To fight of flight, or not to fight or flight. That is the Question.

     If you are being chased by a bear, what are you going to do? If you are Usain Bolt, you will probably run for your life since running would serve you best. But if you are a big, tough guy, like Hulk Hogan, maybe you'd try to fight the bear. Whichever response you choose, it can be classified as your flight or fight response.
     But what exactly controls how you respond when you decide to either stay and fight or run away? That all comes down to the autonomic nervous system (regulates your glands, muscles, organs, etc.), which is split up into 2 parts: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
     So what do these 2 nervous systems do? The sympathetic nervous system mobilizes your body for action. So while you are prepared to either run away or fight the bear, it is getting your body ready and amped up. It is making your heart pump faster, dilating your pupils, and inhibiting bladder conrtaction, just to name a few things. Basically, the sympathetic nervous system is getting your body ready by focusing on what you need for your fight or flight and inhibiting what you don't need (for example, it is not allowing you to go to the bathroom right then and there so you can focus more from defeating the bear).
   And the parasympathetic nervous system is trying to calm everything down; it's conserving energy. It is working in opposition to your sympathetic nervous system by slowing heartbeat, contracting your bladder, etc.
     So what I want to know is, what would happen if you took out a person's parasympathetic nervous system? What would happen to their body? Would they get too overworked by their sympathetic nervous system? Would their heart start beating way too fast without anything to stop it; would their pupils dilate over their entire eye?
Also, is it even possible to take out someone's parasympathetic nervous system? Is it similar to taking out someone's corpus collosum or is it more intertwined in a person's body?

What do you guys think?

Kids

While being in Philadelphia pressed with time and helping with the family cook for Rosh Hashanah, the holiday ends and I am with the cutest baby in the world. From here, I actually learned a bit of Psychology without being in the class. My two little cousins Akiva and Ezra, both brothers, are interesting kids. One of them is really sensitive and his name is Akiva and he's 7 years old, his brother Ezra, who is 5, doesn't care about anything and isn't sensitive. Their personalities are very different and I see that one of them gets the sensitivity from their mother and the non sensitive one gets his non sensitive, humorous personality from his dad. If they were twins would they have the same personalities or would they still be opposite from another?

This is not the only fascinating thing about my cousins, what fascinates me as well is cognition, how when at first when they were little kids, they couldn't comprehend or even build a lego set. Yesterday I went to the store with the kids, and my 7 year old cousin built a rocket ship, what fascinates me is him reading the directions on the manual and knowing which pieces to put where. While I am also fascinated by the fact that this child didn't know how to read when he was very little, I realize the fantastic part of cognition, being able to process information from reading a book, from looking at pictures that tell you where certain pieces belong, and to processing the motion signals one can give off, when shaking their head or waving. Cognition takes place in every second of our life.

Our own little experiment

I recall the night before the test I was apprehensive; almost fearful for it as I tried not to imagine what sort of test would come from the difficult assignments we'd been getting. So it was with trepidation that I walked into the classroom and sat down at my desk. I expected a similar sense of agitation from my fellow classmates but was surprised when several of them expressed a calm demeanor and said that they felt fine. It was then that I began thinking how interesting it would be to research the differing study habits of the class and see what causes varying degrees of test anxiety among us.

As we learned, it is important to make an operational definition for the anxiety we would be measuring.  I think that I would measure the number of times a person fidgets: pumps leg up and down, taps pencil, etc. I would also look at the number of hours spent studying and how late we each went to bed. Personally, I had one hour and 45 minutes of sleep the night before and I feel that that may have contributed to my uneasiness on test day. To be thorough though, and to fit with our biopsychosocial approach, I would also want to observer the Amygdala. An in-depth look at the amygdala would allow me to see the neurological effects the studying times and sleeping schedules were having on the brain and how it effected the anxiety I was measuring. The optimal researhc mode I would want would be a case study so that I would be able to record everything that might lead to greater anxiety levels.

Perhaps based on what I found I would be able to find a way to make test taking less stressful. It might help all of us students for us to engage in this case study.

Bill Gates and the Mean.

