Left Neglected: The Power of the Mind

Felicia, a 41-year-old wife and mother, shows signs of Major Depressive Disorder with severe anxious distress, mood-congruent, and catatonia features. Most of the time, Felicia is overpowered by emptiness, sadness and despair. These feelings caused a change in her previous functioning resulting in emotional, physical and social complications. As depression progresses, the individual becomes more socially withdrawn. She reveals that she spends countless hours alone, avoids her children and occasionally sees her friend. The guilt of not saving her mother, troubles Felicia, causing her to battle with insomnia. Not only does she struggles with falling asleep, Felicia has a difficult time staying asleep. She reports that dealing with the guilt of her mother’s death has her on the bathroom floor, shivering to avoid disturbing her husband. Felicia is observed picking at sores on her arms, which is another symptom of MDD. This motion is known as psychomotor agitation and is also a sign of anxiety. Felicia’s thoughts and actions are slow, a result of psychomotor retardation. She struggles handling certain responsibilities. Her husband hired a housekeeper because Felicia can no longer take care of her family on a regular basis. She states that

S, she suffered a stroke in her right cerebral hemisphere. Her strokes lead to many new challenges. Mrs. S no longer recognized the left side of her body as her own. This neglect for the left side of her body spread to full neglect of the whole left side of her world. She was faced with many symptoms that severely challenged her daily routine. She would only put makeup on half of her face would become very upset when people pointed out that only have of her face was done. Mrs. S would become distressed and frustrated because she would put makeup on the part of her face she could see. And to her, that was her whole face. Another daily activity Mrs. S struggled very much with was eating. She would argue that the nurse forgot to put a drink or certain type of food on her plate, or that the portion size was too small, because she could only see the right half of the plate. Even when the object she was looking for was pointed out to her, she was not able to process it until it came into her right hemispheres line of vision. A huge problem with unilateral neglect is not just the fact that the left hemispace is completed ignored by the patient, it is also that it is impossible to get their attention to the left side of their body (Zillmer, Spiers, & Culbertson, 2008, p.

After conducting a close reading of Victor Davis Hanson’s article, Monasteries of the Mind, I came to the consensus that he provided many plausible and thought-provoking arguments regarding the political climate in the United States right now. He asserts in the article that in recent months there has been a double standard from what was accepted and praised during the Obama administration and and what is looked down upon in the Trump administration. In fact, Hanson accentuated that, “There is now something called the ‘Resistance,’ which by its nomenclature poses that its opposition to Trump is reminiscent of European partisan resistance to Hitler” [1]. I find this accusation to be a bit extreme, because while many of his policies anger and offend

E Sarah’s disability impacted everyone in her family differently. Since the book is written by Paul Austin, Sarah’s father, we mostly hear from his perspective what it was like raising a daughter with Down syndrome. Paul Austin said, “She’s a good kid. But the Down syndrome has put some stress on the family.” For Paul, the early years were the hardest because when Sarah was born he was a third-year resident. Sally stayed at home and took care of Sarah. For Sally, having a daughter with a disability was tough. When it came to having another child she knew that she couldn’t handle having another child with special needs. Sally also

The patient exhibited cues of overall withdrawal from daily activities, notably those he regularly enjoyed like “cooking for his girlfriend and caring for the house.”3 Along with the expressed concern from his children and the stated desire to no longer live. Sonja’s visual assessment of the gentleman appearing lost and confused standing in the hallway supported the patterns of depression. However, during her first visual glimpse of the elderly man in the hallway, Sonja noticed he was well groomed and dressed, which might not be typical of an individual with major depression who lacks the “motivation to do anything.”4 This cue was followed by his anxious voice combined with abnormal gait of stopping and shuffling his feet. These new visual and audible cues created a second hypothesis comparing the patterns Sonja had observed on a patient in the past. Through her interpretation of these new cues on examination and questioning the patient in greater detail, Sonja discovered that the source of the depression originates from the gentleman’s inability to adequately move around to perform daily activities to his standards. Interpreting these patterns as possibly the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, she referred him to the neurology department for further examination and her hypothesis was

The findings of Oliver Slack along with Vuilleumier & Schwartz reveal further insight into the psychological impairment known as unilateral neglect. This condition commonly occurs in individuals that have survived strokes. Unilateral neglect is the phenomenon in which an individual is unable to attend to one side of space within their environment. One’s side of space refers to only experiencing either the left or right side of possible incoming stimuli depending on physical orientation. Looking at the stimuli that is affected, individuals with this condition are unable to hear sounds or visually see the space that is ignored. Think of it as holding a piece of paper perpendicular to one’s face, aligned in the middle with the nose, and only being able to attend to either the left or right side of incoming stimuli. The range of space that is unnoticed depends on the individual and the severity

