A question! (Biology and Medicine)

[Sherona]

Why are humans Prone to forget dreams, even when they seem so vivid upon waking. (over simplified question, :P)

[Nitewalk]

Why are humans Prone to forget dreams, even when they seem so vivid upon waking. (over simplified question, :P)

Due to the nature of human memory, that's the short answer. Over time detail fades from our memories until even the most vivid memories of your life can sometimes be something totally different than what actually happened in reality. This is why psychiatrists can implant memories into people under hypnosis and why individual perception of events (particularly when recalled years later) cannot always be trusted.

This is why I always write down my dreams (the ones I care to preserve) right after I wake up. :)

[Sherona]

Dreams tend to fade even faster then normal memory (or else wouldn't be much of a question) A little hint, Stumpell is the name of the author of the theory I am thinking of :)(not really a theory..more like a conjecture)


Edit: However your answer is partially correct but there is two more parts to this theory that all work in tandem together to cause our dreams to fade so quicklly :D

[Nitewalk]

I would imagine dream memories are created differently than real memories, so maybe that's why dream memories fade and real memories tend to be more vivid, longer...but then how could people experience sleep paralysis, experience being attacked as if it were happening in reality, and believe in their experiences wholeheartedly and refuse to believe they were dreams? Hmm.

Edit: Of course I could get into whether it's really a dream or a real entity attack... that's a whole other topic.

[Sherona]

Ok here is the complete answer in short.

http://www.psywww.com/books/interp/chap01d.htm

The first factor is as Nitewalk has stated, the normal reasons for forgetfulness in waking moments, happen to the dreamworld to. The second factor is the human mind tend to forget the one time events that occur and focus more on the repetitive (which is why people's long term memory over a single event can not be trusted as well as their long term memory about a routine event) Of much greater significance is a third cause of forgetting. In order that feelings, representations, ideas and the like should attain a certain degree of memorability, it is important that they should not remain isolated, but that they should enter into connections and associations of an appropriate nature. If the words of a verse of poetry are taken and mixed together, it will be very difficult to remember them. "Properly placed, in a significant sequence, one word helps another, and the whole, making sense, remains and is easily and lastingly fixed in the memory.

:)

Is someone elses turn to pose a question :D

[Sherona]

Queen Anne's Lace can be used in what process of making fabrics?

[Sherona]

*grins* I didn't know you wanted an explanation on what each was :) The eplanation was on the site I ot the info from, just kept it short and sweet :)


What function does Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum play?

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum's function is to synthesize and export proteins and glycoproteins. 

For a response question, why does the AV node of the heart delay the contraction?

[Sherona]

nice job Asku :D I will try and let someone else answer that question to give others a chance to play :D

[Vekseid]

I had to cheat and get a hint, Sherona provided this link about natural dyes for fabric.

Apparently, the seeds were also used as a natural contraceptive - interesting stuff for fantasy worlds.

Since you asked such a womanly question... :-p

[Sherona]

It is believed by many individuals that humans beat out primates like Chimpanzee's in all cognitive functions. Recent study has shown that this is not true, Chimpanzee's show one form of cognitive functions that best homosapiens. Indentify this function.

[strangely made]

Memory, specifically numerical recollection.

My turn.

In String theory is is possible to construct a string where the left-moving excitations think they live on a bosonic string propagating in D = 26 dimensions and the right-moving excitations think they belong to a superstring in D = 10 dimensions.

The mismatched 16 dimensions must be compactified on an even, self-dual lattice
How ever there are two possible even self-dual lattices in 16 dimensions, and it leads to two types of the heterotic string.

What are they?

[Sherona]

Yaay for S. :)

[Vekseid]

Post that under Physics, Strangely :-p

[strangely made]

Bugger...........that's what you get for posting when your not really with it.

[Vekseid]

I don't particularly much care for the study, myself - chimps naturally have faster reaction times so upping the speed rather than the complexity does not convince me.

Question! Near the human nose there appears to be a dilapidated organ that functions as another potential sensory organ, but is neither sight nor smell, but is still thought to be partially functional despite a great deal of atrophy. What is this sense?

[strangely made]

Would it be the vomeronasal organ (Jacobson's organ)?
Situated at the anterior edge of the neural plate and enclosed in a separate bony or cartilaginous capsule which opens into the base of the nasal cavity. It's a chemoreceptor organ and potentially used to detect specific chemical compounds contained within scents that are often, but not always, large non-volatile molecules.

There is controversy about whether adults have functioning VNO's although The presence of a VNO in human embryos goes undisputed In fact, the human embryonic VNO possesses bipolar cells and luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) producing cells.

[Vekseid]

The organ I am referring to has nothing to do with chemical analysis and lies between the eyes.

[Sherona]

*gives up* every search I do gives me about 7 pages of articles about the Vomeronasal organ..and can't read any more about "the Sex Organ Up the Nose"...>.>

[Vekseid]

Magnetoception is the sense of magnetic fields, commonly possessed in birds and other animals, including, it is believed, bees.

Humans apparently have a small deposit of magnetite in the ethmoid bone, and some studies to suggest that humans possess a rudimentary compass. It is easily thrown off by visual cues, but blind studies have shown that humans are capable of telling direction which nearby magnets are capable of disrupting.

[Sherona]

Thats interesting :D I hadn't heard about this yet.

[strangely made]

So that why you get the little tingly sensation if you put something close but not touching just between the eyes?...........cool.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Well, nobody seemed to like my last question.  So here's another one.  Not sure if you can google answer this one nor do I even know if I'm asking it the right way.  Yet, here we go.


