It is.

http://www.interesting12.com/

“Newsworthy topics and cultural affairs, one after another”

I’ll see you there. Thanks for reading. (and tell your friends!!)

Food for thought: If donations are a gift, why do we receive a tax credit based on how much we give? Why are egg and sperm donors paid?

The first successful organ transplant was in 1954. A kidney between twin brothers. We’ve come a long way since then in body parts going from one person to another. As of the writing of this, 116,901 people are waiting for organs in the United States. From Jan. 2012-Sept 2012 21,132 transplants have been done. (More stats organ transplants click here)

face transplant (Photo credit: TheoJunior)

The medical procedure that replaces partial or all of a person’s face is called a face transplant. The first partial transplant was in France in 2005. Isabelle Dinoire’s face had previously been mauled by her dog. A triangle of face tissue from a deceased person’s nose and mouth were grafted on.

The world’s first full transplant was in Spain in 2010. The team of 30 doctors carried it out on a man injured from a shooting accident.

Those disfigured by trauma, burns, and disease may best benefit aesthetically from the procedure. There is a significant difference in that its benefits are not lifesaving in the same context as a transplanted organ is. And it’s caused considerable ethical debate since its debut procedure. An extreme version of plastic surgery perhaps? Some think so.

Jarrahy Reza, a co-surgical director at UCLA pointed out to medgadget.com (in a May 2012 article), “Your appearance and your personality are in some ways inseparable. It’s hard to get past that.” And although face transplants likely will not save anyone’s life, “might enable some people to have a life.”

Your try living with a severely disfigured face…A face that causes people to stop and stare. See how well you handle it.

Alternative options to facial transplants include movement and replacement of skin from the patient’s own back, buttocks or thighs to their face through a series of as many as 50 operations. With the outcome at its best only limited function, an in reality likened to simply a mask.

Medagadget asked Jarrah where he saw transplant surgery going, and he responded, “Face transplantation is interesting in that what we are doing in the operating room is not necessarily new. We have done solid organ transplantation for decades. We do very complex craniofacial surgery at UCLA. We have been a leading center of microsurgery for many years and so the surgical techniques that we are using are not necessarily new by any means. The novelty is combining all of these disciplines into one.”

The world’s first full face replant procedure was successfully preformed on 9 year old Sandeep Kaur in Northern India, in 1994. Her mother witnessed her daughter’s hair being caught accidentally in the thresher machine they used. Her parents brought her face to the hospital in a plastic bag (see image below) and one of India’s top micro-surgeons Abraham Thomas, was able to reconnect the arteries and skin.

In 2004 Sandeep went on to pursue training to become a nurse herself.

A similar operation was performed in 1996 in Australia. These surgeries thus launched the idea that facial transplantation was possibly possible.

L. Scott Levin MD FACS, Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, has described transplants as “the single most important area of reconstructive research.” (source here)

Michele R. Berman, M.D. for online blog celebrity diagnosis column explains that a great deal of prep is involved. Recipients are screened physically and psychologically to make sure they will be able to handle the physical and emotional demands that the procedure will entail.

The facial tissues must still be attached to the circulation of a “living” donor who is brain dead with no chance of recovery. Aside from being matched for skin color and skin age, a special test, called a HLA test is performed on the tissue of the donor, the closer the HLA profile of the donor and the recipient, the less likely the tissue is to be rejected.

Check out this brief video by UCLA that explains the process:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjMz_uq3Tq4

• In 2004, the United States (Specifically at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio) became the first to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers.
• March 2008, 30-year-old Pascal Color of France, sufferer of neurofibromatosis, received world’s first “almost full face transplant.”
• In December 2008, a team at the Cleveland Clinic, led by Dr Maria Siemionow and including a group of supporting doctors and six plastic surgeons performed the first face transplant in the US on a woman named Connie Culp.

Connie Culp (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It was the world’s first near-total facial transplant and the fourth known facial transplant success. This operation was the first facial transplant that included bones, along with muscle, skin, blood vessels, and nerves. The woman received a nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw, and even some teeth from a brain-dead donor. (Source: Wikipedia.)

• On April 9, 2009 the second US partial face transplant took in Boston on James Maki, 59. He’d been injured in 2005, after falling onto the electrified third rail at a subway station.

