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Second Pearl and Valentin anivesario

Herd Bambi celebrates the second anniversary of the adoption of Pearl and her son Valentin

Perla, is jet black, joined the Herd the 30 Bambi April 2008, when he was a baby 10 months and 20 days he called Valentine.

Valentine has grown a lot since I came home today is an adult cat that exceeds the size and weight of his loving mother Pearl, who has continued to protect his Bebot.

We wish our honorees

and Bambi Herd

a

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY.

New, Voodoo-Free fMRI Technique

MIT brain scanners Fedorenko et al present A new method for fMRI investigations of language: Defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects. Also on the list of authors is Nancy Kanwisher, one of the feared fMRI voodoo correlations posse.

The paper describes a technique for mapping out the "language areas" of the brain in individual people, not for their own sake, but as a way of improving other fMRI studies of language. That's important because while everyone's brain is organized roughly the same way, there are always individual differences in the shape, size and location of the different regions.

This is a problem for fMRI researchers. Suppose you scan 10 people and show them pictures of apples and pictures of pears. And suppose that apples activate the brain's Fruit Cortex much more strongly than pears. But unfortunately, the Fruit Cortex is a small area, and its location varies between people. In fact, in your 10 subjects, no-one's Fruit Cortex overlaps with anyone else's, even though everyone has one and they all work exactly the same way.

If you did this experiment you'd fail to find the effect of apples vs. pears, even though it's a strong effect, because there will be no one place in the brain where apples reliably cause more activation. What you need is a way of finding the Fruit Cortex in each person beforehand. What you'd need to do is a functional localization scan - say, showing people a big bowl of fruit - as a preliminary step.

Fedorenko et al scanned a bunch of people while doing a simple reading task, and compared that to a control condition, reading a random list of nonsense which makes no linguistic sense. As you can see, there's a lot of variation between people, but there's also clearly a basic pattern of activation: it looks a bit like a tilted "V" on the left side of the brain:

These are the language areas of each person. (Incidentally, this is why fMRI, despite its limitations, is an amazing technology. There is no better way of measuring this activation. EEG is cheaper but nowhere near as good at localizing activity; PET is close, but it's slow, expensive and involves injecting people with radioactivity.)

Fedorenko et al then overlapped all the individual images to produce of map of the brain showing how many people got activation in each part:

The most robust activations were on the left side of the brain, and they formed a nice "V" shape again. These are the areas which have long been known to be involved in language, so this is not surprising in itself.

Here's the clever bit: they then took the areas activated in a large % of people, and automatically divided them up into sub-regions; each of the "peaks" where an especially large proportion of subjects showed activation became a separate region.

This is on the assumption that these peaks represent parts of the brain with distinct functions - separate "language modules" as it were. But each module will be in a slightly different place in each person (see the first picture). So they overlapped the subdivisions with the individual activation blobs to get a set of individual functional zones they call Group-constrained Subject-Specific functional Regions of Interest, or GcSSfROIs to their friends.

Fedorenko et al claim various advantages to this technique, and present data showing that it produces nice results in independent subjects (i.e. not the ones they used to make the group map in the first place.)

In particular, they argue that it should allow future fMRI studies to have a better chance of finding the specific functions of each region. So far, experiments using fMRI to investigate language have largely failed to find activations specific to particular aspects of language like grammar, word meaning, etc. which is unexpected because patients suffering lesions to specific areas often do show very selective language problems.

Does this relate to the voodoo correlations issue? Indirectly, yes. The voodoo (non-independence error) problem arises when you do a large number of comparisons, and then focus on the "best" results, because these are likely to be wholly, or partially, only that good by chance.

Fedorenko et al's method allows you to avoid doing lots of comparisons in the first place. Instead of looking all over the whole brain for something interesting, you can first do a preliminary scan to map out where in each person's brain interesting stuff is likely to happen, and then focus on those bits in the real experiment.

There's still a multiple-comparisons problem: Fedorenko et al identified 16 candidate language areas per brain, and future studies could well provide more. But that's nothing compared to the 40,000 voxels in a typical whole-brain analysis. We'll have to wait and see if this technique proves useful in the real world, but it's an interesting idea...

