The Brain Going Through Puberty?

The human brain may be the most complicated object in planet Earth due to how it works involving its different parts and working in syncronization, but before this super machine becomes what it is expected to be, it undergoes certian changes during the "teenage" stage of an individual.

One of the most notable things in the teenage brain is the necessity of sleep in the body. A normal adult will need about 8 hours minimum of sleep per night, but in "adolescent" needs around 9.5 hours of sleep. Why so much difference? Well as well as infants need almost half a day of sleep in order to develop, as well does a teenager that uses the nine and a half hours to develop its body and especially the brain, and when the brain changes so does the attitude of an adolescent. The problem is that teenagers, by one or another reason, always feel distracted by somethng that keeps them from sleeping properly. That is why the people have put the "lazy" stereotype on adolescents.

Another Change in the brain is the constant mood changes they pass through. These occur because the brain of the teenagers can get more esaily stimulated and also because of their developement in the frontal lobe of the brain. In this area is where mood comes from, so when it is eign developed it tends to change and this causes the mood changes. During this period, and because of the same reason before stated, the person starts to develop his/her personality in a better manner.

This image Shows how the brain develops Gray Matter through the years.



Notice that in the estimated points of 13 to 18 the brain is developing gray matter and from estimated point 19 to point 28 gray matter decrases rapidly.

That is because of puberty. So yes the brain goes through puberty as well.

How our Brain Works.

The brain works in different ways and even though it is one whole organ it has different parts that make it seem like it has more.

1. What does the word "hemisphere" refer to when talking about the brain?
-This means the the brain is divided into 2 equal pieces (like the hemispheres on earth) and also can be used to say that the brain is actually two parts connected.

2. What are the major differences between the left and right sides of the brain?
-They control the opposide side they are on, personality is developed depending on how much do you have from each side.

3. What is the corpus callasum?
- The corpus collasum (from latin "corpus"=body and "callasum"= thought) is a flat bundle of neural fiber that unites the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere of the brain.

4. Explain the study performed by Paul Broca in which he discovered "Broca's Area."
- Paul Broca had two patients in which he discovered their problems. One was Lebronge a man that had damage on the left part of the frontal lobe and could only say one "word and it was "tan" which meant that his speech ability was reduced. The other was Lelong which had similar problems but could say five words: "yes", "no", "three", "always", and a mispronunciation of his name, "lelo". He was also damaged in the same part of the brain as Lebronge so this part was called Broca´s area and it is the part that controls speech and the processing of words,

5. Explain the study conducted by Roger Sperry in regard to "split brain."
- Roger and other scientists had studied many patients like one they named J.W. he had a seizure when he was 16 and throuhout the yeas he started to get epillectic attacks and they dicovered that it was caused by a damaged corpus callosum. This damage caun cause disorder in your brain and that is what causes epilepsy.

6. Explain the study conducted by Karl Wernicke which led to the discovery of Wernicke's Area."
-Wernicke thought that bot only Broca´s area was responsible for language preoblems so he deided he would study a bit of it so after alot of reasearch he found that he was right the area that is a little bit to the right of Broca´s area is also responsible for speech, this beaing true because the two are from the frontal lobe.

7. Which lobe is most responsible for vision?
- It is the optical lobe which analyzes what your eyes see.

8. Which lobe is most responsible for hearing and language?
- It is the temporal lobe, and it decodifies the language for you.

9. Which lobe is most responsible for performing math calculations?
- The Parietal lobe.

10. Which lobe is most responsible for judgment, reasoning and impulse control?
- The Frontal lobe, which also controlls the mood and personality.

We can see that the brain works in independent ways and that because of that we are what we are now. Without that it would be different.

Bibliography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca%27s_area#Broca.27s_patients
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Wernicke

Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage was a man with kind and sweet personality but after a terrible accident he totally changed physically and mentally. What could have caused that? Th following questions and answers are going to clear it all.

1. Who was Phineas Gage?

-Phineas gage was a man that worked on a railroad construction and that got hurt drastically.
2. Describe the event which caused his injury.

-On September 13, 1848, he was making an explosive hole by putting blasting powder and a detonator on a hole, then covering it with sand and finally compacting it with a iron rod, but that day he did not cover it with sand so a spark detonated the powder and the iron rod went into his cheekbone and got out by the top of his head, passing by his frontal lobe and damaging a great part of it.

3. What happened to him as a result of his injuries?

-Amazingly and even though he got seriously damaged he survived and eventually could go back to life. There was one problem though, his attitude and personality changed. He became a social renegate and people hated him much and there was nothing here could be done.



Phineas Gage and the Iron Rod

4. What did we learn about the brain based on this case study?

-We learned that the brain´s frontal lobe plays an important role in ones personality. Phineas Gage used to be a normal triumphant man but the damaged frontal lobe made him become an ugly person, but anyway it is not required to have an iron rod pass through your skull in order to become a bad person, you just have to have a big frontal lobe damage and you will become so.

5. Explain the idea of brain localization?

- Brain localization is the division of the brain in two parts; front and back. The two work on different places of the body, the back works on the senses and the front works on feelings and thinking, this separation is important because it secures the most important parts and mantains a stable environment in the body.
6. Explain the concept of brain lateralization?

- This system is similar to localization but instead it is on th left and the right sides of the brain and each one controls the opposite side of each other (left lateral=right side and vice versa) and they control the unconciousness of the person.

The Lobes of the Brain

From this we can say that the damage in the localization part in Phineas Gage´s brain is what caused the cahnges in his attitude and personality.

Journal- Darwin and the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin was born in February,12 1809 was an Enlgish naturalist that postulated all the living species and its evolutionary line, called the natural selection. He came across this idea because he went in a voyage across the world and he saw the different species that he saw were adapted perfectly to its environment, so he thought that nature must select the stronger and kill the weak in order to mantain balance. This theory states that an animal will adapt to its surroundings or if not it will die, and the one that survives will evolve to make changes in its body to help himself to survive.
                                               

Darwin's theory of evolution in Men

Darwin had problems with publishing his ideas because of many things. First her wife was a devote christian and she disapproved it, second the church did not like this ideas so he was in trouble with them and was considered an anti/christian and in those times religion was put first and then science so his theory was not really famous.. He also was suffering in the family because one of her children, a girl, passed away and he was seeing her in his mind, so he got kind of crazy.

This was darwing as a young man

Darwin felt somehow anguished of the publication of this book, but because he was afraid of disaprvall and most of all, he thought that if it was published people would start to not belive in god so he would be in lot of trouble. Anaways, decades after it was published he is recognized nowadays a true scientist.

Nature+Nurture=Intelligence?

Nature and nurture are the both aspects on which humans or animals are raised and formed, and according of how much they recieve from each one their personalities will be formed. Various factors are affected by this, in this case I am going to talk about the intelligence being part of it. Intelligence is the capacity of anyone to have characteristics such as the capacities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, learning from past experiences, planning, and problem solving. The question is, are they nature or nurture?

Actually some abilites come in our unconciosness since we are born such as our instincts, understanding, learning, and problem solving. Others come from nurture like communication, learning from past experiences, and planning. So intelligence comes by both, but which one has the most influence on the intelligence of the person.

The genes write how much IQ or intelligence you have but you as a human can develop you capacity of abstract thinking in different ways. Every day we learn something new so that means that intelligence is in an equal balance with nature and nurture.