Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a condition in which the perception of senses are all jumbled up. Someone with this ability perceive one stimulus with more than  one sense. They may be able to smell certain numbers or see different colors and shapes associated with a person. This may seem weird or hard to imagine, but to me, it sounds really cool! Just to check if you have this amazing superpower, take a look at this picture. Can you figure out what shape the 2's are in?

It actually took me a while! So I guess I'm not a synesthete, unfortunately. However, if you were able to figure it out quickly, that doesn't mean you're one. It all depends on how you figured it out. Certain synesthetes can see numbers as certain colors so they would have been able to pick out the triangle of twos fairly quickly. It might have looked something like this.

There are many different types of synesthesia though. Some people can feel certain sounds on their body, some people taste things as colors, while others can see smells as funky shapes! There are a million different ways this condition manifests itself, but it all has to do with "joined perception" of different senses. 

Its origins are very mysterious. One theory is that the brains of these synesthetes have crossed wiring. When babies are born, their brains contain way more connections that are really needed and after time, they are disposed off, but maybe some of these connections, specifically the ones between different sensory processing areas, remain connected through life. This could cause the mixed signals between different senses. 

Although it's not really understood, I think this is really cool condition. The people who have it are sometimes bullied or made fun of as children so they learn to hide it. I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of! In fact, sometimes it can be an advantage! People with this condition are usually better at learning complex theories because they have the added assistance of other senses to help them understand.

If you think you might have this condition, click on this link to try and determine if you have it! It should adjust itself to see which specific type you have since theres many different forms of it!

Korsakoff's Syndrome

Alcohol misuse can cause a lot of issues. But did you know that chronic alcohol abuse can cause problems such as an inability to remember recent events, memory gaps, and even trouble learning new information? These are all characteristics of Korsakoff's Syndrome, which can be caused by alcohol abuse. The actual physiological cause is a deficiency of thiamine. This can be due to anorexia, starvation, vomitings, AIDS, dialysis, as well as heavy drinking. These can all lead to thiamine deficiency.
Korsakoff's Syndrome can cause different types of memory problems. One symptom is retrograde amnesia. This is a loss of memory of events that happened before the onset of the disease. For example, someone might lose memories of their childhood. Another symptom is anterograde amnesia which is a bit more interesting. This is a loss of the ability to form new memories. A person cannot make new memories so they don't remember anything prior to the start of the disease. For example, a person might wake up 25 years after getting this syndrome and not know that its been 25 years! This is what happened to Drew Barrymore in the movie  50 First Dates.
The most interesting symptom of Korsakoff's Syndrome is confabulation. This is where someone has memory deficits and tries to fill in the missing information by guessing. However, they don't realize that they are making up information; they think its true! It isn't the same as lying because they aren't trying to deceive. They can even be influenced to think a certain way. If they are trying to fill in a memory gap, and they are told that something happened, they will believe it and even 'remember' it happening.
This website explains very clearly the causes, symptoms and treatments of Korsakoff's Syndrome. 

Aphasia: Broca's vs. Wernicke's

Aphasia is a disorder caused by damage to the area of the brain that controls language. It can cause difficulty speaking, comprehending speech, writing, gesturing, and reading. Specific types of aphasia are characterized by the different areas of the brain that are damaged and the slight differences in symptoms. There are two types of aphasia that are very similar but have profound differences. They are Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia. Broca's aphasia involves damage to Broca's area. This is in the  left frontal lobe. Wernicke's area is in the left temporal lobe. They are connected via the arcuate fasciculus.

 Broca's aphasia, also known as nonfluent aphasia, is difficulty in forming or comprehending coherent, complex sentences. People with this type of aphasia often speak awkwardly, in very simple sentences because they can no longer understand complex grammar. They often leave out helping verbs, prepositions, and other flowery words. They only speak with nouns and verbs, and sometimes have trouble with even that. They also have trouble with sentences like "the man was bitten by the dog". This seems simple, but the inversion of the noun and the verb throw them off.

This video shows a patient with damage to Broca's area trying to describe a picture. A simple description of this picture is  "a mother is washing dishes while two children use a stool to steal cookies from a cookie jar" You can see how difficult this is for her.

Wernicke's aphasia, on the other hand,  is also known as fluent aphasia. The real problem is speech comprehension. They don't really understand what they hear. They also have speech impairment but in a different way. They speak fluently, unlike the woman in the Broca's aphasia video. However, they cannot recall words so they make up words instead. There are two different types of made-up words and patients use either or both of them. One type is  paraphasia. An example of this is if the patient wanted to say "cook", but said "took" or "sook" instead. The other type is neologism. This is a total made up word. For example, if they wanted to say "cook" and said "skucker" instead. Also, unlike patients with Broca's aphasia, they don't even notice that their speech is impaired, or that they don't understand something. This type of aphasia can be difficult to treat since the patient doesn't even realize that something is wrong.

In this video, you can see that the man with Wernicke's aphasia doesn't realize that he is answering the questions wrong. He doesn't seem to even understand what is being asked of him. 

As you can see, these disorders seem similar but are actually very different. People with these disorders usually respond well to speech therapy.