Fedorenko, E., Hsieh, P., Nieto Castanon, A., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., & Kanwisher, N. (2010). A new method for fMRI investigations of language: Defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects Journal of Neurophysiology DOI: 10.1152/jn.00032.2010

New, Voodoo-Free fMRI Technique

MIT brain scanners Fedorenko et al present A new method for fMRI investigations of language: Defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects. Also on the list of authors is Nancy Kanwisher, one of the feared fMRI voodoo correlations posse.

The paper describes a technique for mapping out the "language areas" of the brain in individual people, not for their own sake, but as a way of improving other fMRI studies of language. That's important because while everyone's brain is organized roughly the same way, there are always individual differences in the shape, size and location of the different regions.

This is a problem for fMRI researchers. Suppose you scan 10 people and show them pictures of apples and pictures of pears. And suppose that apples activate the brain's Fruit Cortex much more strongly than pears. But unfortunately, the Fruit Cortex is a small area, and its location varies between people. In fact, in your 10 subjects, no-one's Fruit Cortex overlaps with anyone else's, even though everyone has one and they all work exactly the same way.

If you did this experiment you'd fail to find the effect of apples vs. pears, even though it's a strong effect, because there will be no one place in the brain where apples reliably cause more activation. What you need is a way of finding the Fruit Cortex in each person beforehand. What you'd need to do is a functional localization scan - say, showing people a big bowl of fruit - as a preliminary step.

Fedorenko et al scanned a bunch of people while doing a simple reading task, and compared that to a control condition, reading a random list of nonsense which makes no linguistic sense. As you can see, there's a lot of variation between people, but there's also clearly a basic pattern of activation: it looks a bit like a tilted "V" on the left side of the brain:

These are the language areas of each person. (Incidentally, this is why fMRI, despite its limitations, is an amazing technology. There is no better way of measuring this activation. EEG is cheaper but nowhere near as good at localizing activity; PET is close, but it's slow, expensive and involves injecting people with radioactivity.)

Fedorenko et al then overlapped all the individual images to produce of map of the brain showing how many people got activation in each part:

The most robust activations were on the left side of the brain, and they formed a nice "V" shape again. These are the areas which have long been known to be involved in language, so this is not surprising in itself.

Here's the clever bit: they then took the areas activated in a large % of people, and automatically divided them up into sub-regions; each of the "peaks" where an especially large proportion of subjects showed activation became a separate region.

This is on the assumption that these peaks represent parts of the brain with distinct functions - separate "language modules" as it were. But each module will be in a slightly different place in each person (see the first picture). So they overlapped the subdivisions with the individual activation blobs to get a set of individual functional zones they call Group-constrained Subject-Specific functional Regions of Interest, or GcSSfROIs to their friends.

Fedorenko et al claim various advantages to this technique, and present data showing that it produces nice results in independent subjects (i.e. not the ones they used to make the group map in the first place.)

In particular, they argue that it should allow future fMRI studies to have a better chance of finding the specific functions of each region. So far, experiments using fMRI to investigate language have largely failed to find activations specific to particular aspects of language like grammar, word meaning, etc. which is unexpected because patients suffering lesions to specific areas often do show very selective language problems.

Does this relate to the voodoo correlations issue? Indirectly, yes. The voodoo (non-independence error) problem arises when you do a large number of comparisons, and then focus on the "best" results, because these are likely to be wholly, or partially, only that good by chance.

Fedorenko et al's method allows you to avoid doing lots of comparisons in the first place. Instead of looking all over the whole brain for something interesting, you can first do a preliminary scan to map out where in each person's brain interesting stuff is likely to happen, and then focus on those bits in the real experiment.

There's still a multiple-comparisons problem: Fedorenko et al identified 16 candidate language areas per brain, and future studies could well provide more. But that's nothing compared to the 40,000 voxels in a typical whole-brain analysis. We'll have to wait and see if this technique proves useful in the real world, but it's an interesting idea...

Fedorenko, E., Hsieh, P., Nieto Castanon, A., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., & Kanwisher, N. (2010). A new method for fMRI investigations of language: Defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects Journal of Neurophysiology DOI: 10.1152/jn.00032.2010

BOM DIA!!

