Just finished watching a Japanese movie entitled "Memories of Tomorrow" ,aka Ashita no kioku. This movie talks about a man who suffered from Alzheimer's disease (AD). The movie was a bit of slow pace, story lines progressed very slowly: The main character Mr. Masayuki Saeki,a successful businessman started to forget many things,including his business appointment. He went to see a doctor and he was diagnosed to suffer from AD. He tried hard to stay healthy,in order to attend his only daughter's wedding. As time went by, disease progresses...the movie won 10 awards, such as Japanese awards for best film,best actor and best actress. Anyway,it's not quite my cup of tea as i don't quite like slow-pace movie.
Notebook (2004)
On the other hand, it reminds me of another movie about AD too, it's called 'Notebook'(2004). [There're 3 movies which shared the same name). This one,i quite like it: An old man read a story to an old lady, a story about a wonderful summer experienced by a young couple, Noah and Allie. Allie went to a village to spend her summer holidays, and she met Noah, a handsome local guy. Together, they had had heaps of fun. After the summer ended, Allie had to go back to city, and in fact, her mother wasn't agree with this relationship at all. Ever since, Noah tried hard to keep in touch with Allie, he wrote so many letters to Allie but none of them reached her...
What cause Alzheimer's disease?
The actual, ultimate cause is still yet to discover. Put it in a nutshell, AD is a neurodegenerative disease, which means the neurons in our brain aren't working as well as before. To be specific, it's the Cholinergic neurons. (Meanwhile, Parkinson disease is due to the degenerative of Dopamine neuron, and thus, an overactive Cholinergic neurons).
I haven't studied much about AD, I did learn a little bit about it in our pharmacology class.
Eternal Sunshine on a Spotless Mind
I love this movie a lot!!!! The storyline is awesome! I won't write much about it, I'll let you discover the story itself. Generally, it's about a story how a couple wanted to erase the memories of each other...
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Yeah, sometimes i do feel like erasing some memories out of my brain, and sometimes, i desperately need my memory to be excellent!!!
Heard some people told me they had had a hard time forgetting their ex-boy/girlfriends. I guess it is always not easy, there are so much common memories, and most likely, one side still in love with the other side. However, i love this saying, "The harder you try to forget, the harder you can forget it."
Probably it's great that in reality, we don't have the memories-erasing machine like in the movie. For me, regardless it's a sweet or a bitter memory, it's still a memory, a memory that we should appreciate. After all, we have experienced that particular experience in our lives, and if we don't like it, somehow, it'll just gone without a trace, there's no need to try to forget it. Human brain is very amazing, somehow, it'll choose to delete the part it doesn't need.
Memory Improvement
I'm sure everyone wants to have a good memory. As a medical student, i long for a good memory too,though it just doesn't work occasionally.
Below are some of my personal experiences on building up memories that I would like to share:
1. Play mahjung. Haha. (yes, it's first on the list :D ) in fact I'm not really good at it, will try to learn. Anyway, just play any games that can improve your memories, such as flipping the 2 same cards among piles of cards, etc.
Building up memories is a slow process.
2. Association. In physiology, it's called 'conditioned reflex', firstly suggested by Russian scientist, Pavlov, who won Nobel prize before. He did many interesting experiments, including the dog and the bell. He rang the bell, and soon, he fed the dog. Then, he rang the bell again, and fed the dog. He repeated this step several times and eventually, he rang the bell without feeding the dog, but the dog had its saliva dripping.
Well, what I'm trying to say was associate what we try to remember with things that we use or see in daily lives. I can't recall whether i have actually tried this before, but one example, you associate a list of things with the things you see on your most familiar route, such as the way home from your school.
3. Making up stories. For instance, a series of number: 157382498, it could be ONE day, FIVE boys with SEVEN EYES because THREE of them are blind, went to EIGHT bookshops TWO (to) look FOUR (for) books about Window NINETY-EIGHT.
Probably it's a silly method, but in my Anatomic pathology class, we ought to study lots of slides, and they're so similar and hard to be distinguish sometimes. The problem is, my teacher likes to ask us to identify slides. That's a really hard task!!!! but the 'good thing' is, all the slides have numbers on it. So my groupmates and I, memorised all the slides (we had two tests so far, each test had about 30-40 slides i guess)...Crazy...
