The Brain's Plasticity

One thing I find interesting about the brain is its plastcity. When someone has a brain injury and one part of the brain cannot serve its function, the brain uses that area for a different function. The brain reorganizes itself to help the person. For example, if you have ever tried to use your finger to read Braille, it seems almost impossible to feels the different dots since they are so close together. But for someone who is blind and therefore unable to read, the sensory cortex will partially reorganize itself. It will use the occipital lobe (which is normally used for vision) to increase the sense of touch. The finger will therefore be more sensitive than the average person's finger. They will be able to feel the dots of Braille with greater ability, even though they are really close together and it is harder for the average human. To me this is like the brains way of being fair to the damaged person since it is giving back something with greater ability.

The Amygdala and why our class has shrunk

Have you ever walked into a class at the beginning of the year thinking that it would be manageable, and then you are a week into it, and you realize that you were mistaken. That is what happened to many students this year in AP Psychology.
We started the year off with a lot of students (maybe 16) then suddenly it decreased to about 13, 12, 11, 10. I think we are at 10 now, but I am not 100% sure. The point is, our class has shrunk exponentially. Why? What causes people to drop out of classes? Fear? Boredom? Laziness?
We can easily eliminate boredom in this scenario because Psychology is one of the most interesting subjects in school these days. We learn a lot of interesting things about humans in general, which I find really cool. Now we have laziness and fear.
There is no doubt that laziness is a contributing factor, as students do not want to do a lot of work in high school, but I think that fear is the main reason why students are dropping out of this class at a rapid pace. Will I do well on the AP? How am I going to do all of this work and have time to spend on my own? All of these questions are going through my mind, and I think through the minds of others as well.
Which part of the brain is linked to fear? The Amygdala is the correct answer. So, when students are frightened by all of the work, the amygdala is at work, and it is to thank for the fact that we now have only 10 students in the class.

This One's a Real Brain Splitter...

This week in psychology we learned the coolest thing I've learned all year. We learned about the different hemispheres and how they interact with each other. And here comes the kicker: the two hemispheres in your brain are connected by the corpus collosum.
Now don't get too excited yet. But hold on to your seat because this is mind-blowing.
Many years ago, doctors tried an experiment to try to stop people from having seizures. Through their investigating, they came to a conclusion that if you remove one's corpus collosum, he or she will cease to have seizures. And they were right! But there is one thing they did not account for.
It turns out that the same thing that can be removed to stop seizures is also what allows the two hemispheres in your brain to communicate.
To understand this better, let's look at an example. Let's take a standard right-handed person who has his speech controlled in his left hemisphere and movement of his left hand controlled in his right hemisphere. What if you were to remove his corpus collosum (and blindfold him because sight in each eye goes to both hemispheres - that's another whole story within itself)? Well, as you can expect, he would not be able to transfer information from one hemisphere to another. But what really are the ramifications of this?
Glad I asked because I know someone who can give a great answer, and his name is Isaac Graber. Let's take our example of a blindfolded, right-handed man and put some playdough in his left hand. Well in that case he'd be able to tell you that he is holding playdough since both speech and control of his left hand are in his left hemisphere. But what if you put that playdough in his right hand. Well, he'd be able to draw the word playdough with his left hand had you asked him what he was holding, but since speech is in his left hemisphere, and that sensory info of what he was holding went to his right hemisphere, he would not be able to tell you what he was holding.
This concept blew my mind that you can communicate one way but not another if you are lacking a corpus colossum. Any volunteers in class willing to have your corpus collosum removed so we can mess with you? Just let me know.

I'm running out of Titles for my Posts

Ethan Cooper

      What has always been up interests to me, beyond learning about the literal function of the brain, is studying actual cases of brain damage/disorders and seeing what we have learned about the brain actually apply to life. Perhaps one of the most landmark case studies that brought the study of brain into real life was the story of Phineas Gage. Gage suffered severe damage to his prefrontal cortex after a railroad accident. When an explosion occurred, a large iron rod belted through his skull, leading to severe social impairments. Although the extent of these impairments remains controversial, this laid a foundation for studying specific areas of the brain. 