MEUS QUERIDOS AMIGOS, VENHO RAPIDINHO AQUI AGRADECER A TODOS.
SEI QUE NÃO ESTOU CONSEGUINDO VIM TODOS OS DIAS.
MAS, TE DIGO: ESTÁ SEMPRE COMIGO, DENTRO DO MEU CORAÇÃO.
NA SEGUNDA A NOITE, QUANDO ESTAVA QUERENDO IR TE VISITAR, FIQUEI SEM NET, EM FUNÇÃO DAS CHUVAS POR AQUI..
MAS DEIXO O MEU ABRAÇO E O MEU CARINHO.
UM LINDO DIA PARA TODOS..

MUITO OBRIGADA PELO SEU CARINHO. AMO CADA UM QUE PASSA POR AQUI...

UM GRANDE ABRAÇO..BEM FORTE E UM GRANDE BEIJO NO SEU CORAÇÃO...

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Meus Mimos-E SEUS PRESENTES-

SANDRA

Head Trip

A quick post to recommend the 2007 book Head Trip, by Jeff Warren.

Head Trip is about "24 hours in the life of your brain": sleeping, waking, and everything in-between, from lucid dreaming to daydreams and hypnosis.

Warren gives a nice overview of current research and theory along with the story of his personal quest to experience the full spectrum of conciousness.

The book's most interesting chapter is called "The Watch". It's about that hour or two of wakefulness which occurs in the middle of the night, between the first sleep and the second sleep. You know the one...right? Neither did I, but apparently, this makes us a bit weird, historically speaking.

Warren says that until the era of artificial lighting and alarm clocks, sleep was segmented. It was common for people to sleep twice each night, with a bout of awakeness in the middle. This nocturnal alertness wasn't quite like daytime waking, though: it was more relaxed, less focussed, carefree. Our modern sleep pattern, then, is kind of compressed, with the two sleeps pushed together until they merge into one.

There are two lines of evidence for this. Writings from the pre-modern era routinely make reference to "first sleep" and "second sleep", and in many languages, although not modern English, there were special words for these periods and the wakefulness between. This is according to historian A. Roger Ekirch in his history of night-time, At Day's Close (review, Wiki), a book I really want to read now.

On the other hand, there's the findings of sleep psychiatrist Thomas Wehr, in particular his classic 1992 study called In short photoperiods, human sleep is biphasic. Wehr took healthy American volunteers and put them in an artificial environment with a controlled light cycle, such that there were only 10 hours of brightness per day. (That's 6 hours less than we get on average, even in winter, due to artificial light.) Within a few weeks "their sleep episodes expanded and usually divided into two symmetrical bouts, several hours in duration, with a 1-3 h waking interval between them."

This is pretty freaky. Sleeping all night seems natural, normal and healthy: if we wake up before we need to get up, we're dismayed and we call it insomnia. Maybe this is a modern invention like electric lighting. There's something amazing and also a bit disturbing about this idea. As Warren says, it's like finding out that your house "is really the exposed bell-tower of a vast underground cathedral".

Head Trip

A quick post to recommend the 2007 book Head Trip, by Jeff Warren.

Head Trip is about "24 hours in the life of your brain": sleeping, waking, and everything in-between, from lucid dreaming to daydreams and hypnosis.

Warren gives a nice overview of current research and theory along with the story of his personal quest to experience the full spectrum of conciousness.

The book's most interesting chapter is called "The Watch". It's about that hour or two of wakefulness which occurs in the middle of the night, between the first sleep and the second sleep. You know the one...right? Neither did I, but apparently, this makes us a bit weird, historically speaking.

Warren says that until the era of artificial lighting and alarm clocks, sleep was segmented. It was common for people to sleep twice each night, with a bout of awakeness in the middle. This nocturnal alertness wasn't quite like daytime waking, though: it was more relaxed, less focussed, carefree. Our modern sleep pattern, then, is kind of compressed, with the two sleeps pushed together until they merge into one.

There are two lines of evidence for this. Writings from the pre-modern era routinely make reference to "first sleep" and "second sleep", and in many languages, although not modern English, there were special words for these periods and the wakefulness between. This is according to historian A. Roger Ekirch in his history of night-time, At Day's Close (review, Wiki), a book I really want to read now.

On the other hand, there's the findings of sleep psychiatrist Thomas Wehr, in particular his classic 1992 study called In short photoperiods, human sleep is biphasic. Wehr took healthy American volunteers and put them in an artificial environment with a controlled light cycle, such that there were only 10 hours of brightness per day. (That's 6 hours less than we get on average, even in winter, due to artificial light.) Within a few weeks "their sleep episodes expanded and usually divided into two symmetrical bouts, several hours in duration, with a 1-3 h waking interval between them."