The procedure was shown as part of the ABC documentary series Boston Med.

• July 8 2010, France reported a full face transplant, including tear ducts and eyelids.
• In March 2011, a surgical team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, performed a full face transplant on Dallas Wiens who had suffered severe disfigurement following a power line accident that left him blind and without lips, nose or eyebrows.
• January 21, 2012, a Turkish medical team full face transplanted19-year-old, Uğur Acar’s face. He’d been burnt in a house fire as a baby. The doctors used the body of 39-year-old Ahmet Kaya, who had died the day before.
• February 24, 2012, saw the family donated body of a 40 year old, which had been pronounced brain dead following a motorcycle accident Feb. 17; go towards the second for Turkey, successful full face transplant. Recipient 25-year-old Cengiz Gül had lived life since age two badly burned after a television tube implosion.
• March 17, 2012, marked Turkey’s third partial transplant. Hatice Nergis, a twenty-year old woman, who’d previously, lost six years before, her upper jaw including mouth, lips, palate, teeth and nasal cavity in a firearm accident, received donated facial grafts from a 28-year old woman in Istanbul who committed suicide.
• On March 19, 2012, the 23rd facial transplant ever to occur; from the hairline to the neck, was performed on Richard Lee Norris of Hillsville, Virginia, in Baltimore, Maryland, to repair the trauma of a gunshot wound in 1997. (see image at left)
• In March 2012, a face transplant was completed in Maryland on a 37 year old man who had a facial ballistic injury from 1997. This transplant represents the most extensive to date, and included all facial and anterior neck skin, both jaws, and the tongue.

This isn’t Face/Off, in real life after the procedure, the patients tend to look a bit like a combination of themselves and the donor. Images of Richard Lee Norris, Dallas Wiens, Carla Nash, Mitch Hunter,Li Guoxing, Isabelle Dinoire, Connie Culp before and after can be found at CBSNewsImages

To read more of a first-hand account of what it was like going through the procedure, I recommend reading this 2005 piece from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about David McDowell.

Since 2005, 19 patients have had full or partial facial transplants. Only two patients have died. This remains an emerging field that physicians around the world are continuing to monitor.

Glimpse into China’s efforts. (2008 video)

This past September 2012, the 47th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS), met in Washington D.C.

Guests included Bernard Deveachelle, MD, who performed the first face transplant in the world, and J.P. Meningaud, MD, who has performed five procedures, as well as actual patients of the facial transplant surgery. The Academy’s mission was to ensure members undergo extensive training and competence, embody high ethical standards and artistic ideals to enhance the quality of human life.

The AAFPRS is the world’s largest specialty association for facial plastic surgery. It represents more than 2,700 facial plastic and reconstructive surgeons throughout the world. The AAFPRS is a National Medical Specialty Society of the American Medical Association (AMA), and holds an official seat in both the AMA House of Delegates and the American College of Surgeons board of governors.

For more info see the AAFPRS website.

UCLA launches first face transplantation program in western U.S. 2012!!

“The UCLA Health System has launched a face transplantation program for patients with devastating facial trauma, burns, or birth defects. It is the first such program in the western United States. The organizers of the program are currently looking to recruit potential patients with severe facial disfigurement who would be interested in enrolling as five-year study volunteers. Potential patients can come from anywhere in the United States.”

I’ve personally been fascinated with all things organ donated related for some time now. When I learned I could be a skin donor, I was like, sign me up I won’t need that skin after I die. It’s just doing to rot (#thatsmorbidhuh?) I’m an EVERYTHING donor. What inspired me write this article was a post I saw online that a friend several states away has more than once posted on his Facebook. A fundraising page for a girl named Sarah.

“Sarah was in a tragic ATV accident on October 16, 2012. When she was going downhill she lost control and flipped. Unfortunately she wasn’t wearing a helmet and the ATV landed on her face causing extensive injuries and required her to be life flighted to Grant Medical in Columbus, OH. All the bones in her face from the eye sockets down have been shattered into many pieces. The doctors aren’t sure what all is fixable at this point and feel the only option for reconstruction would be a total facial transplant…”

The page (here) was created by her friend Jasmine Wood on October 19, 2012, in the efforts of raising money to pay for the bills for her extensive treatment as she appears to be possibly be wait listed for the procedure.