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova is a novel based on a woman who gets into a car accident, suffers from a stroke, and ends up developing left neglect. Left neglect, otherwise known as Hemispatial neglect, develops after a stroke or brain damage to the right side of the brain. Left neglect is a neuropsychological condition that causes an attention deficit to the awareness of the left side of space. A person with left neglect has difficulty processing and perceiving stimuli on the left side of their body. It can affect a person’s visual perception where they are unable to see things or interpret them on the left side of them. Typically a person with left neglect forgets that their left side exists. Someone who suffers from left neglect may not be able to dress themselves on their left side; they may not eat the food on the left side of their plate, or be able to read a left side of a book. It can cause issues with their mobility where they are unaware of their left extremities, which can lead to problems in walking or any task using bilateral coordination or skills.

A human mind is without question one of the most powerful and unique aspects about a person. The mind is referred to as the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences. It empowers a person to feel, to think, be creative, and have emotion. However, one vital characteristic of the mind is that it can be utilized for good or evil. A human mind is notorious for taking people into crazy thought and adventurous journeys. This can definitely be great however it could have many downsides. These mind games that happen frequently in society can lead to people becoming introverted as well as scared for what life can bring them in the future. In the zombie film Pontypool, Grant Mazzy and Sydney Briar are faced

The life course theory is reflected in her career choice and dedication to the study of mental illness. Explicitly, her brother’s mental illness prompted her study of the brain along with her advocacy for mental illness (Taylor, 2013). In addition, her education and research allowed her to analyze brain function during and after the stroke. Furthermore, her thought that the left brain is the individual perspective aligns with the life course theory and personal

In order to become stress free, millions of people choose meditation and mindfulness as a source of relief. Choosing the two can help a person, not only get stress relief, but also achieve a much better physical body and response. Being mindful of one’s health by meditating can help a person achieve a better mental health.

According to Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, in his movie “Secrets of the Mind,” our vision system is divided into two parts, one with our eyes, and the other with our brain. He also says that there are two different pathways in which our brain uses to “see.” One of these pathways, he calls the evolutionary new pathway (the more sophisticated pathway) in which our eyes see, then the information is sent to the thalamus, and eventually entering the visual cortex of the brain. This pathway is the conscious part of seeing. The other pathway Dr. Ramachandran says is more prominent, as well as evolutionarily primitive. An iguana uses this system of seeing. In this second pathway, information enters through the eyes, and then is sent to the brain

The primary case in the video, "Privileged insights of the Mind" is the situation of Derek Steen. Derek feels torment in his cut away left arm which is likewise alluded to as Phantom Limb Syndrome. Steen does not feel the torment constantly. He clarifies that after he got his surgery despite everything he had the inclination that his arm was still joined to his body. Be that as it may, the agony came when he contemplated his arm, the more he pondered it the more torment he encountered and the other way around. Furthermore, Steen says when he initially began shaving subsequent to turning into an amputee, he would encounter torment and a shivering sensation in his removed hand when the left side (the side where his arm is cut away) of his face was being shaved.

In the hypothetical situation, the patient described was suffering from hemispatial neglect, a neurological condition that results from hemispheric damage. Patients suffering from this condition fail to acknowledge a stimuli situated contralaterally to their hemispheric lesion (Verdon, Schwartz, S, Lovblad, Hauert, & Vuilleumier, 2001). Lesions on both the left and right hemisphere can cause neglect, however, only the right hemisphere lesions cause lasting deficits (Stone, Halligan, & Greenwood, 1993), which is the reason for the opinion that the right hemisphere is dominant for attention. Although neglect has been associated with impairment to the right inferior parietal lobe (Vallar, 2001). neglect, however, has also been observed within

Next I will start discussing the ethical issues represented in the other film ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.’ This film deals with the ethical implications concerning memory loss. In the film, Joel and Clementine, who are ex-lovers, remove memories of each other. If you could erase someone from your life, would you? The act of erasing a person’s memory appears at first so highly unethical, even when the characters in the film have actually requested for it.

Pursuing the left and generating stability was used to describe when the “attention to the left was enhanced by emotionally salient stimuli”. This concept was demonstrated in an interview where a woman would unceasingly drop items from her left hand, but succeeded in holding her infant child on her left side. When the woman in the study was asked about this she said, “I know that my left hand is clumsy and that I sometimes have slopped coffee and such things—but holding my baby cannot be compared to holding a cup of coffee” (Klinke et al.,