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Wednesday, April 27, 2016

What's On My Phone

Hello everyone! Is it just me or is PicMonkey giving a lot of trouble these days? It won't launch properly, as a result I've had to try out a new site. BeFunky is a bit like PicMonkey and so far, it seems pretty easy to use considering it was my first time. They've even got this really neat font style where letters are outlined. I recommend you to check BeFunky out- and now to the post!

I'm the kind of person who would rarely be found without my phone. It's got a ton of things I need to use throughout the day, whether it's checking up on my academics, my emails, my social media or just playing games. It also turns out to be a great time waster too- top of the list when it comes to ways to procrastinate!


So, first things first. My current lock screen is a wallpaper of a night sky in New York City. I found it while browsing through tumblr and ended up collecting quite a few imaged I could use. Of course I picked the best one to use first and so far, I haven't changed it at all. I like it because it's really soothing to look at it and it's also better than putting my face on there instead.
I realize a lot of people- especially girls- tend to put their own pictures up on the lock screens and wallpapers, but it just seems a little narcissistic to me. I mean, sure, if anyone picks up your phone, they'll know who's it is, but most people don't let their phones out of their hands, let alone their sights. It's just basically you looking at your face more than 50 times a day.

Here's the main screen where most of the important things are gathered like the Calendar (not used very much), the Clock (how else to wake yourself up everyday?) Contacts (because I can't remember anyone's number except my own), Photos (blogging purposes), Settings (for when the WiFi randomly disconnects), App Store (maybe used once a month to get a new app), Weather (once a month, it's just here cause it's blue), DropBox (considering to be used for blogging purposes), Adobe Acrobat (for academic lecture slides and PDFs), Evernote (blogging and note taking), iBooks (academic purposes) and Maps (it's blue).

The main tray on the other hand has the solid essentials- Phone, Mail, Messages and Camera. It's there for easy access and lets me see about immediate things I should know about- missed calls, emails, texts to reply. (It looks like I'm really bad at replying to texts but that's because I read them from the notifications center and answer there without going to the messages section at all. So any texts that don't need to be replied to are all piled up. Quite a few are promotional texts from my service providers as well as general advertisements about sales etc).


I only have two screens to switch between- having more doesn't seem very necessary to me. This one has a lot of things piled together. There's Timeful, a really nice time organizing app that I had been frequently using in first year. It's basically like the iPhone Calendar, but it's mostly for every day informal use, like developing little habits and setting small reminders. It was a really nice app and although I stopped using it when exams rolled around (this app requires a lot of maintenance, since you have to plan out your day) but I really want to get back into shape. Next up is Inkling, an educational app linked to most of my medical textbooks. You know how it works- scratch the code in your book and get the virtual copy of it in your phone. It's really nice but I haven't been using it regularly- I have two other books I have yet to load into Inkling but it's just not that necessary for me. Perhaps this app would be more useful on a tablet. Quizlet is all about making flashcards. I was using it regularly in first year and I had promised to use it again in second year but it just hasn't happened yet... My lack of enthusiasm is probably because the flashcards are a little dull- you can't add pictures. alQuran is another app that took forever to find- it's got Quranic texts with translation and you can download recitations for listening to offline. It's really useful and I would recommend everyone to have this (if you'd like it, I mean). 

I've lumped the rest of the apps into folders. Useless Apples is home to all of the useless Apple apps that I can't delete and just clutter my phone. Productivity is a misnomer- a lot of things in there I don't really use. Social has all the media apps, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, Tumblr. You'll notice there's no Facebook and that's because Facebook is not that useful for me. I've installed Buffer though, and its a really useful app for blogging. It basically queues posts for social media accounts. I've hooked it up to my twitter and facebook at the moment.

Chrome is just too important to be categorized- I need it to be on hand for browsing (and checking facebook). The last icon you see is for a game I'm currently in to called Summoner's War. I'm planning to review, just like how I reviewed Clash of Clans, so keep your eyes peeled!

What apps do you have on your phone? Do you use all the apps you've installed? Does your home screen reflect what kind of person you are? Have a nice day!

Friday, April 8, 2016

The Alphabet of Neurosciences

It's April, which is basically the month for the A to Z blogging challenge where you were supposed to blog about each letter of the alphabet every day! Now I'm not exactly a punctual blogger so I was not able to even properly formulate a plan about this event, let alone even attempt is, but here's my little contribution to the blogging community. Mixing it up with the latest module I've been studying, I've decided to share with you the ABC's of neurosciences in the hopes that you might learn something new today! And just to help you feel accomplished, I've even added a short quiz at the end. Are you ready? Here we go!


