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Saturday, November 19, 2011

Event Boundary and Sleep Texting

Dear insansapinas,

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My mother had fifteen other siblings. Some from the previous marriage of my grandmother. My mom was the youngest. I never had the chance to see my uncles and aunts in my mother's side except for my aunt who was only a few years older than my mom and was one of the three children in the second marriage--that of my grandpa's.


They're so big a family that every meal was like a banquet. The house was big, like a train that was so long with more than twenty rooms to accommodate also the extended family. You see my grandma used to take in orphaned relatives, nieces who became  homeless due to separation and or any relatives that extended their vacations/invitations.


Now why do I have to subject you to reading the description of our old house which was reduced to two-bedroom house when it became an empty nest. Wala ng ibon. Wala na ring itlog. Whoa.


There was the master bedroom and a big room for visiting relatives especially the grandchildren. I remember, my grandmom would bring out the big mat and big mosquito  net so that we would sleep together on the floor. The blankets were also big and heavy. 
Hindi uso sa lola ko  ang kasabihang pag maiksi ang kumot, magtiyagang mamaluktot.


I did not actually see the house at its splendour with a big porch and a living room with a  grandfather clock.  It was my mother who told me everything. The dining room was bigger with a table that can seat more than a dozen. Nandoon pa yon noong dumalaw kami. Made from kamagong or narra siguro. Noong bata ako, ginawa naming playground. Yong iba kong pinsan, ginagawang ping pong table.  There were also two kitchens. One was where the foods were being kept warm and the other one was where the gory side of cooking were done like butchering a small pig or dressing several chickens. One chicken was not enough for the family. 


What's the point of the discussion? It is the senior moment where a person forgets what she's going to do the moment she walks to another room and the possible solution to remember is to retrace the steps from where she has originally come from.


This senior moment is referred to by the experts as a doorway or an event boundary.
It appears, the mind regards a doorway as something experts call an ‘event boundary’, signalling the end of one memory episode and the beginning of another.Psychologists found the brain tends to file away events and memories from one room as soon as it exits into another, storing information in successive chapters or episodes.The latest research, published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, shows doorways act as a kind of trigger for the brain to file one chapter and move on to the next one.


Read more about this here. 


I do experience this "senior moment" even when I was still young. Imagine if I have  lived in the house of my grandparents when it was not downsized yet. By the time, I reached the last room, I must have forgotten my name.


Anyway, the doctor said this is not yet a sign of ALZ (thank God, whoa) but forgetting to take medicines (ooops, did I take the meds today? )  and the names of loved ones (Sino ka nga ba? ) require already the doctor's intervention,  


Sleep texting


You are familiar with sleep walking and sleep eating. 
There is a new disorder in town. It is called sleep texting. Symptoms inlude twisting and turning before catching the zzzzzz.   And the moment, a person is asleep, she reaches for the cell phone and texts a friend or a relative.



This is actually what happened to Elizabeth Hammond. And according to experts, the number is increasing. Sus ginoo, eh ang iba naman, kulang na lang nakakabit ang cell phone sa kamay.


Pinaysaamerika

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