I hope you’ll check out her page and consider pitching in. They’ve raised a little under $4000 towards their $50,000 efforts.

Are you can organ donor?

For more information see the below links

• Organ donation and fact sheet by Women’s Health
• Information on registering in America can be found on its official government site.
• Donate Life
• If you already are how about your share your status on Facebook (encourage others!).
• Also,and interesting piece from CNN: Ten Uses for Your Body After You Die

English: Angus T. Jones at a ceremony for Jon Cryer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in September 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There isn’t much I know about 19year-old actor Angus T. Jones, other than he’s on a show I forgot still existed and Charlie Sheen was the star of until he went bat shitz crazy last year.  I vaguely recall reading a few years back how he was collecting over a quarter million per episode, and being baffled by it. And his name makes me want a burger. And with that my knowledge of Mr. Jones is summed up. Post the Charlie out Aston Kutcher in drama, I gave the show a couple 30min blocks of my life and found it to be “eh.”  But hey, I doubt they were ever trying to dazzle anyone with their content, and (somehow) that simplicity has kept them on the air.

Monday afternoon I came across this Gawker snippet and texted the following to a friend,

http://m.gawker.com/5963315/two-and-a-half-men-star-sees-the-light-tells-viewers-to-stop-watching-his-filthy-show?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Check out that link. Pretty interesting. Christian actor saying don’t watch his ‘filthy’ show…

To which she replied,

Wow. You know I had the most interesting conversation with a 7th day Adventist in the airplane home from TN! Their view of media and TV is WAY crazy and extreme. I’m glad that he knows Jesus. I’m sad that this is all probably going to end up hurting him as he’s speaking out the way he is. Thanks for sending this!!!!

I hadn’t actually watched said video yet, but just going off the description where he is calls the show that pays him now upwards of $350,000 an episode, “filth,” my first thought was, “Okay than quit the show.” Simple as that. Actions speak louder than words in many cases. Remember the last time an actor changed his faith belief in a big way…Growing Pains anyone? Before Kirk Cameron left mainstream to strictly participate in Christian acting, he caused a lot of issues. Read about it here, under the “production” heading. He was a literally a growing pain… (but when that show wrapped, he stopped working on productions in that format)

Is there anything inherently wrong with different viewpoints? No there certainly isn’t. We’re a country that famously stands on that. One person is allowed to talk just as much as another person is allowed to not listen. It’s the action next that makes all the different.  If you’re going speak it, the least you can do is set by example. I think this is where things get lost in translation for many. Setting by example does not mean forcing it down someone’s throat; it doesn’t mean bashing them till kingdom come. I doubt I need to site a list of specifics for you to catch my drift.

I respected magician Penn Jillette, a vocal atheist who likens religion to believing without evidence, a little

English: Penn Jillette at Rio Las Vegas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

bit more when he spoke about receiving the gift of a bible from someone. Saying if you believe something to be so true and I might die if you don’t tell me about it, than you must hate me if you won’t speak.

Click here to watch the video

Sharing is caring. Angus has shared his testimony.

If you’re interested in more about his testimony sharing, how he was raised in a Christian church based school from kindergarten on up, but he didn’t discover God until the Seventh Day Adventists introduced him to capital H-I-M. Check out his Oct. 8, 2012 Testimony video at the Adventist Media Center, here

There he talks about his testimony and God keeping him from sex and drinking (not drugs though, he dabbled in that). Other links to videos of his testimony sharing can be found here.

Personally, I’m a bit more interested in actor Jim Caviezel. He’s openly spoken about what it’s felt like being ‘rejected in my own industry’ after he accepted the lead role in Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie ‘The Passion of the Christ’. Caviezel has commented that he was even warned against taking the part by Gibson who said, “You’ll never work in this town again.” To which he responded, and I’ve personally listen to him say to an audience of churchgoers in Hollywood, California, “We all have to embrace our crosses”.’

After Passion of the Christ, offers did dry up. He appeared in less than a handful of films for a long time. In 2011 we saw Caviezel finally make was looks to be a successful return to the acting stage, by way of the CBS show, Person of Interest. He made this choice to do the role, and people that might have called him for roles before, but didn’t after; they made their choices as well.