     Because I know you readers do not watch football, I would first like to point out that CJ2K (Chris Johnson) is back, and rushed for 195 yards in a Titans win. Now back to the boring stuff...I would like to focus on the Hippocampus because its name is beyond extraordinary. It combines both an animal, the hippo, with a campus, creating a metaphor for success.The hippocampus is the structure of the brain most closely aligned to memory formation. In 1985, Clive Wearing, a English conductor, suffered from encephalitis, inflammation to the brain, which caused damage to the left and the right hippocampus. Although he was at his previous level of intellect and perceptual abilities from before the encephalitis, he has now lost the ability to form new declarative memories. This makes him assume he has always awaken from a coma, and his inability to remember things has taken away a great deal of joy from his life.

     While this story is truly sad and unfortunate, it helps us realize the true beauty and power of the brain. That ear-peace/claw game looking like structure, the hippocampus, is literally a life changer, and helps us make new memories each and every day. Now I wish one day I can impair that hippocampus before a psych blog so I can forget to do it!

Applying what we learned this week to a classroom setting…during class

This week, we basically learned about how your brain processes the information transferred from your senses. And let me tell you, this stuff freaked me out (in a good way). First off, we learned how the sense of what you touch and hear go to your brain. Basically, one side of your brain processes information taken from the other side of your body. For instance, when you touch a pencil with your left hand, the information travels to your right brain. We also learned the same thing applies to your ears. What's weird about your brain taking in information from the opposite side is that it applies to ALL sides--not just right and left, but up and down as well. In other words, whatever you feel with your feet, that information is processed at a literally higher level in your brain than the things you perceive higher up on your body. While we were learning these things, I realized I was holding a pen in my left hand. I realized that everything I felt on my left hand was being processed in my right brain! I can't explain it but that just weirded me out. I then realized that my feet were sort of constrained in my shoes. That means that the feeling of restraint from my feet is processed in a higher part of my brain than what my hand was feeling when I touched my pen. The fact that I was able to apply the information we were learning WHILE we were actually learning it was an interesting and, believe it or not, satisfying experience as a whole, and I'm glad I'm learning a subject that is so fascinating yet so simple to grasp (no pun intended).

Magic of the Cerebellum

          7, 6, 5, 4, 3. Only 3 seconds left in my basketball game, down by 1, and I get fouled. I am going to the line to shoot 2. Unfortunately, I miss the 1st shot. The second shot goes in and out. I run up to get the ball with 3 seconds, run it back a few steps while a fast guy is guarding me, 2 seconds, and then set myself up for my shot, 1 second left, and I pop the shot with perfect balance. It goes in and I win the game for my team! The only reason my team won that game is because of my magical cerebellum. If i did not have a cerebellum, then I can guarantee that there is no way that shot would get in, and I would probably get stuffed and sent back home.
          My cerebellum helps me with my athletics and balance as well as controlling my procedural memory. This basically means that it is thanks to the cerebellum that I learn the fundamentals of basketball. Additionally, my procedural memory, which is controlled by my cerebellum, helped me learn how to ride a bike. It helped me learn the procedure of riding a bike. It's a good thing I have a cerebellum or else I probably would be a lot heavier due to the lack of bike riding. Wow, the magic of the cerebellum.

The Smells That Made My Hypothalamus Go Nuts!

Today was the annual ASBEE BBQ Contest. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and the barbecue was smelling mighty tasty! I walked past every booth at the contest and grew hungrier and hungrier  throughout the day. I saw Mrs. Perl walking across the blacktop and was so excited to tell her that my Hypothalamus was making me hungry, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her. I thought more about it and found it so fascinating that the Hypothalamus in our brain controls our hunger and not our stomachs. Everybody always talks about how their stomach is growling because they are hungry, but really your brain tells you when you're hungry. The brain is truly the quarterback of the body. It calls the plays and executes them with precision and efficiency. I never really appreciated the brain before taking this class, but now I see that it is the most complex thing in the world.

More Neuroimaging Techniques?