I was reading yahoo news and an article about the Forbe's 400 richest people in America came up. Looking over this list reminded me of how information we are given could be very skewed. After looking over some numbers and doing some math I was really able to understand where this information could be applied.
In 2010 the United States Census estimated the average household annual income in the US was $51,914. Bill Gates, named the richest man in the United States by Forbe's, made more than $2 billion. Gates made more than 40,000 times the average annual income. While he is not able to affect the average annual income for the other 308,745,537 people in the United States the rest of the 399 people on Forbe's list really do.

Cerebellums: Some are simply "better" than others

Messi dribbles down the baseline cuts it back to the left, Messi going! Messi shoots from 100ft .... Goooooaaaaallllll!! Messi! What a shot! He bent it beautifully! (scream with English accent)
For those of us that are watching this shot, we sit back and wonder, how does he do that? Why can't I do that?
The answer to the question is the cerebellum. It is a portion of our brain that controls balance, movements, coordination, and a lot of other things that are associated with motor movements and sports.
In Drivers Ed with Max Maxwell, on the last day of the week, we did a lot of fun things one of which is a test where you have to walk in a straight line with these drunk goggles on. The point of it is to simulate a test that the police would give you if they suspect you as a drunk driver. It is not easy. That is how it feels to walk if you have no cerebellum because you do not really have any balance.
Another example, of the cerebellum is NFL quarterbacks. Every thing they do is like second nature because they practice so much, and part of the reason why is because of muscle memory (which is linked to the cerebellum). Their throwing motion, footwork, timing, etc. all have to be perfected if they want to play at a high level, and all of that stuff is associated with the cerebellum.
As we said today in class, some cerebellums are better than others. There is nothing we can do to change that. Lionel Messi's cerebellum is at a very high level (whatever that means), and Benjamin Kampf's is not. Some people are born with certain traits that others are not born with.
A couple of questions I have:
1. Is the cerebellum genetic? Meaning if my father has a good cerebellum, than do I have a better chance of having a good cerebellum?
2. What does it mean that someone's cerebellum is better than someone else's?
3. Can one develop the cerebellum?
I loved reading about the cerebllum in the book, and can not wait to learn more about it in class. It truly is fascinating.

Aphasia - aisahpA

I like toast.

That's all.

No, but really. One of the most fascinating things I have learned this year has got to be, hands down, Aphasia. It's an disorder caused by brain injury that drastically affects our ability to speak. Being a mute is not interesting, how could not being able to talk be cool? What I thought was really intriguing were the various types of Aphasia than can result in amazing disorders. In one form of Aphasia, one loses the ability to speak normally, only being able to communicate through song. Can you imagine having to walk around singing everything you need to say? It'd be fun at first, but I would surely get tired of it. Another form is quite confusing. One may lose the ability to read, but is still able to write and visa versa. This phenomena makes absolutely zero sense to me. Being totally lost in a subject may discourage some people, it may even drive them away from wanting to learn more, but when I'm confused by a disorder in Psych I have the strongest urge to chase down some answers. I guess that's why I'm enjoying this course. It's encouraging me to learn more than is actually necessary.

As reflected in my domination of test number 1. Just saying.

Stay classy Memphis.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia

     After studying the brain a little bit in this past chapter's assignment, I came across a few psychological illnesses when reading the textbook and through various other readings I've done outside of class and the concept of Schizophrenia sparked my interest. 

     Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by delusions, perceptual distortions, disorganized thinking or speech that affect emotions and cause an individual to be out of touch with reality. There has been a plethora of genetic research findings in order to further understand the idea. For example, it has been shown that the prevalence of schizophrenia is pretty much the same across various cultures. Another interesting find is that when studying twins, identical twins are more likely to show higher concordance rates than fraternal twins, shedding light on the disorder. 

    There is what is known as the dopamine hypothesis that explains the origin of schizophrenia. This hypothesis shows that schizophrenia is related to over-activity of dopamine. Dopamine is a compound present in the body as a neurotransmitter and a precursor of other substances. Drugs that block dopamine decrease the symptoms. Medications used to treat schizophrenia are designed specifically to decrease the amount of dopamine. This prevents dopamine from being released at the time synapse. 

    It is clear that schizophrenia is a unique disorder that can affect cognition, the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. If this perspective is blocked off from psychology, it is difficult to live an ordinary life.