We’ve all heard or read actors all the time go on and on about how they crafted their careers, chose their roles because of its content (when they had them to choose from!) and whatnot, so to Angus T. Jones let me remind you that what you do with your money, how you earn it, and who you earn it from, these things all say something about you. They don’t define you, but are a part of your description.

Don’t tell me you “don’t want to be on it [Two and a Half Men]” one day, encourage myself and others in that same breath to, “please stop watching it, please stop filling your head with filth.”

Don’t say you’re sorry for saying exactly what you meant. You’re allowed to feel how you feel, just as much as others are allowed to get upset and kick you off the show for badmouthing it, if they want to. The same way you’re also allowed to break your contract, and leave the show. They will be allowed to take up whatever legal recourse they might see fit if they want to.

If you feel like you hurt your cast mates and crew by your choice of words, then craft your words in a way the first time you speak them. Lesson learned. So what you say won’t be confused and misused…

Because signing on for another season of the show for $8 million, saying, “I don’t think I would have been on the show if God hadn’t kind of pushed me into it. Because otherwise I genuinely didn’t want to do another year of the show.” Well that’s confusing.

Christopher Hudson, a controversial Seventh-day Adventist himself, and the person featured in the video with Jones, who only recently met him, and has admitted to never having watched an episode of “Men,” but agrees that it’s “filth.” Says something less confusing when he remarks,

“If I was in Angus’ shoes and had his spiritual awakening, I hope I would not continue on the program. But Angus is highly intelligent. Whatever decision he makes will be between him and the maker.”

Read more: NYDailyNews

I’m from the Show-Me-State of Missouri, ‘I’m skeptical of the matter and not easily convinced’, but it doesn’t matter if I agree or disagree with you, to still see your actions not standing up with your words. Frankly it’s boring.

On the plus side, I still find angus beef burgers utterly delicious, and Rainn Wilson’s spoof video hilarious.

I dig it.

Women rights, equality, and everything else related to this gender, have come a long way, and it’s great to see new progresses that have come about in my less than thirty years of life as well. Ladies of all ages are walking down trails paved by those before us with their trials, tribulations and successes.

Helen Reddy sang in the  early 1970 on her  hit, “ I Am Woman”,  about being a woman and hearing her roar.

Being a woman means a lot of things, to a lot of people, its definition interpreted in a lot of ways. I don’t think there is a single definition, nor should we be trying to create one because we all as humans are complex, diverse, have different motivations, desires and are beautiful. I like seeing the nurturing of that with both genders.

I like seeing successful Kickstarter projects like GoldieBlox, created by Debbie Sterling, a Stanford-educated engineer, who aims to change book and construction toys created for young girls.

 “Sterling studied product design in Stanford’s mechanical engineering department, where she found herself the odd woman out. “l’ve always been obsessed with entering into male dominated fields, and I’d always find myself working on projects in engineering with all guys,” she says.”

Let’s get girls excited about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

“It’s a great climate to introduce GoldieBlox,” she says. “Even if it had come out five years ago, I don’t think it would get as much excitement as it is now.”

Source: Fast Co.exist

I like seeing people talking. Yes talk can be cheap without action, but this isn’t a chicken or the egg  what -happens-first, type of thing. Without communication first, action doesn’t happen. It does go in that order.

Today I had the pleasure of reading about Irish writer Jennifer O’Connell’s six-year old daughter who is challenging Hasbro, creators of the board game “Guess Who?”  The mother daughter duo took to the game manufacturer’s AskHasbro section of their website, and emailed the following,

“My name is R______. I am six years old. I think it’s not fair to only have 5 girls in Guess Who and 19 boys. It is not only boys who are important, girls are important too. If grown ups get into thinking that girls are not important they won’t give little girls much care.

“Also if girls want to be a girl in Guess Who they’ll always lose against a boy, and it will be harder for them to win. I am cross about that and if you don’t fix it soon, my mum could throw Guess Who out.

“My mum typed this message but I told her what to say.”

I loved that game as a kid, and I honestly remember as a little Maggie thinking, I don’t want to be a girl—I’ll lose! (At the game at least.) Even in the context of playing a game, little girls should never being saying sentences like that.

To read more about Harbro’s response: http://www.byjenniferoconnell.com/2012/11/update-response-from-hasbro.html

I may not walk around complaining about the lack of men opening doors, nor do I slap a feminist label on myself. I read Bitch Media, Marie Claire, and Darling Magazine. I am a supporter of the rights and equality of women. I think it’s a privilege to be this gender.

