Your attention please!!! Last term,last effort.
Listening 1: April 26th
Writting: May 10th
Listening 2: May 17th
Grammar: May 29th
Speech: date it with teacher ASAP.
P.S. Mind the blind.
Ghosts inside the brain
I’m going to tell you about ghosts inside the brain. I mean, in some occasions different brain damages happen and show strange symptoms. I’m going to explain to you some of these unusual injuries.
Prosopagnosia
There are different cases of prosopagnosia.
For example, in a specific case, a man could recognise animals, but he couldn’t say their names. He neither recognised famous people, like Marilyn Monroe.
He had his temporal lobe injured. At the temporal lobe we save specific memories that let us distinguish between different people, animals or things.
Another patient had lost his own emotions related to his relatives and friends. He couldn’t recognise his parents and thought that they were impostors. Also, he supposed that his house was an identical replica of itself. Eventually, he Even perceived himself as an impostor or as “the other me”.
A car accident had injured his connexions between the occipital lobe (where the visual recognition areas are), and the temporal lobe (where we save our emotional responses to each object that we perceive). But he preserved the auditory areas of the brain and it allowed him to recognise his parents by phone.
This man suffered “Kapgras syndrome”. It’s a type of prospagnosia.
Something similar happened to “the man who mistook his wife for a hat” whom Oliver Sacks talks about in his famous book.
Epilepsy
An epileptic seizure causes a brain storm at the temporal lobe. The neural activity increases suddenly and it can change into a flood of strange emotions. And these emotions can be interpreted as religious or metaphysical experiences.
It happened to John. He believed that he was God and he knew the truth about everything.
Blind sight
It happens when a man has a blind field of vision, but if there is movement inside this field, he perceives it. He can’t see any object, but he can perceive its movements.
It happens because there are two different ways of vision processing. The conscious vision depends on one of them and this is damaged, but the movement depends on the other , and this one is safe.
“Ghost limb” syndrome
There is a map of the body surfaces at the parietal lobe of our brain, where they are represented. When a doctor has to amputate a patient limb, this map suffers an alteration. After that, if there is any kind of stimulation in some part of the body, it can activate the part of the map related to the amputated limb. It causes a high tension in the body.
It makes amputated people feel the absent limb and even feel pain on it.
Hemi negligence or Visual slovenliness
In patients that suffer hemi negligence, one field of vision has prominence in comparison with the other one.
They forget the right or left side of the world due to a parietal lobe damage in the left or right hemisphere, respectively.
Then, if you ask them to draw a drawing by heart or copy it, they aren’t able to draw the left or right side of it, depending on the damaged hemisphere. Or, for example, a woman with this problem, would only use make up in one of her face sides.
Anosognosia
People with anosognosia deny the existence of their own parts of the body. They deny the evidence. For example, it could happen that a woman with anosognosia couldn’t recognise her leg as her own leg. Then, her leg would be completely paralysed and she won’t be able to control it any more.
It happens because there are problems with objects and human faces being processed and it is due to damages in the perception areas on both brain hemispheres.
Eva Mª Carballal Rodríguez
5th Course BA
“Bridget Jones’s diary” is a novel by Helen Fielding. It was published by Picador in 1996.
It is a sort of comedy novel.
The story is told by Bridget, the protagonist. So, it is narrated from her point of view.
The story takes place in London for a year, from January to December.
The main characters in the novel are:
- Bridget Jones, the protagonist, a thirtysomething single, funny and moody woman, friend of her friends, who are always there to help her, makes some resolutions for the new year and tries to fulfill them during it. She has a tendency to say whatever comes into her mind.
- Daniel Cleaver, who is Bridget’s boss and her first boyfriend, is a funny but too conceited man. He behaves badly to Bridget when he starts going out with another woman. Sometimes he is liar and cruel.
- Mark Darcy, who is more loyal and serious than Daniel, is madly in love with Bridget, though he doesn’t show it. He is a reserved man.
- Shazzer, who is one of Bridget’s best friends, is a bit rude and has a strong and hard personality. Also she is a strident feminist.
- Jude, who is more sensitive tan Shazzer, is, also, one of Bridget’s best friends. She is always asking her friends for help and stuffy to reading books of self-help.
- Tom, who is Bridget’s best friend, is an homosexual man. He asks for advice all the time and relies on Bridget more than on anybody. He is more reserved than Bridget and not as outgoing as her.
- Pam Jones, who is Bridget’s mother, behaves crazily and is pretty immature. She really loves her daughter.
- Colin Jones, who is Bridget’s father, is a very sensitive person. He loves his wife and daughter over everything, tough it seems that Bridget doesn’t care about him. He needs her daughter’s help to get over his divorce.
Plot: The book is about a thirtysomething single woman living in London who is employed in the publishing industry and thinks se has a monotonous life. She is determined to improve herself while she looks for love for a year during which she keeps a personal diary. She has some bad habits, such as smoking and drinking too much, but she annually writes her New Year’s resolutions in her diary, determined to stop smoking, drink no more than fourteen alcohol units a week, and eat more pulses. Her favourite hobby is losing weight.
The story opens with a dinner with her parents and their friends, where she meets Mark Darcy, whom her mother wants her to go out. But Bridget feels atracked by her boss, Daniel Cleaver, who at first seems to feel the same as her, so they start going out. Her mother leaves his father and she starts living with an other man. Bridget, who is really worry about it, try to find help in her friends: Shazzer, Jude and Tom. Some months later Bridget meets Mark again and likes him, they keep contact and finally they have a closer ralationship, when Daniel,who was her boyfriend, starts going out with another woman.
Personal opinion: From my point of view it is a good book, although it is not the kind of book I enjoy most. At first, I found it quite boring but, then, it turned amusing and entertaining.
The most exciting part of the book was when Bridget tried to cheer up his Dad after he started the divorce proceding.
It was difficult to read, because there were lots of new vocabulary. However, I could follow it well.
I would recommend this book as an entertaining book for those who enjoy jokes and funny stories.
To sum up I believe it is an enjoyable book, but you’d bettet see the film because it turns out to be less difficult.
Belén Caso 5º 4-5.30
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GAZPACHO |
Ingredients (for 4 people):
1 Kilo tomatoes (plum tomatoes would be best).
1/2 small onion (60 grams).
1 small green pepper.
1 small cucumber.
1 small cup of olive oil.
2 desert spoons of vinager.
200 grams of bread from the day before, soaked in water.
Put the tomatoes, onion, pepper, cucumber, vinager, oil and bread into a liquidizer. If you want to dilute it, add a glass of water. If you want a garlic taste, add a small amount of fresh garlic to the mixture before liquidizing.
Put the mixture into a bowl, add salt and pepper and leave the gazpacho to chill for at least an hour. If you want to eat it straight away, you can put some ice cubes in to cool it down. Gazpacho is a Summer dish, so the colder it´s served the better!!
You can also add diced serrano ham or hard boiled egg.
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