Loving Linguistics

Reading through Unit 3B, I noticed that one section of the unit really stood out to me: the part regarding the hypothalamus. For those who are unaware, the hypothalamus is a neural structure lying below the thalamus. It directs several maintenance activities like eating and drinking and helps govern the endocrine system through the pituitary gland. However, the part that really got me was the idea that the hypothalamus is linked to emotion and reward. Why did this stick with me? The answer can be found in James Olds and Peter Milner's experiment in 1954. Their goal was to implant an electrode in a rat's reticular formation. However, they misplaced an electrode, putting it in a section of the rat's hypothalamus. When the rat discovered a button that stimulated that electrode, it continuously returned to that button to receive that stimulus, even crossing an electrified grid that it wouldn't cross to get food or water. The doctors realized that they discovered a center that, if stimulated, can cause extreme pleasure in animals. What's scary is, later scientists have been able to use this pleasure center to practically control animals, almost like they're remote controlled toy cars. Of course, the book asks if humans have this "pleasure center" in their hypothalamus as well. It turns out we do, but it works better by itself than when stimulated from an outside source. However, one can have a genetically disposed deficiency called reward deficiency syndrome, which causes somebody to become addicted to something like alcohol or drugs in order to replace whatever pleasure they feel they're missing in their hypothalamus. This section about the hypothalamus both freaked me out and amazed me. Never before have I thought that mind control was technically possible, even if it's used more on animals than on humans. Could humans be controlled through the hypothalamus, is it possible that those with reward deficiency syndrome can be controlled more easily than others, and would it be ethical (in fact, is it ethical to control animals like rats)? Now I'm pumped to cover this section in more depth as a class.

From the Abused to the Abuser

          Since we just finished taking a test, I decided that it would not really be beneficial to write about something we have already done so I decided to research and write about a correlation that I have always been wondering about.
          Is it true that those who were abused tend to end up being the abusers and if so why? This is a similar question in regards to the nature-nurture debate. Are you born an abuser, or does it develop based on nurture; based on experience?
         There definitely are cases in which people have medical conditions in which they are more likely to become abusers; however, in most of the cases I found, the abusers say that it is primarily because of nurture and experience. The obvious reason is because those who have been abused think that it is not fair that only they were abused so they take it out on other people. Also, it is because they have been around abuse all of their life so they think that abuse is the norm.
         A way to test this is by getting a group of people who have been abused and get a group of people who have not been abused and observe the way hey act towards their kids. Most likely, the group of people who have been abused will abuse their children a lot more.

Dismantling a Common Misconception

     We've all heard it. "Humans only use 10% of their brains." I have heard this comment often throughout my life, but I was always too lazy to find out if it was true or not before coming to this class so I just accepted it. But how true is that comment really? Is 90% of our brain really just a pile of mush that fills up space in our skull? This is not true at all.
     However, after finding the truth to this concept, I can understand why people would say such a thing. But keep in mind, that still does not make it correct. It could be plausible that someone could think such a thing because our motor and our sensory cortex make up approximately 10% of the area of our brain. These are the parts of our brain that actually perform direct functions.
     The motor cortex is the area in our frontal lobes that controls voluntary movement. Any time you want to move part of your body, you are activating your motor cortex to send a message to your body to perform that action. And your sensory cortex is the area in your parietal lobes that registers and processes body touch and movement sensations. So, for example, any time someone pokes you, your sensory cortex receives that sensation and informs your brain that you have been touched.
    So what makes up the rest of the brain? Here comes the kicker. The other 90% is made up of association areas, no, not empty mush. These areas do not have direct motor or sensory functions, but rather they are used in much higher mental functions, such as learning, remembering, thinking and speaking. Like the example of Phineas Gage in 1848. He had severe damage to his frontal lobe in a gun powder accident, yet he was still able to sense and function just fine. However, he damaged a specific association area, and he lost all morality in his behavior.
     Two things can be learned from this. 1: You do use almost all, if not all, of your brain for many functions besides sensing and moving. And 2: If something sounds so ridiculous and simply does not make any sense, don't believe it! You end up looking like a clueless, ignorant person who does not know what he or she is talking about whatsoever.