October 2011 Archives

How Can We Learn if We Can't Remember? by Janet M. Cromer (Psychology Today)

People who suffer from brain damage often lose senses, skills, intelligence, and many more bodily functions. This article refers to a man named Alan who suffered from a massive heart attack that lead to brain injury. The author writes about rebuilding Alan's skills that were lost due to brain injury. I strongly agree with this theory because the brain is able to take in many things while adapting and growing. An important scientific principle to apply here is "Occam's razor" because some may say this is an extraordinary claim. Over time, Alan was able to learn and repair skills with repetition and practice. She is able to prove it possible. Also, they should use this method on other brain injury patients so they are able to confirm "replicability". Alan could be a one-time miracle so it would need to be repeated on somebody else by analyzing what they can learn over time. I believe that it is possible for people to gain memory and knowledge after injury to their brain.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/professor-cromer-learns-read/201110/how-can-we-learn-if-we-cant-remember

Testing image:

Have you ever heard someone blame the hyper-activeness of a child on sugar? Of course you have because "the notion that sugar causes children to become hyperactive is by far the most popular example of how people believe food can affect behavior, especially among young children." The truth however is that years of research have found no clear scientific evidence to back the claim. According to Mina Dulcan, MD, head of child and adolescent psychiatry at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, "There is elegant research demonstrating that sugar is not at all related to inattention or hyperactivity." This demonstrates two principles of scientific thinking, correlation vs. causation and falsifiability. For correlation vs. causation, the question is does sugar cause children to be hyper-active and for falsifiability the question is can we prove that sugar does not make children hyper-active. The answer to the first question is no and to the latter yes. Research has proven that there is no correlation between sugar and hyper-activity.

Many times parents believe there child is hyper-active after eating something with sugar because of preconceived notions "... if the parents think their child has had sugar, they often perceive a difference in behavior that is not really there by objective measures." "When parents observe a change in behavior, their minds often go back to the child's last treat rather than other circumstances that might have influenced the behavior." That can be considered an example of the scientific principle of Occam's razor-the parents choose the simplest explanation to explain their child's behavior instead of considering other possibilities. Often treats are given around holidays such as Halloween, Christmas, and etc. Perhaps it is the holiday season and relatives visiting and such that is making the child excited and extra active. "The idea that food might have an effect on children's behavior first became popularized in the 1970s" and since then there have been many studies done and some have supported the notion, but the majority show no relationship between food and behavior. That would demonstrate the scientific principle of ruling out rival hypothesis. The sugar notion proves that once a large amount of people believe something to be true, they usually stick w/ it and often times go w/ the simple explanation.

Source: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=52516

Image: http://blogs.families.com/media/hyperactive1.jpg

A rumor has been made that chopsticks are made with a cancer-causing agent called Sulfur dioxide. This rumor was started when a claim was made by a professor in China that chopsticks were harmful to throw away due to their carcinogenic chemicals. This rumor is untrue. Sulfur dioxide is not known to the FDA to cause cancer, even though they restrict it's use on fresh foods, but it is not restricted in canned or preserved food. The rumor is also speculated to be spread to prevent people from purchasing disposable chopsticks as they are a difficult to dispose of in a manner beneficial to the environment. The scientific principle that was ignored by this rumor is that of extraordinary claims. An extraordinary claim was made about the affect of the Sulfur dioxide present on chopsticks with no evidence provided to back up the claim.

Immersion Schools are schools where children are enrolled in a program K-6 where they learn to speak a fluent second language. This however is different than being raised in a bilingual household.

I recently talked to a friend who worked in an Immersion school. The language taught was Mandarin Chinese. The ratio wasn't necessarily limited to people of Chinese decent, but was very diverse. The second language was viewed as an academic achievement and was acquired for future goals.

I think this is a very good thing to look into. We should start children learning languages in younger years where they still have the plasticity to move farther ahead in the language. This also teaches cultural diversity and understanding. It creates an environment where children can learn about a culture different than in the one they live in.