Cake sang in their song Short Skirt Long Jacket, about wanting “a girl with a mind like a diamond” and “who uses a machete to cut through red tape”.

I like little girls because they grow up to be women. And we’re evolving all that goes with that definition.

Photo Credit: Guess Who? Harbro. Two girls on feature image, property of me, Margaret Barnes

Related articles

• Meet GoldieBlox: the toy designed to get girls interested in engineering (guardian.co.uk)

Word of the wise though, if you have a young child in the house, clarify with them that they DON’T understand what you’re doing. Otherwise you might find yourself in trouble the way these parents did when their 5-year-old spilled the beans on their animal selling scheme. To read more of the details of this Pittsburg incidence, click here.

Twitter is used in a bevy of great ways (journalists using it to engage readers and even to find story ideas, leads and contacts ), an assortment of interesting ways, a slew of unexpected ways (couple turns to twitter to help them adopt a baby), and every now and then a handful of down right lousy ways: teen fakes abduction on twitter.

twitter logo map 09 (Photo credit: The Next Web)

16 year old Kara Alongi used twitter to FAKE her own kidnapping. She tweeted to her just under 110,000 followers, that “There is someone in my hour ecall (sic) 911″.

Their calling what she did, “Tweeting Wolf.” Implying a supposed break in and abduction, her followers began retweeting it and #helpfindkara became a trending topic. After numerous calls, police and K-9 unit began an investigation, and after 3 days Alongi was found by New Jersey State Police on a nearby turnpike with her packed bags. She’d simply run away. Needless to say her followers are pissed!! Kidnapping is not a laughing matter. #thatsnotokay #dontbefakeontwitter #rude

Related articles

• Teenage Girl Disappears After Tweeting ‘There Is Someone In My House,’ Social Media Shitstorm Ensues [Kara Alongi] (gawker.com)

Hey if you can wash your hair without water, it only seemed logical that sooner or later someone would figure out a way to bathe themselves without water. Not that is sounds like a pleasurable option. But a possible option now it is.

Through the Dell Social Innovation Challenge DryBath was invented. I have a handful of friends actually not to keen on daily showering (no they’re not homeless. Thankfully they’re not smelly people. They just prefer baths every 2 or 3 days as opposed to every morning.), and may find delight in this product. Think about those living in 2^nd and 3^rd world countries were access to water is limited—this could be quite the asset!  Was that the motivation on the mind of the 22-year-old inventor in his creation of a clear gel formulation, that when applied to the body, eliminates the need for a shower? Friends of the inventory Ludwick Marishane, a student at University of Cape Town, say no. “He was lazy and he happened to say, ‘why doesn’t somebody invent something that you can just put on your skin and you don’t have to bathe.’” So he did.

 Read more

Actually he doesn’t sound lazy at all…

Related articles

• Trend Alert: Bathing Less (bellasugar.com)
• Now You Can Shower Lying Down (bellasugar.com)

I whip my hair back and forth, because it’s a hard knock life? More like shaking my head at Hollywood’s laziness trend in rehashing old plots, verses putting work into creating brand new ones. These days I’d just as well take a prequel or another sequel over another reboot, because remakes are sending my beloved cinema to an early grave.

Does a spoonful of bankable star power make the remake go down? You tell me. Will Smith wants us to think so as he goes out on a very short limb, to bring forth a Jay-Z musically composed, Emma Thompson written, retooling of “Annie’. Right on the heels of the orphan Annie 30^th DVD anniversary.

Related articles

• Emma Thompson invites Jay-Z to tea (thesun.co.uk)
• Jay-Z’s Annie to shoot in spring (bbc.co.uk)

“I was introduced to rap music in college. Before that I couldn’t comprehend the words in songs.”

Huh? That’s more like a rap description.

“So let me get this straight,” I ventured in for clarification. It’s only when he begins describing what it was like for him growing up listening to his sister blare her favorite artist, the King of Pop,  that I better grasp what he’s saying. Imagine if you turned on the radio and every time someone sang their voice sounded like they were a teacher in a Charlie Brown special.

