Weekly Blogging Assignment No. I

We read an article that talked about how the median age of "puberty onset" in girls is movin' on up, and how very young, developed girls are more common these days. I remembered reading a while ago about that one Peruvian girl (Lina Medina, I believe?) showed signs of puberty at the tender age of three, and got pregnant at age five. This was a while back, too - maybe in the forties or fifties. Her father was arrested for incestual, statutory rape, but he was later acquitted of all charges.
It's absolutely terrifying, in my opinion. Especially the last part - girls don't just randomly get pregnant without any sexual contact (unless you're Mary... but how the crap does that work, anyway?), so that means that SOME man had some form of sex with her. Aside from that, it's kind of scary, anyway. I saw a picture of her when she was pregnant and she looked so... young. Completely unequipped to carry a baby at her age. She delivered by cesarean section, of course, or the baby probably would have split her open.
The family treated the baby like a "younger brother", and Lina preferred to play with toys more than she did her child. He was not told of his "sister's" actual relation to him until he was older.
This is probably, hopefully, a once-in-a-blue-Moon case, but relating to the article we read, what is the possible evolutionary benefit to entering puberty at such a young age? Correct me if I'm wrong, but, aren't most qualities attained through evolution somehow beneficial to the current people that have them (but not necessarily the later ones - I'm looking at you, fear of spiders!). I just can't muster the brainpower to even comprehend why this could possibly be due to actual evolution - with our life expectancies so high, why would we need to attain the ability to become pregnant so much more early?

Bipolar[ism?] - Part I

["Bipolar" sounds weird, since it's used as the disorder, the person that has the disorder, and the state of having the disorder. ENGLISH IS WEIRD... not that other languages aren't.]

The other day, I was talking to a dear friend of mine [Let's call her "K"!] about bipolar. She's a type II bipolar; she offered a lot of insight on what it's like to actually be bipolar. She gave it a human face.
I had some prior knowledge, such as the basics of what the symptoms are, and that while its origin is shrouded in mystery, it is thought to be a result of some form of chemical or hormone imbalance. It is also relatively universal knowledge that bipolar is heavily based on genetics.
I asked a lot of questions, and she told me about the mood swings, the rapid cycling, the difficulties, the feeling of nothingness. [I even asked if me being so inquisitive was annoying, and she told me it wasn't: I was asking the "right" questions, and she knew I was especially interested in how it could apply to my "learnings".]
I was thinking about what she told me last night when I was in the shower, and a thought shouted, "How is bipolar related to the amygdala?" Another thought stemming from this asked, "How is bipolar related to puberty and, in girls, the menstrual cycle?"
K told me that she was a relatively normal child, and that her first mood shift/rapid cycle happened when she was twelve. I made a connection - to what we're learning at the moment - in that the average age of first menstruation [menarche] is 12.5. Could this mean that there's some correlation between onset of menstruation or puberty - with release of new hormones or upped amounts of old hormones? The hole in this is that bipolar also is diagnosed in children and adults, but still, it's an idea, isn't it?
I did a little research in Ceramics today and found that, in people suffering from bipolar, the amygdala are significantly smaller, volume-wise. The hippocampi are also somewhat smaller than those of their "regular", "normal" counterparts.
I also learned that womens' bipolar/mood cycles may fluctuate along with their menstrual cycle. Hmm.
I'll do more "investigation" over the weekend, and I'll discuss them here, in "Part II".

Color Sightongue

Technology is amazing, to be honest. Especially in the studies profiled in this article.

When the subject receives pricks or pulses on their tongue [based on sophisticated technology that changes the intensity of the pulses or pricks based on things such as contrast, in white or black, or in spatial positioning, in the form of balance], the sensory neurons *on* the tongue are activated. These neurons, feeling input, generate action potential and "fire" down the dendrites, through the cell body, down the axon, out the axon terminal, and across the synapse (with the use of neurotransmitters), where the message/impulse/action potential is sent to the next neuron. This process is repeated, in a startlingly short amount of time, until the message/impulse reaches an interneuron in the spinal cord. It ascends to the top of the spinal cord, into the thalamus.

The thalamus, being somewhat similar to a flight-director with bright orange batons, figures out where to send the sensory input. In the case of the blind-person-that-"sees"-with-his-tongue, the thalamus recognizes the input as optical input. The input is sent to the occipital lobes, the main house of vision.

The message is then read and interpreted. The more often the brain uses this pathway, the more strong it gets. Older, infrequently-used pathways are pruned and discarded. This illustrates the brain's ability to reassign and make new pathways at its best. The strength of the little powerhouse that is the brain is simply amazing.

Mescaline - Agonist or Antagonist?

Mescaline is a type of hallucinogenic drug that is obtained from a type of spineless cactus (which is unintentionally hilarious - "Heeeey broooooo, I'm trippin' on some cactus riiiiight nowww... Why are you purple aaaand five-faaaaced?"). It is an agonist, which means it stimulates a type of receptor (a certain serotonin receptor, actually) and somehow causes hallucinations. It is unknown how exactly it activates the receptor to cause said hallucinations, however.
A trip on mescaline leads to intense colors, flattening of three-dimensional objects, kaleidoscopic patterns, and sympathetic arousal (like the side effects of the fight-or-flight process). It lasts up to twelve hours.

YouTube Video Assignment!

I liked the assignment, but I wish we had had more time to actually film it. Mine was sort of scrambled and hurried because I was having some major problems - I couldn't do what I actually wanted to do, which was to play both parts and do edits and cuts in Windows Movie Maker - my camera apparently doesn't record in the right freaking format for Windows to be able to read it (because Windows is about as smart as a bag of shoes, sometimes!), but John was gracious enough to let me use his camera and to film me himself, so that was really awesome, and watching some of the videos was pretty fun, too. Notable ones were Noah's video and Claire and Kelsey's video. The sockpuppets were nuts, but not in a bad way.
The idea of the assignment was good, and as always, some people broke through and rose to the top, making other people not look like they put very much effort into the assignment, which in some cases is absolutely not true. I felt that mine could have been so much better, but it was ruined, castrated by Windows and me being nervous on film, knowing that at least 24 sets of eyes would be secretly judging my performance. Oh well, though.
I think that the only thing the teachers could do to make the assignment better would to allow maybe just a little more time for it to be completed - if I had had the weekend to finish it, for example, it would have been a lot more consistent, entertaining, and put-together.

Sources for video:
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/marycalkins.html
http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/CALKINS.html

Standard Deviation

Control (Comprehension):
Mean - 13
Median - 12
Mode - 12
SD - +/- 3.26

Experimental (Visualization)
Mean - 16.03
Median - 17.5
Mode - 20 and 19
SD - +/- 14.51

Experimental (Pronounciation)
Mean - 6.27
Median - 6
Mode - 6 and 8
SD - +/- 2.08