I myself took German for 3 years but it was in a setting where i learned for an hour a day and was brief in its descriptions. It would have been much better in my opinion to learn in an environment of 2 languages.

By now, as early Psychology students, we have seen many demonstrations done by Ivan Pavlov and many others. Classical conditioning is a form of learning where an animal responds to something new because of an old stimulus. Many tests that we have seen show dogs responding to a bell, pigeons playing ping pong, or some other animal responding to a stimulus for a reward. Our society uses some of the same techniques to get people to have a response to an object or idea. An example would be one like the Old Spice deodorant commercials. The neutral stimulus (the deodorant) normally doesn't usually bring forth a very large response, but when paired with a muscular man surrounded by beautiful women, an unconditioned response occurs. Advertisers hope that these unconditioned responses will get us to buy their product. Outsell Inc. recently did a study that showed companies in the U.S. alone spent almost 412 Billion dollars last year in advertisements. So with psychology on the companies' side, it looks like empty wallets will become the usual.

The case of Clive Wearing puts me in complete awe. Since the video that was shown in lecture, I have searched for more videos of him. Clive Wearing was a conductor and musicologist from Great Britain before he was diagnosed with anterograde amnesia, which prevents him from remembering any new information given to him. He has a memory span that lasts from only seven to 30 seconds long. Every time he "wakes up", he thinks that he had just woken up from a long period of unconsciousness. Not only can he not remember anything new he takes in, but he had also forgotten part of his earlier life. The only person he recognizes is his wife, Deborah, and every time she walks into the room it is as if Clive is seeing her for the first time in years.
In another video that I watched of Clive was more recent than the one from lecture. I thought it was so strange how after so many years he still says the same lines when he "wakes up", and how he gets excited every time he sees his wife. What I found kind of sad was that in the older video, I remember Deborah saying that his memory span was around two minutes and then in the more recent video his memory span decreased to seven-30 seconds long. In the recent video, more information about Clive's amnesia was shown. It showed that he could no longer remember which taste belongs to which food.
( http://youtu.be/wDNDRDJy-vo )
The interesting case of Clive Wearing is important because it shows the difference between explicit and implicit memories. These two parts make up the long-term memory system. An explicit memory is a memory that we can recall consciously. In contrast to that, an implicit memory is a memory that we cannot recall.
Memory loss cases like Clive's are the reasons why I want to major in psychology. Finding out about how the human brain and mind works have always been a big part of my curiosity. The human brain and mind is one of the most complex concepts that even when the smallest information found it is like we've found such one of the biggest puzzle pieces. I want to be able to help solve this puzzle.

My friends and I are always laughing. Except for when we are reliving an inside joke between us, that's when I'm the one scratching my head. They make fun of me because I can't seem to ever remember details of something like an inside joke. So for the sake of my funny bone, I decided to make a change!

I Google-ed "how to improve memory" and found a site called Lumosity. Lumosity targets five areas (speed, attention, memory, problem solving, flexibility) to help improve brain function. I signed up for a free account to work on improving my memory. They had me play a game where the screen showed a grid of squares. A certain number of squares would light up for a few seconds and then dimminish. Then I was to click on the squares that had been lit. As I picked a round of squares correctly, they would show me a bigger grid with more lit up squares for the same amount of time as previous.

I noticed a few things that reinforce the information in Chapter 7 of the Lilienfeld text. The first was that the first few rounds of the game were relatively easy yet they got harder as the grid got bigger. I noticed that as I was asked to recall around 8 lit squares was when I began to struggle. This follows George Miller's theory of the Magic Number, meaning one can remember plus or minus seven pieces of information. Another concept I noticed at work was chunking, the organization of information into groupings. When some squares were located directly next to each other, it was easier for me to remember those squares. The last aspect I noticed in this activity was that I always remembered the first few squares that I looked at on the screen while the last squares I saw were harder for me to locate, a concept called the primacy effect.

If anything, I hope these games have taught me to better chunk parts of inside jokes together or maybe I'll be lucky and the punch line will be in the first few moments of the memory. I'm ready for a good, hard laugh!