Disclaimer: This is by no means well- written explanations. I have purposely left out a lot of major detail to make things easier for the average reader. If any of this interests you and you want to learn more, let me know in the comments below and I can direct you to helpful reading sources or videos or perhaps write something extra for you.

A is for Aphasia. If you look at the word carefully and try to figure out what it means, you can break it down into two parts, 'a' meaning without and 'phasia' meaning phases. So Aphasia meaning "out of phase". This term is used for incoordinated movements, when you want to perform a task but you can't because your muscles aren't working together in phase. Aphasia is a general term.

B is for Broca's Area. This is a very special area in the brain. It functions to gather your thoughts in response to a question and plan out how you're going to say it. The Broca's Area sends the "speech" plan over to the cortex of your brain that controls the muscles and that's how you're able to flawlessly speak, using all the teeny tiny muscles in your voice box as well as the muscles in your tongue. If there's something wrong with your Broca's Area, you won't be able to form a proper reply, your speech muscles will be out of phase and whatever you say won't make a lot of sense with several pauses and difficulty saying words. This is called speech aphasia.

C is for Cerebrospinal Fluid, also abbreviated to CSF. This is the fluid that surrounds your brain and makes it float inside your skull. Your brain is made up of so many folds that if it couldn't float in CSF, it would collapse on itself and become very deformed. CSF also helps cushion your brain when you hit your head, protecting your brain from hitting hard bone and injuring itself! Too much CSF can be a bad thing though, you could end up compressing your brain as it fills with CSF. This condition is called hydrocephalus, where hydro means water and cephalus comes from cephaly, or head.

D is for Dopamine! Dopamine is a very important neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitters are small substances that are passed from one neuron (nerve cell) to another neuron and essentially carries across messages. Dopamine functions in emotions by giving us the drive and motivation to do things. Dopamine also triggers the reward centers in our brains and can thus lead to drug seeking behavior. Have you heard of Parkinson's Disease? It's a disease where the neurons that talk using dopamine are destroyed, as a result, it's hard for people with Parkinson's to move since the motivation is gone.

E is for Epinephrine! Also known as adrenaline, epinephrine is another important neurotransmitter that functions mostly in the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is the part of our nervous system that instantly prepares us for fight or flight. That means that epinephrine will increase blood flow to our muscles so we can run, dilate our pupils (make the little black windows in our eyes bigger) so we can see better and releases more energy so we can use it to keep moving! Epinephrine is also released by the adrenal medulla.

F is for Frontal Lobe. This is the part of the brain that is at the very front- right behind our forehead! This is a very important part of our brain since this is where our thinking takes place- problem solving, planning as well working memory. The frontal lobe decides what to focus on. When you're reading this, you are focusing on the words in this line, not the words above or the words below. Similarly, if you're in class and your teacher is talking about something but your friend is making faces at you, it's your frontal lobe that decides to focus on your friend's antics and totally tune out whatever the teacher is saying! Of course, your frontal lobe is you, so blaming it for focusing on the wrong things is really blaming yourself xD

G is for Gangrene. Gangrene is, in simple terms, the rotting of a part of your body, most commonly the ends of your arms and/or legs. It usually happens when the blood supply to these areas is not enough. The cells and tissues there starve and then die. If left untreated, gangrene can result in amputation of the limb since the rotting flesh can spread over to the healthy parts, not to mention how perfect such dying tissue would be for bacteria.

H is for Hemorrhage, pronounced hemor-rage. No, it doesn't have anything to with rage. Hemorrhage refers to blood leaking out of the circulatory system. While a finger cut could be referred to as a hemorrhage, it's a term usually saved for more serious types of bleeding. It's especially dangerous for hemorrhage to happen in the brain because brain cells are not equipped to work without oxygen. Blood pooling in the brain can also squish parts of it and this can in turn affect our control on our body.

I is for Ipsilateral. This is an anatomical term that basically means "same side". The anatomical term for opposite side is "contralateral". For example, the right side of our brain controls the left side of our body. Anatomically, we can say that the right side of the brain controls the contralateral side of the body.

J and K stand for Just Kidding.

L is for Limbic System. This is a system inside our brain that controls our emotions. This is what tells you to be mad at the right moment and also gives emotional context to experiences. Remembering a memory that makes you smile involves the limbic system. It also plays a role in memory and learning through a structure called the hippocampus.

M is for Myocardial infarction. Often abbreviated to MI, myocardial infarction is when the blood supply to your heart is disrupted and the heart muscles just start dying. Dying cells release a lot of substances that can cause pain, so myocardial infarction is a painful condition. After all, how else can your heart get your attention except by causing you pain?