This is pretty freaky. Sleeping all night seems natural, normal and healthy: if we wake up before we need to get up, we're dismayed and we call it insomnia. Maybe this is a modern invention like electric lighting. There's something amazing and also a bit disturbing about this idea. As Warren says, it's like finding out that your house "is really the exposed bell-tower of a vast underground cathedral".

Bubblegum Necklace

I like this necklace that Jessica made. I wish I knew how to crochet this well to make one. But the good news is that Jessica is giving it away at Newly Wife. My Dad said I could enter the giveaway. I really hope I win it! :) C

Busy Week

I'm still tired from last week. But I had a lot of fun! It was fun to see Joe again. He used to live here too. In our town. But his dad got transferred and they moved to Utah. But we still see each other at the different conferences. My Dad pays for him to go. He thinks it's important for us to learn about our culture.

Our show went really well on Saturday. Sunday we went to see lots of groups perform. We got to sing too! And my Dad and me ate lots of food! That's our favorite thing to do at things like this. I also bought lots of jewelry, monos, and ribbons. We got my Nana some too! She likes these earrings.

Joe went home early Monday morning. We came home later in the afternoon. Our bags are still at the door! We haven't unpacked. Because I had to go back to school yesterday. And my Dad went back to work.

Last night we had a long dance rehearsal. I'm glad we don't have one today. I'm really tired. And I got all my homework done before we came back. I'm ahead of my classes because my Dad got my work before we left. I finished it. And my classes haven't gotten that far yet!

Tonight I think I'm going to bed early. I'm really tired. But we had so much fun last week! It's just sad that it only happens a few times a year! There are 4 conferences that I like to go to most. I'm glad my Dad teaches at them and that I get to go. :) C

Medical Images Ofmale Erection

When differences are noted ...