That’s what it sounded like to him. It was frustrating to him because it was as though his ears would temporarily stop working. But it wasn’t his ears doing something different, it was his brain.

There are a variety of disorders that affect the way the brain processes auditory information, and they’re difficult to detect and diagnose.

“What the brain does with what the ear hears.”

(Katz, 92 Source here.)

He had just described what the umbrella terms APD: Auditory Processing Disorder, and CAPD: Central Auditory Processing Disorder, define.

Research into APD began in 1954 via the Helmser Myklebust study. Then later in the later 70’s and early 80’s more in-depth research began.

 “Myklebust’s work suggested that auditory processing disorder is separate from language learning difficulties.”

Our ears pick up the sounds we hear and direct them to our auditory system. It’s the processing there that dictates our comprehension.

Those with APD typically have a normal peripheral hearing structure. They can hear. But they don’t process information the same way. Their brain essentially flips the switch without warning, and on occasion, changes direction, goes a different route, and leads to difficulties in recognizing and interpreting sounds. Sounds as in speech.

Cause? Persons with known neurological disorders, or diseases, such as aphasia, Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury, stroke, tumor, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis often exhibit APD. The majority of the time it’s unknown. It can be developmental or acquired. It has been concluded that APD is associated with dysfunction within the central auditory nervous system (CANS). A commonness of an APD presence isn’t uniform, but it generally occurrs in two distinct populations: children and elderly.

“Hearing begins in utero, but the central auditory system continues to develop for at least the first decade.”

For children, an estimated 2-3% are affected, give or take the many children un/misdiagnosed. Older adult estimates are 10-20%; and for individuals over 60 years it’s on average 70%. The most consist similarity has been the high prevalence of men verses women with a presence of the disorder.

(Wikipedia provides more links to instances when APD has been related to a cause.)

Over the years, for three key reasons, APD has been deemed somewhat controversial because professionals haven’t always accepted or approved of recognizing APD as a “unique functional deficit”.

1. Other types of disorders, ADHD, language impairment, learning disability, autistic spectrum disorders, and reduced intellectual function, may produce similar behaviors. These auditory deficits are many times diagnosed as a function of another deficit.

Look at what the symptoms are:

Exhibiting one or more of the following signs:

1. They appear hearing impaired, but in fact have normal hearing sensitivity.
2. They say ”huh” or ”what” a lot, and often ask the speaker to repeat.
3. They experience difficulties hearing in the presence of noise.
4. They respond inconsistently or inappropriately to auditory information.
5. They take longer to respond when participating in oral communication situations.
6. They have trouble following oral directions or instructions.
7. They experience difficulties with phonics and speech sound discrimination.
8. They are often unable to locate where sounds are coming from.
9. They cannot remember information presented auditorally.
10. They are unable to concentrate, or stay on task, and are easily distracted.
11. They have difficulty directing, sustaining, or dividing attention.
12. They have chronic otitis media, or a history of chronic otitis media.
13. They exhibit poor reading and spelling skills.
14. They are poorly organized.
15. They are unable to learn songs or nursery rhymes, and have poor music and singing skills.

2. Audiologic assessment (testing for) procedures have not always adequately differentiated APD from other disorders. (That’s confusing)

3. Other factors including motivation, attention, cooperation, and understanding, are all factors that may affect test interpretation and so lead to misdiagnosis of a related disorder.

Skepticism is on the decline as “the development of reliable and valid behavioral and electrophysiological assessment procedures has legitimized APD as a recognized auditory deficit.” (source here)

Still, this auditory disorder plays itself out in an assortment of different ways depending on the person. Keeping it a particularly curious disorder.

For example, the term ‘auditory overload’ is often used to describe what happens to people with APD. An overload in a sense of being overwhelmed by received auditory information. “If information is highly specific, spoken quickly, lacking in contextual cues, described in unfamiliar language or presented in a noisy environment, it will be very difficult for someone with APD to comprehend the message or follow through with instructions.” (source here)

But going back to my brunch companion, it was different for him. To him when words were presented in a lyrical structure with different tones and the addition of musical accompaniment, that was when his brain became, “confused,” and his pathways redirected. He officially has never been diagnosed, and his symptoms were only present in his inability to interpret songs. Still he appears to be in alignment with a form of APD.