N is for Neuron. A neuron is basically a nerve cell. Neurons have their special shapes that kind of look like those cute girly pens that have feather pompoms on their ends. There's a rounded side that receives information from extensions called dendrites, then the message is carried all the way down the long end, called an axon. Axons can be really long, going from your spinal cord to the muscles at the end of your foot.

O is for Optic Chiasma. Optic refers to the eye and chiasma refers to crossing over. The optic chiasma is the X shaped part of the optic nerves. Before the optic nerves can go to the eye, they cross over each other. It looks kind of like this


P is for Pulmonary Embolism. This is a little like gangrene and myocardial infarction- a small piece of debris makes it's way into the lungs and gets stuck there, disrupting blood supply. Since blood can't move forward (there's a traffic jam!) it gets difficult for blood to become oxygenated. As a result, there is low oxyen levels in the blood, rapid breathing rate and rapid heart rate. Oh and pulmonary refers to the lungs while embolism refers to a piece of debris, usually a blood clot, that was formed somewhere else, got picked up by the blood and stuck somewhere else.

Q is for Queen I guess. Can't think of anything relevant.

R is for Reticular Formation. This is a part of your brain stem that functions to activate your brain, or wake it up. If anything happened to your reticular formation, you wouldn't be able to wake your brain up! The reticular formation is also located in a strategic position- right between the brain and spinal cord, so it is always updated with what kind of information is being sent up to the brain and what's being sent back down. When you're asleep, for example, there are a lot of things that your body can feel but doesn't get registered, but if someone was to give you a painful slap, the pain information goes straight to the reticular formation which immediately wakes the brain up!

S is for Stroke. A stroke is basically any derangement of brain activity that results from disturbance in blood supply. This can be either having a traffic jam in the blood supply and some tissues not getting any oxygen or blood leaking out of the vessels and pooling in the brain, called a hemorrhage (did you remember that? Good job!). Strokes can have a wide variety of effects since there are specific areas of the brain for specific tasks. A stroke in the Broca's Area would cause difficulty in speech, or speech aphasia. A stroke in the reticular formation would result in a coma, where the brain would never be able to wake up.

T is for Thrombus. A thrombus is related to an embolism. While an embolism was a travelling piece of debris, a thrombus is where it all began. It's basically a local clotting of blood that may or may not accidentally end up blocking the blood vessel. It could be that while trying to block a vessel, a piece breaks off and that piece is called an embolism.

U is for Upper Motor Neuron. This is a neuron that is an upper class neuron designed to control muscles (hence, motor). How is it upper class? Well, it comes out from the brain directly! Any neuron that carries motor control and starts from the brain is an upper motor neuron. This neuron goes all the way down to the spinal cord before ending and passes it's message on to the Lower Motor Neuron. The lower motor neuron's job is to carry the message to the muscle itself. Simple enough?

V is for Ventricle. These are little spaces in the brain filled with CSF, or cerebrospinal fluid. We have a grand total of four ventricles in our brain, two lateral ventricles, a 3rd ventricle and a 4th ventricle.

W is for Wernicke's Area. This area is where we understand language, whether it's spoken or read. When you read these words, it is the Wernicke's Area that is turning these miniscule curves and lines into something you can understand. When you listen to someone talking, it is your Wernicke's that turns the sounds and tones into something you can understand. If your Wernicke's Area didn't work, it would probably be very much like suddenly being in China where you can hear and see the Chinese language everywhere but you have no idea what anyone is saying. As a result, if anyone asked you anything, you would reply fluently along the lines of "I have no idea what you're saying, nothing makes sense" and this tells us that your Broca's Area is doing just fine, you can make a language response, even though it has no context to the question you were asked.

X is for X-ray. Need I say anymore?

There's no relevant word I can think up of for Y or Z!

Alright! You got through the ABCs of Neuroscience! Here's a small test to see how much you learned!

Q1. When you are exercising, which one of these is busy making your heart pump faster?
a. Dopamine
b. Epinephrine
c. Acetylcholine
d. Serotonin

Q2. Which one of the following is responsible for consciousness, or waking the brain up?
a. Frontal Lobe
b. Optic Chiasma
c. Reticular Formation
d. Pain

Q3. The anatomical description for "same side" is
a. Medial
b. Lateral
c. Ipsilateral
d. Contralateral

Q4. Which part of your brain is responsible for problem solving and planning?
a. Frontal Lobe
b. Parietal Lobe
c. Occipital Lobe
d. Temporal Lobe

Q5. If you had a stroke in your Wernicke's Area, you would
a. Be unable to read
b. Be unable to hear
c. Be unable to taste
d. Be unable to smell

Write your answers in the comments below and I'll let you know how well you've done on this test! Did you think you learned something new and interesting today? Would you like seeing posts like these again some time? I certainly had a lot of fun writing this! Have a nice day!
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