This is your brain on stress

Thanks to G as in Good H as in Happy for finding the Eide Neurolearning Blog, which is full of fascinating tidbits like this:

"When not lost in thought, he was in constant motion, jumping up and down, leaping from chair to chair, rushing about, and falling and hurting himself. He seemed to have no sense of personal safety. His love of martial poetry was obsessive. He had a speech defect and one miserable cold after another..." From his mother we hear that he was a "troublesome boy" and "a most difficult boy to manage." From his principal: "Constantly late for school, losing his books, and papers and various other things into which I need not enter- he is so regular in his irregularity that I don't know what to do."

Who was this fellow with "ADHD"?

Go here for the answer.

Or, here is a post on how the brain processes (or fails to "get") humor, why humor is an important tool in teaching, and links to humor-in-learning websites, including some that teach how to teach humor as a social skill to people with autism spectrum disorders.

Every post is followed by a list of links for further reading. A post on the biology of "choking under stress" includes a link to a scientific paper on how "stress affects memory" -- it's the cortisol, stupid -- reassuring to those of us under fire who sometimes wonder if we're losing it for more sinister reasons.

This one goes on my blogroll.

I'm one weary blogger. Doing the abortion rant (and trying in vain to get Andrew Sullivan to read it) was like donating bone marrow. When I try to blog, only a dry rasping sound comes out. It's wonderful, though, how the 'sphere will carry its wounded for a while till they feel better. I can stay on my feet by leaning on the wonderful work of other bloggers like G as in Good . . . Thanks, guys. (And no, I don't mean "guys." "You guys," like "y'all" and "youse", is simply an attempt to put back the lost second person plural in English.)

- amba

Comments

[dilys]

Thanks Amba, it's nice that the Lenten-and-then-some withdrawal can still shovel up a few goodies.

[Julie Leung]

Thanks amba for letting me know about this fascinating blog. Before I read your post, I had heard on the radio this morning Slate's article on memory competitions:
http://www.slate.com/id/2114925/
I'm hearing music, not dry rasping sounds. :-)