Studies and Alzheimer's

I'm in the Agric building, waiting for the second part of a psychological study i'm taking part it. You see, in order to be able to use first and second year students as guinea pigs in our third year dissertation projects, we have to participate in 20-hours worth of studies over two years. So I've had my mind probed, my eye movements tracked, thrown a ping-pong ball into a Starbucks cup no less that 180 times... Still, just now I had to eat 50 gramms of chocolate (awesome !) and need to go back in two hours for a series of psych tests. Then I need to go back next week same time to do the same. Still, after that, I'll have 19.25 of the 20 credits we need ! The thing is, the dissertation i've applied to will be happening in Oxford so I doubt I'll be using Reading Uni participants but it's still good to help out the third years .

In other news, I got the bus this morning because it was a miserable drizzly day. So there i was waiting for the 17 to arrive and arrive it did ten minutes later... Only to let everyone off and drive off saying "Sorry not in service". So everyone at the stop had a rave. Not too much of a problem as there was still a good 40 minutes before lectures started so I waited for the next one. In true British bus style, not just one bus arrived 20 minutes later, not just two buses arrived 20 minutes later but THREE buses came lounging into the station 20 minutes later. So we were spoilt for choice as to which one to go on. In the end I arrived at uni just in time for my lecture.

We had Neuroscience this morning, about Alzheimers Disease and it was such a depressing lecture ! 15% of us will get Alzheimers, with a higher chance if we have a certain gene. This was partially based on studies carried out by a bunch of nuns in the 1930's which is all fair because they were in a controlled environment all their lives. They found that nuns who's applications contained simple English with not much elaboration had a higher dementia rate when they got older. Conclusion : Uneducated people have a higher dementia rate than the educated. So... in order to avoid Alzheimers, you need to go to university and not have a certain gene? Wrong. To quote the lecturer "We only know about 10% of the causes of Alzheimers"... Great... Though it doesn't beat yesterday's lecturer who ended the lecture with "in conclusion: dadadada, dada dadada". Nice to see we pay £3000+ for a high level of teaching !


Alzheimer's causes brain tissue degradation over time so prevention is much better than treatment which is why giving to research programms is important


I also need to find someone who owns a power drill because I've got a photo-canvas of a tree I want to hang in my room but I don't have the tools. And to put my huge whiteboard over my desk. All for a more organised life ! I'm listening to radio nostalgie which is such a good radio station because I like modern music but the radio gets so repetitive and a bit of olde music is always good !

I won't write more for now because I've got loads of research to do for my essays so I'll say ciao for the time being !