Post-op patient goes immediately into respiratory arrest while still on the surgery table.  There is no exchange of gases occurring in the lungs and so the CO2 levels are high.  Staff begins resuscitation of the patient.  Before the patient is intubated, the physician begins to administer epinephrine.  The patient receives nearly 15mg of epinephrine over the course of ten minutes to little effect.  Patient is then successfully intubated and gas exchange is achieved.  Suddenly the patient’s heart rate and pressure increases dramatically.

What caused the sudden rise in pressure and heart rate?

[Vekseid]

For a response question, why does the AV node of the heart delay the contraction?

Eeep.

In order to give time for the Atria have released blood into the ventricles before the heart contracts?

Post-op patient goes immediately into respiratory arrest while still on the surgery table.  There is no exchange of gases occurring in the lungs and so the CO2 levels are high.  Staff begins resuscitation of the patient.  Before the patient is intubated, the physician begins to administer epinephrine.  The patient receives nearly 15mg of epinephrine over the course of ten minutes to little effect.  Patient is then successfully intubated and gas exchange is achieved.  Suddenly the patient’s heart rate and pressure increases dramatically.

What caused the sudden rise in pressure and heart rate?

Epinephrine is adrenaline, apparently :-p

[Vekseid]

What mechanisms cause aging, and what can be done to stop or even reverse the process, at least in theory?

(There is a rather lot to this answer).

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Correct on both.  Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to ask the neat part about the second question, so I'll just say cause I think it's neat.  Cardon Dioxide is often packaged in the form of acid.  So when there is an abundance of the substance in your body, such as with being unable to breath, your body goes into respiratory acidosis.  Obviously if you can't breath, your body cannot compensate for this.  Looking back over the case, I think the patient's pH level was near 7.1.  When pH goes below normal, proteins and hormones begin to slow.  Epinephrine is included in this affect.  So in this case, the epinephrine was floating around this patient's body but could not bind properly to its sites.  When the team intubated him and begin allowing the body to compensate, blowing off the CO2 and helping restore body pH to normal, the epinephrine could suddenly work.  So in an instant, you have a patient with near no pulse or pressure going through the roof and eventually dying.  I believe the heartrate was in the 280s and the pressure was like...240/180 or something ridiculous like that. 


As for aging, I used to know this one.  There is something in the cell that slowly winds down each time the cell begins to reproduce.  I forget the name, but basically as it begins to shorten in length the cell loses his ability to reproduce itself.  Oddly enough cancer cells do not have this particular trait and are immortal if given the correct amount of nutrients.  I've heard of their being research into using that trait to reverse this aspect of aging.

[Vekseid]

Telomerase is the term you are thinking of.

Only a partial answer of a partial answer, though :-p  It is a big problem.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Since the medical thread fell into some neglect, I felt a small need to give it a pulse.  So let's start with something morbid.  One of the injections given for the death penalty is potassium chloride.  Why does this stop the heart so effectively?

[Question Mark]

Potassium chloride, having such a high acidity, instantly throws off the pH balance in the bloodstream.  Since pH is used to goven nueronical impulses that control muscles, it throws the nervous system into an "unrecoverable state of shock".  Unrecoverable because once that potassium chloride hits the heart, the cardiac muscles sieze up from the unbalanced pH level.  Without the heart pumping, and the entire cardiac nervous system shut down (not to mention all the nerves that the potassium chloride encountered along the way), the brain is deprived of oxygen, as is the entire rest of the body, resulting in tissue necrosis.  After several minutes, the necrosis is irreversible, and the inmate is pronounced dead.

This happens so quickly because the potassium chloride is injected directly into the vein.  Within two pumps, the majority of that salt will be pumped directly into the heart.  The actual necrosis and dying part takes another two-to-three minutes.  But, for all intents and purposes, if that gets into your heart, you're dead meat.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Been awhile I know and I'm sort of ressurecting here, but I love this subject.  I've been wanting to bring it back for awhile but was sorta traumatized after physiology.  Anyway, Question Mark has a well thought out answer but not quite there.  Indeed with an injection of potassium chloride the pH levels would decrease and while some may be due to potassium, most of it is due to respitory failure.  If pH levels were lessened to such an extent, we would see rapid and shallow breathing in the person.  Descriptions say the person looks like they simply went to sleep. 

There is indeed an imbalance with pH and pH does play a role in neurological impulses.  Its role is more biochemical though as reactions will not occur under certain pH conditions.  The imblance is more eletrical between sodium and potassium, which governs cell membrane potential.  The diffusion of sodium into the cell versus the diffusion of potassium into the cell establishes the membrane potential.  That gradient is vital for life and is closely regulated by the cell.  Too much sodium in and potassium out, the cell activates the sodium/potassium pump to correct.  This balance is very precarious and a great deal of ATP is invested by the cells in maintaining it.

The large injection of potassium into the bloodstream destroys that diffusion gradiet.  No membrance potential, no action potential generation, no heart contraction and death soon follows.  This can be seen on an EKG as the person goes into ventricular tachycardia with the QRS wave becomes wider and taller.  This displays a growing length of time in the heart's contractions as it cannot depolarize and repolarize as fast.

The pH explanation may be more applicable to a more chronic form of hyperalemia.

[Question Mark]

*medical terms makes my mind go fuzzy*

Nice explanation there.  After I looked up the bigger words, it made perfect sense.  :p

There is currently only one place on Earth's upper crust that is suspected of having absolutely no life what-so-ever.  Name it and give three reasons why some believe life cannot exist there.