According to the Levels of Processing model, there are three important things in developing a memory of a verbal situation: what we hear, what we see, and what we feel. What we see and hear does not have a large impact on the memory as it is more based on what the verbal information makes us feel or means to us. The deeper we connect to the verbal information the longer the memory will last.
This can be seen in numerous instances. We participate in and listen to many conversations every day. We can rarely remember everything we heard and saw during this time, what sticks out in these conversations is the moments that created the strongest emotions in a person. This could be the hilarious joke, or the jaw dropping news that is the most distinguishable. This is because those things create the largest emotional response triggering strong memories of the time.
The Levels of Processing model is not a complex model. The model is rather common sense in nature as we tend to forget non-important verbal information as it tends to not connect with us deep enough to be added to your long-term memory. Verbal situations that have large impacts emotionally tend to stick with for a long time.

After reading the chapter on sleep, I decided to do more research into what happens when we don't get eight hours of sleep. After looking though many articles, I found one that really opened my eyes. The study done showed that high school students with less then eight hours of sleep on school nights are more likely to start abusing drugs and alcohol, and are at a higher risk of committing suicide than students with eight hours of sleep. In the study, 12,154 high school students were asked how many hours of sleep they got each night. Two thirds of the students got less then eight hours every night and of those two thirds, many were likely involved in "risky behaviors". Some statistics from the article are as followed:
"86% more likely to have seriously considered attempting suicide.
67% more likely to smoke cigarettes.
64% more likely to drink alcohol.
62% more likely to feel sad or hopeless.
52% more likely to use marijuana.
41% more likely to be sexually active.
40% more likely to be in a physical fight one or more times."
Researchers say that if teens consistently do not get eight hours of sleep every night, then they decrease their ability to avoid "risky behavior" and increase their chances of falling to peer pressure.

http://teens.webmd.com/news/20110927/lack-of-sleep-for-teens-linked-to-risky-behavior

One concept that I have been finding very interesting is the concept of people taking smart pills. Some of these pills are designed to enhance your memory. These include ginkgo, vitamin E, and some other drugs that are not supposed to be used for memory purposes. Ginkgo is an herbal remedy that apparently improves memory in less than four weeks. What I want to focus more on is the use of drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall, which have been becoming increasingly prevalent at colleges around the country. These are drugs that are prescribed for people with ADHD, an attention deficit disorder in which they need stimulants to help them focus. College students have been increasingly purchasing these drugs in order to increase their performance on exams. These so-called "smart pills" allow students to be completely focused while studying for an exam, and retain most of the information. This is relevant to all college students. As an honest test-taker, I realize that not everyone is getting the grades they deserve. Professors have to realize that the class averages are most likely not an accurate representation of how much students have been learning. As this video shows, many students take drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall for a "competitive edge."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0ihO1KFxkQ
This video is a good representation of what a college campus is actually like. It's hard going to school and knowing that some of the other students got into this college by cheating on entrance exams. I would really like to know that actual percentage of students take exams and entrance tests without any sort of stimulant for help. I am also wondering if the government will soon step in to regulate who gets these drugs more. With how fast this problem is increasing, I would assume someone will try to take responsibility for it soon.

Recently, we learnt classical conditioning in the learning chapter. When we learnt Pavlov's model of classical conditioning, we knew that in first-order conditioning, learning is acquired by pairing a conditioned stimulus (CS) with an intrinsically motivating unconditioned stimulus, for example, like food. In higher-order conditioning, the CS is paired with a another conditioned stimulus that has motivational value that is acquired rather than intrinsic, that is, organisms learn to pair a new CS with the original CS.

Because high-order conditioning helps us to augment CS to new stimuli, we know the reason why we always want to buy a beverage when we see an advertisement. Take the Perrier ad for example, when we see the tennis player in the ad, we have already come to associate the sun, heat, sweat. That makes people feel resonate and thinking about the moment they feel tired and thirsty and they want to buy Perrier.

http://www.snopes.com/college/pranks/trained.asp
The professor is "trained" to stand next to the wastebasket in the course in the article is using replicability in the Six Principles of Scientific Thinking. Can the results be duplicated in other studies?