always try to be positive.
This road that we had to move is very hard and often are the days where everything seems to cost more. Days when you feel you're walking uphill and is at the end of those days where, at nightfall, although fatigue is extreme, one is revealed at the ceiling of his room thinking about many things at once While it seems that thoughts, anxiety and millions of questions are entangled with each other. The latter
days I felt well.
I always like to see the glass half full rather than half empty. That was always my letter of salvation to the time when the sadness and why they wanted (and still want) invading.
"My son goes to power" is something that I always say to start each day.
And in those gray days where I feel (as I said earlier) that instead of walking on a flat track, road and climbed a mountain at a time, are your laughter, your kisses and your deep brown eyes, which I make you feel that you're on top by pulling the end of a rope to help me up and so to be by your side to follow teaching me to enjoy the little things along with you. Never
I like to compare. I think there has been a success at all. Every time we go to a place together, I let you play as you want, I know that if you feel like you're going to bring to play with a baby, or are you going to allow anyone to approach and play with your buckets and spend some time with them. But when you feel like and just amuse you or tirándote climbing down the slide or you Rock your asking me, while all the other boys play together, I respect you. Are your time, not mine that matter.
The weekend we went to the house of your uncles (my cousins) who met 11 years of marriage. Were you happy when you said you were going to the house of Matthew (son, your cousin) to adore. Matthew is a year and a month longer than you, but despite this difference is love and he is happy every time he learns to be seen. It's great with you, you always pay their toys and you have infinite patience, and enjoy your company.
When we got was also the cousin of Matthew (by the mother) who is your age and who saw no more than three times, but you remembered it when you name it.
is all very well behaved and interacted with them at times, but were the least. When they call you asking you to play or something you seemed to be locked in a little bubble, or not hear, and not even look at you turn. When you play a hard time playing "properly" with toys and if you grabbed a doll instead of doing what others were doing, like make walking or jumping, you were dragged them out of hand and you'd the hall to throw in the air. Of course, as they are small and you do not understand why you did that and I looked puzzled and even laughed at how you act. After several anger from your cousin because he clutched toy toy you dragged them out of the hand to play "your way" and taking advantage of calm I had a toy garage and many toy cars, provided they are asked to entertain you with that. As you played the cousin of Matthew and he asked me: "Why not talk Valentine?" or "I speak but I do not want to hear." And I'd say "What happens is that it is small that you and I can not talk, because he is shy, you have to give her patience and help."
immediately began playing with the car with you, although it was actually next to you, because they'll talk and you see how you kept submerged in the little car going down each of the floors of the garage to put it on the downhills (as chute) in sides.
Until they began to keep the bells and whistles because your aunt promised them ice cream and candy to you, it was with all that played.
All who were present congratulated me that night how beautiful you were and how much better you were. They do not see very often, only your cousin's birthday or those of their parents (my cousins, your uncles). So, I comforted me enough to listen to these things.
They died for love, when you saw the cocaine and asked him a little to the mother of the cousin of Matthew saying, "Mrs. po'favó coca." Or where to go say goodbye to everyone with a kiss. You're a sweet, nobody can deny. You do not have drama when sharing kisses, lol!.
I felt strange that night and I told your dad.
It's like having the sole purpose to help get you ahead and make progress every day, do not look Furthermore more than that: forward, and nothing else.
I am proud of the steps you give and that's what sustains me to follow. Your new words, phone pranks and antics, the cute things Lucia (your inclusive) tells me that you do in the garden, how smart she and your therapists believe that you are, or when you tell me how you played with a playmate the room and the next day to talk to Lucia I see that it is true that in the garden you play with your friends and enjoy their company and they of yours. Are each of these things that make you (as I said earlier) see the glass as half full rather than half empty.
But every so often when I look at "the sides" and I am I can see that interacting or not with kids your age (in this case your cousin), I think, "There is a yawning gap to cross yet, perhaps every day we get a little closer and that gap is slightly narrower, but always going to be there. " Able to grow as you follow the differences more noticeable or not, I do not know.
I know that nothing leads me to think so. Not for nothing I'm two years in this way. I know what thoughts are productive for me and what not. But there are times when I can not avoid them. And I feel a big lump in the throat, the knot that makes me want to mourn, but smile to see your attempt to swallow for not shedding a tear.
Today I choose your smile once again, hold me to that contagious laugh and laugh with you, and think again as the morning, "My son is going to achieve."
do not know if I'll be right, but as I get the air live for that and only that. I will live to be happy, to love, to celebrate each accomplishment as if it were only to continue to consider each of them large and small miracles that, thank God, I can be a witness.
I enjoy your joy, that pure love that only you reside in your little big heart of all who know you are in love. Of these "Tinc kisses mom" (five kisses mom!) You give me every night before bed repeat with your sweet little voice as I go shaping the face (a, do, tees, kato, tinca).
I know this road is hard, and that rather than try to see everything is always in a positive way, often not going to achieve and I will not know how to handle it. And many times instead of repeating the phrase that I think every morning when I wake up, my mind will be some, "I'm tired, I can."
But I also know (and that's my fortune) that every morning my sadness will go flying away, waiting to return to me at any time, when you turn your eyes to see cheeky new sunrise, your smile so perfect and your voice very slowly (as for not wanting to wake) as standing on tiptoe, I say, "Hi Mom! vamo a Jadine! (Hi Mom, go to the garden!)

Today once again choose your joy and your desire to be happy:


I tell you a million times a day, but one more will not hurt you?: BOLD I LOVE YOU MY LIFE!

How Can I Transfer Money Off Of A Biolife Card

Bambi Bambi First anniversary of Daphne Moon Happy Birthday

The Bambi Pack celebrates the first anniversary of adoption of the cat Daphne.

Daphne, was adopted on April 26, 2009, in Concepción, Chile, when he was 3 months. It was a cat with long, straight hair and was sick.

Before being adopted by his human Cris, small reception and Daphne had been abandoned twice. Cris met her at a veterinary clinic, was shivering in a cage and could not take her in his arms. The kitten was grateful for the affection of one human being shy purrs. This first contact led to Daphne part of the family Bambi.

His human mind in its flog that Daphne is shy and affectionate cat, who can play with his brothers and specifically agrees with Benjamin, his kitty brother with which he grew up. It's scary to strangers but loves humans and recognizes the family that adopted it.

HAPPY FIRST ANNIVERSARY DAPHNE!

LIÇÃO DE VIDA.

ESTRELAS DO MAR

UM HOMEM CAMINHAVA AO PÔR DO SOL EM QUE UMA PRAIA MEXICANA.

À MEDIDA QUE CAMINHAVA, COMEÇOU AVISTAR OUTRO HOMEM A DISTANCIA.