4. Diet
-Not really sure about this though; however, Chinese believes walnut is good for improving memories (not to eat too much, probably 5 walnuts maximum as they're considered as 'heaty' food (refer to my previous post regarding cough, see 'health is wealth'). So does Ginkgo.
-I read this on BBC news health section: "A chemical found in chocolate, tea, grapes and blueberries can improve the memory of mice, research suggests." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6705215.stm
Conclusion:
Oprah Winfrey says, "write down 5 happy things that happen to you each day in your diary." and yes, i agree with that, diary is meant to be jotting down all the joy we have had every day. One day when we are old, when we look back, oh yes, we have had a great and joyful lives!
Yeah, sometimes i do feel like erasing some memories out of my brain, and sometimes, i desperately need my memory to be excellent!!!
Heard some people told me they had had a hard time forgetting their ex-boy/girlfriends. I guess it is always not easy, there are so much common memories, and most likely, one side still in love with the other side. However, i love this saying, "The harder you try to forget, the harder you can forget it."
Probably it's great that in reality, we don't have the memories-erasing machine like in the movie. For me, regardless it's a sweet or a bitter memory, it's still a memory, a memory that we should appreciate. After all, we have experienced that particular experience in our lives, and if we don't like it, somehow, it'll just gone without a trace, there's no need to try to forget it. Human brain is very amazing, somehow, it'll choose to delete the part it doesn't need.
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Buddhism and Taoism believe in reincarnation, i.e. after death, we will be reborn as other creatures in our next lives, based on what we did in our previous lives. In other words, if we do a lot of bad things now, we shall be reincarnated as cockroaches, or dogs, or cats, etc. in our next lives; and if we do good things, we shall be reborn as human, humans without congenital diseases...
Anyway, they believe that the spirits will drink a soup called 'Meng Po soup" before reincarnation, and this soup will eliminate all the memories.
Anyway, they believe that the spirits will drink a soup called 'Meng Po soup" before reincarnation, and this soup will eliminate all the memories.
*******************
Memory Improvement
I'm sure everyone wants to have a good memory. As a medical student, i long for a good memory too,though it just doesn't work occasionally.
Below are some of my personal experiences on building up memories that I would like to share:
1. Play mahjung. Haha. (yes, it's first on the list :D ) in fact I'm not really good at it, will try to learn. Anyway, just play any games that can improve your memories, such as flipping the 2 same cards among piles of cards, etc.
Building up memories is a slow process.
2. Association. In physiology, it's called 'conditioned reflex', firstly suggested by Russian scientist, Pavlov, who won Nobel prize before. He did many interesting experiments, including the dog and the bell. He rang the bell, and soon, he fed the dog. Then, he rang the bell again, and fed the dog. He repeated this step several times and eventually, he rang the bell without feeding the dog, but the dog had its saliva dripping.
Well, what I'm trying to say was associate what we try to remember with things that we use or see in daily lives. I can't recall whether i have actually tried this before, but one example, you associate a list of things with the things you see on your most familiar route, such as the way home from your school.
3. Making up stories. For instance, a series of number: 157382498, it could be ONE day, FIVE boys with SEVEN EYES because THREE of them are blind, went to EIGHT bookshops TWO (to) look FOUR (for) books about Window NINETY-EIGHT.
Probably it's a silly method, but in my Anatomic pathology class, we ought to study lots of slides, and they're so similar and hard to be distinguish sometimes. The problem is, my teacher likes to ask us to identify slides. That's a really hard task!!!! but the 'good thing' is, all the slides have numbers on it. So my groupmates and I, memorised all the slides (we had two tests so far, each test had about 30-40 slides i guess)...Crazy...
4. Diet
-Not really sure about this though; however, Chinese believes walnut is good for improving memories (not to eat too much, probably 5 walnuts maximum as they're considered as 'heaty' food (refer to my previous post regarding cough, see 'health is wealth'). So does Ginkgo.
-I read this on BBC news health section: "A chemical found in chocolate, tea, grapes and blueberries can improve the memory of mice, research suggests." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6705215.stm
Conclusion:
Oprah Winfrey says, "write down 5 happy things that happen to you each day in your diary." and yes, i agree with that, diary is meant to be jotting down all the joy we have had every day. One day when we are old, when we look back, oh yes, we have had a great and joyful lives!
1 comments:
Hi,
it is really good to note some points in a book about our daily activities as it can be helpful to recall them in the future if need be. It is very important to improve our memory right from the time we are young.
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