Insanity

Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person becoming a danger to themselves or others, though not all such acts are considered insanity; likewise, not all acts showing indifference toward societal norms are acts of insanity. In modern usage, insanity is most commonly encountered as an informal unscientific term denoting mental instability, or in the narrow legal context of the insanity defense. In the medical profession the term is now avoided in favor of diagnoses of specific mental disorders; the presence of delusions or hallucinations is broadly referred to as psychosis. When discussing mental illness in general terms, "psychopathology" is considered a preferred descriptor.

In English, the word "sane" derives from the Latin adjective sanus meaning "healthy". Juvenal's phrase mens sana in corpore sano is often translated to mean a "healthy mind in a healthy body". From this perspective, insanity can be considered as poor health of the mind, not necessarily of the brain as an organ (although that can affect mental health), but rather refers to defective function of mental processes such as reasoning. Another Latin phrase related to our current concept of sanity is "compos mentis" (lit. "sound of mind"), and a euphemistic term for insanity is "non compos mentis". In law, mens rea means having had criminal intent, or a guilty mind, when the act (actus reus) was committed.

Insane (cancelled video game)

Insane (stylized as inSANE) was a survival horror video game, formerly in development by Volition to be published by THQ, in collaboration with film director Guillermo del Toro. It was being developed for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and was to be released in 2013. It was intended as the first installment of a planned trilogy of Insane video games.

Development

Insane was first announced at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards on December 11th 2010 by del Toro and Volition, in the form of a thirty-second teaser trailer. Del Toro said of the game, "With this new series of video games, I want to take players to a place they have never seen before, where every single action makes them question their own senses of morality and reality. THQ and Volition, Inc. are equally excited to make this vision of a completely new game universe into a reality."

Comic book artist Guy Davis was one of the key designers of the game. He has previously worked with del Toro on designs for At the Mountains of Madness.

Relapse (Eminem album)

Relapse is the sixth studio album by American rapper Eminem. The album was released on May 19, 2009 under Shady Records, Aftermath Entertainment, and Interscope Records. It was his first album of original material since Encore (2004), following a four-year hiatus from recording due to his writer's block and an addiction to prescription sleeping medication. Recording sessions for the album took place during 2005 to 2009 at several recording studios, and Dr. Dre, Mark Batson, and Eminem handled production. Conceptually, Relapse concerns the ending of his drug rehabilitation, rapping after a non-fictional relapse, and the return of his Slim Shady alter-ego.

One of the most anticipated album releases of 2009, Relapse debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 608,000 copies in its first week. It produced three singles that attained chart success and has been certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album received mixed reviews from most music critics, who were divided in their responses towards Eminem's lyrics. It has sold more than three million copies in the United States and more than ten million copies worldwide.

Wakefulness

Wakefulness is a daily recurring brain state and state of consciousness in which an individual is conscious and engages in coherent cognitive and behavioral responses to the external world such as communication, ambulation, eating, and sex. Being awake is the opposite of the state of being asleep in which most external inputs to the brain are excluded from neural processing.

Effects upon the brain

The longer the brain has been awake, the greater the spontaneous firing rates of cerebral cortex neurons with this increase being reversed by sleep. Another effect of wakefulness (which may or may not be related to this) is that it lowers the small stores of glycogen held in the astrocytes that can supply energy to the brain's neurons—one of the functions of sleep, it has been proposed, is to create the opportunity for them to be replenished.

Maintenance by the brain

Wakefulness is produced by a complex interaction between multiple neurotransmitter systems arising in the brainstem and ascending through the midbrain, hypothalamus, thalamus and basal forebrain. The posterior hypothalamus plays a key role in the maintenance of the cortical activation that underlies wakefulness. Several systems originating in this part of the brain control the shift from wakefulness into sleep and sleep into wakefulness. Histamine neurons in the tuberomammillary nucleus and nearby adjacent posterior hypothalamus project to the entire brain and are the most wake-selective system so far identified in the brain. Another key system is that provided by the orexins (also known as hypocretins) projecting neurons. These exist in areas adjacent to histamine neurons and like them project widely to most brain areas and associate with arousal. Orexin deficiency has been identified as responsible for narcolepsy.

Awake (Donkeyboy song)

Awake is an English language hit in Norway for the Norwegian band Donkeyboy, their fourth single taken from their album Caught in a Life after singles "Ambitions" and "Sometimes" (both #1s for 13 and 8 weeks consecutively in the Norwegian Singles Chart) and "Broke My Eyes" (that reached #6).

"Awake" released in 2009 reached #8 in the Norwegian Singles Chart.

Charts

References

Awake (Godsmack album)

Awake is the second studio album by the rock band Godsmack, released on October 31, 2000. It features the song "Goin' Down", which first appeared on the band's first studio recording All Wound Up. This was the only Godsmack album to feature drummer Tommy Stewart.

Since the mid-2000s, the songs "Sick of Life" and "Awake" have been extensively used for the United States Navy's "Accelerate Your Life" commercials.

Recording

The band opted to convert a warehouse in Haverhill into a makeshift studio, rather than use a more traditional studio setting. According to Sully Erna, the band just didn't want to move into any luxurious studio, because they wanted to keep the edge on for writing and "not get too far away from what we're all about". So they just stayed in the slums rather than moving into luxury.

Erna says the results show in the music's "tougher" sound, however it has a very raw edge to it. It's not very polished," he says. "But it still has a lot of good grooves, and it still has a lot of power."