My Regency: June 2010

At the age of 28, it was my dream to get married. It happened as dreamed. Before I reach 30 years old, I dreamed to have my own home, under my name. It also happened. By this time, I already finalized my dream for the next ten years of my life. Life is often difficult, but I still believe in God and His infinite mercy and unconditional love. I know, everything will happen in the right order.

As horrible as it may seem, I never imagined that something bad will happen to a nearest kin. I work for justice, but he chose to forget it. This time, I really learned that parents must take good care and rear their children to guide them on the right path. Our choices in every moment will affect our future. Hence, we must deal with life prepared and open-minded.

Gong back to my dreams, I will work hard to achieve everything I envisioned for myself and my family. One of my dreams is a dream home, a place where I can still live life to the fullest. I am praying for good health and nice job to help me reach for my dreams. There may be failures, but then the fact that I am still alive, there is hope.

Note: I thank all my friends who kept on visiting this blog. God bless you all!

The Star Wars queen Natalie Portman is amazing. I am amazed in her portrayal and stellar performance in Star Wars and also her academic achievement. She is also the beautiful Sara in Cold Mountain and "V" for Vendetta. According to a 2007 report, she left her acting career sometime on year 2000 to pursue a Psychology degree. You can google these keywords "Natalie Portman cognitive neuroscientist" to look for reports on the topic.

Natalie's real name is Natalie Hershlag. She was a co-author of a scientific paper on the subject neuroscience of child development. She did the project while in Harvard. She was also employed as an assistant in Prof Stephen Kosslyn's neuropsychology lab. There, she got involved in a study investigating the link between frontal lobe development and visual knowledge in infants. The paper was eventually published in the journal Neuroimage, under Natalie's real name, with the title 'Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: data from near-infrared spectroscopy'.

The Study

The study investigated object permanence - the ability to understand that objects do not disappear from the world when they are out of sight, something that typically develops in the first year of life.

Researchers have argued that the frontal lobes are particularly important for this skill, but the trouble is, you can't put babies in conventional brain scanners to easily test the idea. They just wriggle about too much.

Portman's study, led by neuroscientist Dr Abigail Baird, used a relatively new method for measuring brain function called near-infrared spectroscopy.

The Results

The team discovered that the frontal lobes suddenly kicked in when children develop the knowledge that hidden objects still exist, providing an understanding of which brain areas are involved in this important mental function.

The study also demonstrated that near-infrared spectroscopy could be used successfully to study the brain development of very young children.