Week 3: BioHeroes

My birthday is September 15, so I have the temporal lobe and norepinephrine.

Origin Story: At age 17, Willadeen Bell with her big glasses and full luggage sat waiting to board the plane. She had just finished the summer before her senior year when her dad took a new job in China. She didn't know the language and now had to integrate at a new school. When her flight was called, Willa slowly got up and dragged her feet to the entrance. As she boarded the plane she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms every time her dad made encouraging comments about their new, exciting life in China. The plane soon took off and Willa closed her eyes for the long trip ahead. Not an hour away from her destination Willa was awoken by screams and thunder. There was a huge storm and the plane had already been hit by two massive lightning strikes. The plane started to descend at a rapid rate toward an empty field. As the plane fell, Willa's window was hit and smashes by a lightning strike that went right into Willa's head making her black out. When she woke up, she was in a hospital in China. Willa sat up and felt her head realizing she didn't have her glasses on anymore. As she looked around, she realized she could see perfectly even without her glasses. A young Chinese nurse walked over to Willa and started speaking. Even though Willa knew that it was in Chinese, she could understand her perfectly.

When the lightning struck Willa, it hit her temporal lobe which controls language, visual perception, and the ability to communicate. Her language abilities were enhance allowing her to understand and speak every language and even to animals making her the Super-Speaker. Her hormone norepinephrine was also affected increasing her ability to concentrate and have a speedy reaction time. Soon after she discovered her abilities, she learned of three other individuals who temporal lobes were enhanced by accidents in different ways. They formed The Temporal Team: Hearing-Helper, Opioid, Static Sensation.

Week 2: How good is my memory?

This week I set out to complete a few online tests that would show me how good my short term memory is. I've always been told I forget things easy, so this may be my chance to prove people wrong!

Test 1: I was given 12 words and told to memorize them. I read over all the words a few times, and when I thought I knew them pretty well, I clicked continue. It then asked me to retype all the words back. Unfortunately, I could only remember half of them. Then the game asked me to put my age, gender, and country so that my resulted would match the group I belong in. My group's average range was 5-9, so my 6 was a pretty average score.
I thought this test was pretty valid because it showed me that while I may think I've got all the words down, it would have taken me longer to actually remember all those words. I would have preferred if the test had a time limit, so it wouldn't be up to me to decide when I had taken enough time.

Test 2: I rocked at this one! It gave me pictures and I had to click every time the pictures repeated them self. In the end, I got had 100% recall! The game said the average person is 90%, so I'm above average on this one. I think this shows I'm better at remembering visual pictures then words like the previous game.
I think this test was valid in showing how well you can recognize pictures that you have already seen, but I'm not sure if that really equates to things I see in my life. I'm usually not good at paying attention to detail. I think I only did good at this test because I knew I was supposed to be remembering everything I saw, but if I was unaware that it was a test I probably would have done much worse.

Test 3: I did the memory for faces. It showed me a face, and then when I thought I had it memorized I had to rebuild the face. I got all 10 pieces correct proving I have a great memory for faces!
This test did not feel valid because it was a face with drawn on parts and not a real picture. Had they done the same test with a real person's face I would have felt this to be wore valid. It should be called test your memory for a sketch.:/

I think my results ended up proving people wrong on my memory... or at least that I'm average. I found a really interesting article that relates poor memory in toddlers to how likely they are to succeed in school. If you know toddler with bad memory encourage them to play games that practice their memory skills and limit screen time. It may make them more likely to stay in school later on. Read more below.
https://neurosciencenews.com/toddler-memory-education-3414/