Week 1

This first week of the semester I listened to two tapes, and watched four very interesting videos in class. One of the tapes was an interview with a man who suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Although I have already heard about this many times, it was very shocking for me to realize how serious this “illness” is. I cannot image imagine myself being unable to control my behavior, or being unable to pay attention. However, I was amazed when the man said that ADHD can be a gift. He could finish his PhD in just two years, and he wrote one book in only four months. So, ADHD can be a superpower. Anyway, I would not like to live with this disorder. Moving on to another issue, one of the videos I would like to talk was about about was “top 10 facts about dreams”. Among these facts, there was one which interested me most, that is, Out of these facts, the one which most interested me was the theory that explains the reasons why we dream. This theory, called “threat simulation theory”, claims that we dream to simulate dangerous events and, in this way, learn how to react in certain situations. Dreaming, in this theory, fulfills biological requirements. Even though this theory has the merit of establishing the biological bases of dreaming, I think that dreaming is something too complex to have such a simple and reductionist explanation.