I'm not going to lie: when you've only had one day of class, it's kind of hard to come up with a topic we learned in that class to discuss on the blog. Thankfully, there's plenty to talk about since we learned more in class than the book discusses. For those that don't remember, we learned about neuroimaging techniques. These techniques are used to scan the brain for damage or research (i.e. what your brain does when it has schizophrenia, when it does a specific activity, etc.). The techniques discussed in the book is the CT (computed tomography) scan, the PET (position emission tomography)scan, the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), and the fMRI (functional MRI). The ones I'm interested in, however, are the lesion and the EEG (electroencephalogram--what a mouthful!). What exactly are these techniques? Firstly, the lesion is basically research of natural or experimental damage to the brain in order to see what controls what. For instance, how are we supposed to know what part of the brain controls language unless we research the damage done to the brain when someone shows symptoms of misunderstanding language after an accident? The EEG basically measures the waves of electrical activity on the brain's surface. This technique is used to figure out how certain stimuli affect the brain so that we can learn which stimuli are more dangerous than others. This stuff has got me interested in figuring out which stimuli affect which parts of my brain. As long as it doesn't permanently damage my brain, I would actually be interested in participating in an experiment to see which stimuli affects my brain and how they do. Also, just a random, off topic note: if somebody was claustrophobic but went in for an MRI (in the enclosed one), would the results be biased because somebody's fear affects their brain activity? Just something I was curious about while learning about this stuff.

Back in the day scientists of old had no ethical way of observing a brain. The only way that they could have seen a live persons brain would have been to cut off the top of his head. They were stuck until Damadian came along. He thought of this revolutionary way to see into someones head. He created the first MRI in 1972. This brought about huge break throughs in the field of psychology.
This way of progress where scientists get stuck and then one person thinks of a radical new idea is seen throughout all fields of science. In physics we see that Einstein came up with his theory of relativity, in biology we see the theory of evolution thought of by Darwin, in math we see that Leibniz invented calculus and so on. All these people lived in eras where their subject seemed to be running out of information and yet they all transformed their fields. Thats what science is all about: coming up with new innovative ideas and testing them. There is in infinite amount of information in every field, we just need to think outside the box to see it.

fMRI

Many years ago scientists did not have the technology that they have available to them today. They were able to make predictions and conduct experiments but they were never able to actually see inside the brain. Fortunately, we have that technology today. There are many ways to see inside the brain and its functioning. The method which I found the most interesting is using the fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). With a regular MRI, a magnetic field is used to align spinning atoms of brain molecules, then a radio-wave pulse disorients them momentarily which reveals a detailed picture of the brains structure. With an fMRI, one can see the functioning of the brain. This occurs by comparing pictures of the brain less than seconds apart and watching where the blood flows. For example, if someone was speaking, you would then see blood rush towards the front of the brain because that is where the speaking is controlled. With this method scientists can conveniently see which parts of the brain control certain actions or senses, and it helps them learn how the brain functions.

Endocrine and Nervous Systems - 2 Different "Lifestyles"

The 2 main systems for transmitting information and messages throughout the body interest me. These 2 systems are the Nervous System and the Endocrine System. They have a lot of differences. (Obviously, otherwise we wouldn't need both).

Some of the major differences are as follows. The endocrine system goes through your blood, while the nervous system goes through your neurons. The ES is much slower to take effect since it goes through hormones in your bloodstream, while the NS is very fast traveling speeding through your sensory and motor neurons. And one more difference is that the slow moving ES's effects last longer, while the quick firing NS's effects dissipate faster. 

These two systems within our body interest me because this is a case where the biological makeup of our bodies can apply to our lives. The endocrine system is like a slow paced, hard working person, who  puts a great deal of time into his endeavors, and thus gets great, long lasting results. The nervous system is like a speed demon at work, getting things done in a very time efficient manner, although the results do not last as long. I find these 2 systems interesting because the principles of "the harder you work for it, the better results you get" can, in a sense, apply to Biology and Psychology as shown by the endocrine system.

I just thought this would be a good way to help remember these 2 important systems within our body.