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Firstly, apologies for the extremely long hiatus!!! Been very busy studying for various tests, etc. For those of you who aren't clued in, yes, i managed to find a house to live in. I'm currently sharing the house with 3 other female students, 2 of which do pharmacy, and one does photography. They're all extremely nice and friendly, and both the pharmacy girls are Iraqi muslims (although one of them doesn't practice Islam, is 18 years old and has a 33 year old boyfriend!!!! *shock, horror* Okay...moving swiflty along....my room is pretty good, decent-sized, more than what i was expecting (may post some pics of it later ;)). Each bedroom comes with its own little sink (which comes in handy particularly when doing 'wudhu', lol) and it was fully furnished, so i already had a wardrobe, bed, and computer table in place prior to moving in. Convenient, huh? :D We're currently sharing our neighbour's wireless internet connection (he kindly offered it to us) but we are in the process of acquiring our 'own' internet connection after we purchase a phone handset (and split the cost amongst the 4 of us) The rent we have to pay is 350 pounds per month (excluding bills).
I walk 16 minutes everyday to get to the train station to get to uni, although i have recently started taking the bus as well. The way back home, however was, at first, a complete nightmare!!! >____< Have to walk up a 'treacherous' hill to get to my house (there's no way of avoiding it), cos my house is situated on a hilly area. That was SOO hard to get used to, but now i have totally gotten accustomed to it. (no need to do 30 min exercise everyday to keep yourself fit, i fulfil that requirement anyway just by walking up and down the hill, haha! XDDD)
Anyway, enough about my house...i hope everyone is doing fine alhamdolilah and that everyone's in good health :D
Oh yeah, my module for this term is on "Neuroscience"!!!!!!!! Its SOOO amazing!!! Ahhhh... the most interesting modules i have come across so far, very heavy and complicated but oh so interesting!!! I'm totally loving it!!! ^O^ So today in my SSC (student selected component) session, we were debating quite deeply on whether there is a 'God' spot/lobe, or a neuroanatomical variability in the brain thats responsible for 'religion', cos the SSC i chose to do was 'fMRI brain imaging of religious experience'. Then we were talking about how many scientists are still troubled by the 'persistence' of religion for decades, even suggesting that religion may have some kind of 'survival advantage', as people with religion tend to be less prone to mental illnesses...? hmm.....what a strange thought.... Our teacher then deviated completely and started asking us about how we percieve mental illness with 'possession' and the whole 'glossolalia' concept ('speaking in tongues') which is the idea that some people can speak God's words/messages from a divine above, said to be elicited when under an intense prayer or intimate connection to God, almost as if they are being possessed at that moment (not in control of themselves) to say this nonsensical, unknown language. But to us normal people, it would sound as something completely gibberish and incomprehensible. Some say it can be translated, others say it's a language out of this world. But no one really knows what brings about this bizarre phenomenon...there has been research showing certain areas of the brain becoming active during glossolalia, like increased 'temporal lobe activity'. But yeah, our teacher has a habit of deviating and going off-topic a bit, but its hard not to go on a 'philosophical' tangent during these discussions (which is what we normally end up doing..hahha, lol!)
Here's a youtube video, if you're interested in knowing more about 'glossolalia': http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?hl=en&resnum=0&q=glossolalia&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#
There are 8 of us, with 4 of us declaring ourselves as 'religious' and the other 4 being 'non-religious' (I obviously was in the religious group) and basically we discuss loads of articles and critically evaluate these research papers (all of which involve some form of brain imaging perfomed a group of participants while they are having a 'religious experience' to see which areas of the brain light up and whether these loci of activation were different from non-religious people. ('religious experience' ofcourse, being a very non-specific and broad term involving any sort of 'union' , meditation, prayer or spirituality with 'God', its hard to define, really.) SO anyway, I'm gonna have my 'fMRI brain scan' done next week, for the purposes of our teacher's research!!!! SOOO looking forward to it!!! ^_______^
Apparently, all we've been told so far, is that during the fMRI, we're going to perform a task which involves looking at a pair of words being displayed on a screen, and pressing a button when you see the pair of words 'rhyme'....yeah...pretty vague description, right? O__O The teacher doesn't want to disclose anything more for fear of it influencing our thinking/actions during the brain scan. And how that relates to having a religious experience beats me!!! but it'll be fun! :DDD
Anyway, i hope everyone's fine and doing well.
Inshallah, i will upload my new bedroom pics sometime this week, so look foward to that! hehehe :)
Until then, take care everyone!!!
Ciao!!! ^___^