigarettes you smoke daily may increase your awareness, but they also increase your stress and wrath levels disrupt your healthy portion of sleep each day.
• Stress level - Stress is an important part of nowadays life, people running around just to reach their goals - whatever they may be - always trying to achieve as much tasks possible for the day. This can make a person anxious and that's definitely not good for anything.
  

• Emotional state - It's very important to be or feel relaxed at least an hour before sleeping. Being tense even when going to sleep could resort to nightmares and of course sleepwalking.
  
• Food - Spicy food has been mark as bad for a good night sleep. Bad indigestion could also play an important role here.
  
• Alcohol - Wine, beer, whiskey and all beverages that contain alcohol
  
• Caffeine - Compared to nicotine, this baby actually tries to help you stay awake, even when your brain requires some rest. Drinking lots of coffee cups while you require to sleep is a really bad idea.

To be continued...

Brain: How do we remember things?

I stumbled upon a great article today, explaining in simple events how the human /mammal brain can store and recall several fused correlations. It's an exciting piece of work, I believe you should read it as well