4-26-2010 (Monday)

Hey everybody!! It is Monday and the week begins anew. I hope everybody had a good weekend and didn't get to worked up or depressed worrying about things that we really have no control over. I hope everybody enjoyed last weeks little excursion into both satire and humor. I really have no plan of attack when the week begins and I tend to write whatever pops into my head. So it felt good to me to have a theme that actually lasted the whole week. I also enjoyed the interactions through the comments section with Shakes and S as well as JoelT popping in for a bit. I think that for me what I found the funniest bits were the discussion about the Electronic Wool Hugsuits. I found myself laughing out loud at the thought of them.

I heard an interesting piece this morning on NPR about a syndrome called Williams Syndrome there are several ways in which this manifests itself but what I found most interesting in the piece as they were talking to the mother of a little girl that has it. Was that in the, words of the piece on NPR this morning.

"But also, kids and adults with Williams love people, and they are literally pathologically trusting. They have no social fear. Researchers theorize that this is probably because of a problem in their limbic system, the part of the brain that regulates emotion. There appears to be a disregulation in one of the chemicals (oxytocin) that signals when to trust and when to distrust."

You can listen or read the article here NPR

I must give you fair warning though that listening to it this morning on the drive to work well it made me cry. So just a heads up for those of you who are not dead on the inside.

But, it was so interesting to me to think of someone who just automatically trusts people. I realize that young children are a little bit like this. But for people with this condition they just trust everyone. When they first meet that person if that person is willing they will be that persons best friend. The mother of this child detailed her fear in the piece as she talked about her daughter just climbing into a ladies van at the beach and wanting to be held by anyone who looked at her as a baby. I just can't imagine the stress that this must put the parents under as they watch out for the child on a regular basis.

So do yourself a favor and check this piece out. It is really very thought provoking.