Test Your Brain Power

The answer is N.

The letters stand for the months of the year, starting with March.

March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November

Cryptograms date back centuries as a way to pass along encoded information.  Letters in a message are substituted with other letters, number, or symbols.

Here is a little mental health joke.  Numbers are substituted for the letters, your challenge is to break the code and decipher the quote.  (Click on the puzzle for a printer-friendly version.)

Highlight below for the solution:

Why did the airline pilot go to see a psychiatrist?
He thought that he was plane crazy.

Click on puzzle for printer-friendly version.

Click here for the solution.

Try to fill in the missing numbers.

The missing numbers are integers between 0 and 9.
The numbers in each row add up to totals to the right.
The numbers in each column add up to the totals along the bottom.
The diagonal lines also add up the totals to the right.

Click on the puzzle for a printer-friendly version.

Click here for the solution.

Five friends (Allie, Frank, Kyle, Natalie, and Rina) went Trick-or-Treating in their neighborhoods.  From the clues below, can you determine what each friend dressed up as, how many houses they went to (either 10, 15, 16, 17, or 20), and what their favorite candy is?

3×5 Grid

1. The five costumes are a Mummy, a Vampire, a Cowboy (worn by a boy), Cat Woman (worn by a girl), and a Doctor.
2. Kyle, who does not like candy corn, went to more houses than Allie, who also does not like candy corn.
3. The Vampire went to half as many houses as Frank.
4. Of Natalie and the friend who dressed up as a Doctor, one’s favorite candy is Skittles and the other went to 10 houses.
5. Rina does not like M&Ms and did not dress up as Cat Woman.
6. The person who likes Twizzlers dressed up as a Mummy and the person who likes Snickers is Allie.
7. The Cowboy went to one more house than Rina.
8. The person who went to 20 houses likes Twizzlers the best.

Click here for the solution.

Thankfully, both Schizophrenia and  Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly called Multiple Personality disorder) are rare conditions.  Both are difficult to treat, even more difficult to live with, and are often interchanged and confused with each other.  For many years, the media - both news and entertainment programming - used the terms Schizophrenia and Multiple Personality Disorder interchangeably.  As more has been learned about these disorders, the confusion between the two has decreased.  Both still bear a strong stigma in society, however.

Onset

Schizophrenia is a disorder that people are born with, though the onset does not usually occur until later in life.  For men, the onset of Schizophrenia usually occurs anywhere from the teens to mid-20s.  For women, the onset is later, occurring in the 20s or 30s.  There have been cases of the onset of Schizophrenia occurring during childhood, but these cases are exceedingly rare.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a disorder that is developed as a result of a trauma.  Most cases of DID develop as a result of some kind of abuse.  No one is born with the disorder and it can develop at any time.  Most cases develop around the age of 5 or 6 years old.

Symptoms

Schizophrenics suffer from both delusions and hallucinations.  They will believe things that are not true and often could not possibly be true.  Extreme paranoia is common with Schizophrenia, a part of the irrational beliefs.  Schizophrenics often feel that people are after them or something they know, usually either aliens or governments.  Their actions and behaviors are a direct result of their delusions.  They also suffer from hallucinations, weeing or hearing things that are not there.  The voices that they hear, and respond to, are often telling them to harm themselves or others.  Many times, when a Schizophrenic hurts another person, it is because a voice told them to or it was in self-defense of a threat they perceived as a result of their delusions.  Although Schizophrenics may behave erratically, they have only one identity.

The primary symptom of DID is the development of one or more distinct identities aside from the original identity.  These identities are often developed as a coping mechanism to help the original identity to deal with a traumatic event.  These alter identities can be either gender and any age.  They can, and often do, participate in activities that the original identity would not.  The alter identities can take control of the body and thoughts, causing a loss of time for the original identity.  In some cases, the person with DID hears voices, but the voices are attributed to the other identities.  People with DID do not have hallucinations or delusions.

Treatment

Schizophrenia can be managed with a combination of medications and therapy.  People with more severe cases have a harder time staying on the medications and following through with therapy.  Often, the voices they are hallucinating tell them that the medications and therapy are dangerous, making it difficult to get them to even start treatment.  People with less severe cases of Schizophrenia can often function successfully in society while receiving treatment and are more likely to both start and stay on the course of treatment needed to control the symptoms.  There is no prevention or cure for Schizophrenia.

While people with DID may be given medications for things like depression that are a result of the disorder, there is no medication that can be given to relieve the main symptom of multiple identities existing within one person.  The only treatment for the disorder itself is therapy.  The goal of the therapy is to integrate all the identities into one complete identity.  It can take years for successful integration.  It is more likely for the person to learn to cope with the disorder rather than be completely rid of it.  There have been cases of successful integrations of all the identities, but these cases are rare.

Similarities

One of the reasons the two disorders have been confused for each other is that there are some similarities in the symptoms and the way the disorders present themselves.  A big similarity is the onset of depression.  Both Schizophrenics and people with DID are very likely to become depressed as a result of having and dealing with a life altering disorder.  The erratic behavior of a Schizophrenic is often misconstrued as being different personalities, but it is actually the facets of one personality carried to an extreme.  As the different identities take control in a person with DID, it can result in erratic behavior, making the person act in a similar manner as a person with Schizophrenia.  Talking to people that are not there is another symptom that the two disorders can have in common.  In a Schizophrenic, the person is responding to voices that they are hearing or talking to something they are seeing that isn’t there.  For a person with DID, they are interacting with the other resident identities.

Move 2 toothpicks to make 2 squares.

Stumped? Here’s a hint:

Here’s the solution:

.

Click on maze for a printer-friendly version.

Click here for the solution.

Try to fill in the missing numbers.

Use the numbers 1 through 9 to complete the equations.

Each number is only used once.
Each row is a math equation. Each column is a math equation.
Remember that multiplication and division are performed before addition and subtraction.

.

Click on the puzzle for a printer-friendly version.

Click here for the solution.

There are a lot of TV shows out there where a police department or other law enforcement agency receives help from a civilian consultant.  A recent addition to this line up is the Fox show “Lie to Me.”  Of the civilian consultant type shows, this one has a premise that could actually happen.

The premise:  The Lightman Group is a private agency that are experts on deception detection.  The head of the agency, Cal Lightman, is a psychologist who is an expert on the science of lying.  He is able to read the small signs that people give when they are lying.  He works for private citizens as well as for law enforcement agencies.

During the course of each episode the deception experts that work at the Lightman Group explain the different signs of deception, as well as the signs that go with different emotions.  The show is based on actual science and this comes through in each episode.  The small signals that the body gives off come from subconscious impulses from the brain.

While people can control certain biological signs of lying, like blood pressure and heart rate, it is unlikely that they can control all of them.  The approach the the Lightman Group uses to detect lies involves not only the biological signs, including respiration and body temperature, but also body language and word choice.

Agencies like the FBI and police departments do actually use the services of people like Cal Lightman in order to detect deception.  The signs that the brain triggers when lying, or expressing emotions, include the way the mouth and hands are held, where the eyes look to access information, the words that are chosen, as well as body temperature, respiration, and heart rate.

The show is well written, factual, and the science is explained well.  It is well worth checking out.