Dr. Reneh Karamians

The Function and Neuroanatomy of Dreams By Dr. Reneh Karamians, Psy.D. Scientists and philosophers have been cogitating about dreams for a long time now. As an example, some ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were a doorway to a different dimension. Sigmund Freud, a 19th century neurologist and “wannabe” psychologist, wrote extensively on the topic and did so in a surprisingly cogent manner. Freud, ever the scientist, atheist and skeptic, took an evolutionary approach to the problem of dreams and stated that dreaming served a purpose for the survival of early humans. Freud postulated that 1) dreams happen to keep early humans asleep when minor phenomena within the environment present themselves (e.g., hunger or needing to pee), 2) dreams served early humans as an internal alarm to help them wake up when major environmental dangers presented themselves (e.g., There is a lion in the cave!). Dreaming to Stay Asleep In the case of the former, what Freud called the ...

Five Facts About the Brain Everyone Should know Dr. Reneh Karamians, Psy.D. As a student of Neuropsychology, I get asked a lot questions about the human brain. One of the most popular is “Do humans really only use 10 percent of their brain?”. Well, I thought I would take this opportunity to address some of these questions. So, here we are in no particular order. 1)  Do people really only use 10 Percent of their brain? I’ll be honest. I’m not even sure what this questions means. But I have tried to make some sense of it and I have been able to come up with two answers. The first addresses the brain’s mass and the second the brain’s capacity to store information. So, do people only use 10% of their brains? If any one individual was forced to live with 90% of their brain mass removed, they would most certainly not survive since most of the lower brain regions that control heat rate, breathing and other homeostatic functions would be gone. So, the answer in this case is, ...