AO SE APROXIMAR DO NATIVO, NOTOU QUE ELE SE INCLINAVA,

"APANHAVA ALGO E ATIRAVA NA ÁGUA. AO SE APROXIMAR AINDA MAIS,

NOTOU QUE O HOMEM APANHAVA ESTRELAS DO MAR NA PRAIA E, UMA DE CADA VEZ, AS LANÇAVA DE VOLTA À ÁGUA.

INTRIGADO, APROXIMAU-SE DO HOMEM E DISSE:

- BOM TARDE, AMIGO. ESTAVA TENTANDO ADIVINHAR O QUE VOCÊ ESTÁ FAZEND

O. O HOMEM RESPONDEU:

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BAIXA E TODAS AS ESTRELAS DO MAR FORAM TRAZIDAS PARA A PRIA. SE EU NÃO

AS LANÇAR DE VOLTA AO MAR, ELAS MORRERÃO POR FALTA DE OXIGÊNIO.

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PRAIAS ACIMA E ABAIXO DESTA COSTA. VÊ QUE NÃO FARÁ DIFERENÇA ALGUMA?

O NATIVO SORRIU, CURVOU-SE APANHOU UMA OUTRA ESTRELA DO MAR E, AO ARREMESSÁ-LA DE VOLTA AO MAR, REPLICOU

-FEZ DIFERENÇA PARA AQUELA.

NUNCA CONSIDERE UMA BOA AÇÃO INSIGNIFICANTE, MESMO QUE SEJA ELA ATINJA POUCOS,

OU ATÉ MESMO UMA ÚNICA PESSOA. SE CADA UM FIZER A SUA PARTE, O MUNDO SERÁ, COM CERTEZA, MELHOR".

PENSE NISSO.

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AGRADEÇO A TODOS QUE PASSARAM PELA CURIOSA E PELA INTERAÇÃO DE AMIGOS E NOS DEMAIS BLOGS.

AGRADEÇO A VOCÊ QUE PARTICIPOU DA COLETIVA. TAMBÉM A VOCÊ QUE VEIO COMPARTILHAR DESTE MOMENTO.

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MUITO OBRIGADA PELO SEU CARINHO. AMO CADA UM QUE PASSA POR AQUI...

UM GRANDE ABRAÇO..BEM FORTE E UM GRANDE BEIJO NO SEU CORAÇÃO...

Poetas-Um Voo Livre

Sinal de Liberdade-uma expressão de sentimento-

Blog Coletivo-Uma Interação de Amigos- TEM COLETIVA DE ANIVER...

Meus Mimos-E SEUS PRESENTES-

SANDRA

I'm Bipolar, You're a Schizophrenic

Over at Comment is Free, Beatrice Bray takes issue with this cartoon (for those who don't follow British politics, the guy on the right is trying to win an election at the moment.)

The use of the word "psychotic" was offensive. You may think this political correctness gone mad, but if you are ill, or have been, you need words to describe your experience to yourself and to others. If for you these words are negative, you will hate yourself. Language can make or break your happiness. That is why mental health activists do not like psychiatric terms being used as abuse...

Hmm. Fair enough... but why would a sick person care if people insulted their illness? Cancer patients don't seem to be offended when things are called "a cancer on our society" or whatever, because not many cancer patients like cancer.

Maybe the clue is later on:

And please allow individuals an identity apart from their illness, so always say "a person with schizophrenia" rather than "a schizophrenic".

So the problem is that unlike cancer patients, the mentally ill aren't seen as people separate from their illness. That is a serious issue - but getting offended by someone using "psychotic" as a term of abuse surely only reinforces the idea that sufferers identify with it?

In fact, a lot of people with psychiatric illnesses don't follow Bray's advice when talking about themselves. "Bipolar", for example, is commonly used to describe people, rather than their illness - and many bipolars do this... bipolar people... people with bipolar disorder. Whatever.

On Google, "I'm bipolar" gets 247,000 hits and "I am bipolar" gets 235k, so that's about 500k in total. "I have bipolar" gets 576k - so "having" and "being" are about equally popular.

Likewise for schizophrenia, "I have schizophrenia" gets 174k, but "I'm schizophrenic" gets 136k, and "I am schizophrenic" 31k - almost equal again. "I'm a schizophrenic" gets 465k, mainly because of a movie, however if you exclude those you still get over 100k.