What makes this disorder particularly interesting can be found in its various forms of treatment. Much of the time it’s treated with specific music. Music based auditory stimulation. Or listening programs.

Examples of a few such worldwide programs are:

• Stowell Learning Centers Inc
• Fast ForWord program
• Listen And Learn Centre
• Sound Therapy Systems
• The Listening Program

These programs, “literally exercise and tone tiny muscles in the ear and help them build stronger multisensory pathways in the brain. The brain receives this especially rich auditory stimulation and the ability to process sounds improves.”

Professor Nina Kraus explains this musical therapy concept well. She is a world expert in the study of activity in the brainstem. Her niche is studying auditory brain stem responses (ABR ) to speech and non-speech (including musical) sounds. When presented with sound the brain stem responds by producing an electrical signal that maintains the characteristics of the stimulus sound wave.

“Timing, pitch and timbre are the basic information-bearing elements in music and speech. The auditory brainstem response represents a faithful reconstruction of these features and can be recorded in a non-invasive manner in human participants”

In her measuring of ABR’s, a systematic and reliable difference is indicated between the normal listener, and the non. Those with a present lower phonemic awareness (phonological awareness as in the ability to recognize, understand and use the sounds that make up language) and auditory working memory showed slower ABR responses. “Their ABRs have good representation of the basic attributes of sound waves (i.e. the fundamental frequency) but poor representation of the more complex elements (i.e. the harmonics). These complex parts of the wave are more important for disambiguating sounds like consonants in spoken language.”

Music training is a way of strengthening a basic brain mechanism that contributes to the understanding of language. Kraus’ findings are proving to be paving the way for music intervention’s continual development. In ways that will also benefit and assist poor readers develop their skills as well.

More information about Nina Kraus’ research can be found here: http://www.soc.northwestern.edu/brainvolts/

In the specific case of the man I presented to you at the start of this article, he appears to have inadvertently found help in exercising and strengthening his ear muscles though the complex structure of rap music! Or as he says,

“The more I listened to rap, the more I begun being able to hear and understand the words in other music.”

He has a soft spot for rap music, and for his own entirely unique reason!

To read another case of what life is like first hand from someone with a form of auditory processing disorder, I HIGHLY recommend checking out the blog Andrea’s Buzzing About. She frequently writes about APD and many of her readers share in.

Related articles

• Could Your Child Have Auditory Processing Disorder? (everydayhealth.com)
• Not Unique (fallingondeafearsuk.wordpress.com)

Bible (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

If any press is good press because it keeps people talking, than the Bible must be doing its thing pretty well. Seeing as all these years later the world remains in a chatter over it’s contents. A world where Bible plots remain out of the big and little screen, is a world that simply doesn’t exist. Which you’ve got to admit is fascinating, even if it’s not your faith brand of choice.

Will Smith has for a long time been an alleged participant of the Scientology persuasion, but one of his many new flicks being rolled it soon is about the Christian religion’s Old Testament brothers Cain and Abel.  In a twist that is sure to have many conflicted in their approval, Smith is repackaging the tale that asks, ” am I my brothers keeper?” as a vampire story. Vampires are still trending right? That’s one way to put science in the good book, with the addition of fiction.

Another upcoming movie with a Bible complex, is the new noah’s ark movie, Noah. This one brought you by non other than famed Black Swan director, Darren Aronofsky. New Regency reportedly financed the $130 million dollar plus film. Initially a hard sell, not because of it’s Bible tale mainstream (that’s not new), but actually because of Aronofsky’s desire to keep the tone and nature of the story in as much alignment as possible. And the way he describes it is that,

Noah was the first environmentalist. The first to plant a vineyard and drink wine. (these Bible stories) Are not PG in any way. That kind of stuff got censored out of our religious upbringings.

Source: deadline.com and screenrant.com

Russell Crowe has signed on to play Noah. Rumor has it, beating out Christian Bale and Liam Neeson.

This should be edgy.

Related articles

• Will Smith Turns Biblical Story Of Cain & Abel Into Vampire Tale! (oldschool945.com)
• Sony Is Putting Will Smith’s Biblical Vampire Epic “The Redemption Of Cain” Into Production (complex.com)
• First Look: Russell Crowe as Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Noah’ (slashfilm.com)
• Holy-wood: the film industry’s new passion for Christ (guardian.co.uk)