So if mental health activists want to reform the way we talk about mental illness, it's not just the "them" of the general public who need bringing into line. But I've never been convinced that changing what words people use about things like this is a good way of changing minds: it's an easy way to create the appearance of doing so, but actually changing minds is hard, and I don't think language reform is even a good first step.

You don't change minds by telling people to please change, you make them change by showing them examples of why they're wrong. If your aim is to convince that schizophrenia happens to people and doesn't define them, a movie like A Beautiful Mind (or more recently perhaps Shutter Island, although it takes a lot of artistic license with the symptoms of psychosis) is worth a thousand word-changes.

I'm Bipolar, You're a Schizophrenic

Over at Comment is Free, Beatrice Bray takes issue with this cartoon (for those who don't follow British politics, the guy on the right is trying to win an election at the moment.)

The use of the word "psychotic" was offensive. You may think this political correctness gone mad, but if you are ill, or have been, you need words to describe your experience to yourself and to others. If for you these words are negative, you will hate yourself. Language can make or break your happiness. That is why mental health activists do not like psychiatric terms being used as abuse...

Hmm. Fair enough... but why would a sick person care if people insulted their illness? Cancer patients don't seem to be offended when things are called "a cancer on our society" or whatever, because not many cancer patients like cancer.

Maybe the clue is later on:

And please allow individuals an identity apart from their illness, so always say "a person with schizophrenia" rather than "a schizophrenic".

So the problem is that unlike cancer patients, the mentally ill aren't seen as people separate from their illness. That is a serious issue - but getting offended by someone using "psychotic" as a term of abuse surely only reinforces the idea that sufferers identify with it?

In fact, a lot of people with psychiatric illnesses don't follow Bray's advice when talking about themselves. "Bipolar", for example, is commonly used to describe people, rather than their illness - and many bipolars do this... bipolar people... people with bipolar disorder. Whatever.

On Google, "I'm bipolar" gets 247,000 hits and "I am bipolar" gets 235k, so that's about 500k in total. "I have bipolar" gets 576k - so "having" and "being" are about equally popular.

Likewise for schizophrenia, "I have schizophrenia" gets 174k, but "I'm schizophrenic" gets 136k, and "I am schizophrenic" 31k - almost equal again. "I'm a schizophrenic" gets 465k, mainly because of a movie, however if you exclude those you still get over 100k.

So if mental health activists want to reform the way we talk about mental illness, it's not just the "them" of the general public who need bringing into line. But I've never been convinced that changing what words people use about things like this is a good way of changing minds: it's an easy way to create the appearance of doing so, but actually changing minds is hard, and I don't think language reform is even a good first step.

You don't change minds by telling people to please change, you make them change by showing them examples of why they're wrong. If your aim is to convince that schizophrenia happens to people and doesn't define them, a movie like A Beautiful Mind (or more recently perhaps Shutter Island, although it takes a lot of artistic license with the symptoms of psychosis) is worth a thousand word-changes.

Plica In Knee Surgery Recovery

BE A MOM SPECIAL ...

My beautiful "Chinaman blind, jiji!

be a special mom is having heart
warrior to withstand adversity

that gives life.

be a special mom is to be a teacher, is the best teacher

a special child can have.

be a special mom is having the courage and the courage
to overcome everyday challenges
is grabbing life
be heavily
God's hand and take the momentum for new challenges.

be a special mom is a woman blessed by God because God
, knew perfectly
that special child, was for her.
A special mom is a great woman
And God gave him to boot:
Fortaleza, faith, hope and a world

of patience and tolerance. Being a special mom

is a special gift.

Author: Juan Luna Delgado

To all my friends "special" ...
The love you!

nice weekend!

Our Big Show

Tonight is our big show. I get to wear a pretty dress like these ones. I think ours are even more beautiful! They have lots and lots of lace. My Dad was trying to steam mine this morning. And our aprons have lots of embroidery and sequence on them. I just wish my Nana was here to do my hair. She is really good at that.

My Tia Alicia is going to help me. And she brought lots of hairspray and bobbie pins. There is a hairpiece that you have to put in. I hope mine doesn't fall out! We also have to dance with a candle on top of our heads. I've done it a lot of times. But it still kind of scares me!

But I'm excited for tonight. We have a rehearsal in a little while for the show. Joe and I have to practice out duet too! I'm not worried about that. Because we have sung together before. I'm just really excited for the show! :) C