Our short term memory allows us to retain information for a short period of time. It has the capacity to hold information for only a few seconds. Within this amount of time our memory can actively access the information. Our short term memories fade away over time and the longer we wait the less is left. People who suffer short term memory loss have the condition of anterograde amnesia. People may find themselves constantly forgetting information, people or events after a few seconds or minutes, because the data does not transfer successfully from their conscious short-term memory into permanent long-term memory.

This is an issue that has multiple causes including a number of chronic medical and psychological conditions, trauma, medications, drug or alcohol abuse, and infections. Short term memory loss is a condition that affects many peoples lives greatly. This is an important concept because as we get older our memory gradually decreases and isn't as strong. Short term memory loss helps us realize how important our memory is to us and without it life can be very difficult. We rely on our memories to explain our lives and make up our lives. Understanding a disorder like this makes us aware of how lucky we are that we can access our memories.

Dory in the movie Finding Nemo suffers from short term memory loss, or anterograde amnesia. She forgets things very quickly and tends to ask the same question over and over again. At one point in the movie Dory is told to go through a dark scary trench, not over it. Once Dory and Marlin arrive at the trench Dory forgets what she was told and they go over the trench. They end up running into a school of jellyfish and Dory gets stung by the tentacles on the jelly, almost costing Dory her life. This goes to show that short term memory can be very dangerous. Forgetting key pieces of information can result in harm. You could end up not knowing where you are or what you were doing. There is also a part in the movie where Dory, after looking for Nemo for a long time, finally finds them and asks "What's your name?" Nemo tells her his name, but Dory doesn't realize Nemo is Marlins son because she couldn't remember his name. This prevents her from solving the problem she has been trying to solve. Amnesia can get in the way of solving problems and doing simple day to day tasks. Imagine if you couldn't remember something someone just told you. It would be very hard to live a normal life this way.

One question I am left with is can short term memory loss be fixed? Once you have amnesia, can you do something to help you gain back the task of being able to store memories? I found some tips below to help, but I want to know if amnesia can be "cured".
I think it is important to understand short term memory because it could affect you soon in the future.
http://www.wikihow.com/Overcome-Short-Term-Memory-Loss

Our short term memory allows us to retain information for a short period of time. It has the capacity to hold information for only a few seconds. Within this amount of time our memory can actively access the information. Our short term memories fade away over time and the longer we wait the less is left. People who suffer short term memory loss have the condition of anterograde amnesia. People may find themselves constantly forgetting information, people or events after a few seconds or minutes, because the data does not transfer successfully from their conscious short-term memory into permanent long-term memory.
This is an issue that has multiple causes including a number of chronic medical and psychological conditions, trauma, medications, drug or alcohol abuse, and infections. Short term memory loss is a condition that affects many peoples lives greatly. This is an important concept because as we get older our memory gradually decreases and isn't as strong. Short term memory loss helps us realize how important our memory is to us and without it life can be very difficult. We rely on our memories to explain our lives and make up our lives. Understanding a disorder like this makes us aware of how lucky we are that we can access our memories.
Dory in the movie Finding Nemo suffers from short term memory loss, or anterograde amnesia. She forgets things very quickly and tends to ask the same question over and over again. At one point in the movie Dory is told to go through a dark scary trench, not over it. Once Dory and Marlin arrive at the trench Dory forgets what she was told and they go over the trench. They end up running into a school of jellyfish and Dory gets stung by the tentacles on the jelly, almost costing Dory her life. This goes to show that short term memory can be very dangerous. Forgetting key pieces of information can result in harm. You could end up not knowing where you are or what you were doing.

One question I am left with is can short term memory loss be fixed? Once you have amnesia, can you do something to help you gain back the task of being able to store memories? I found some tips below to help, but I want to know if amnesia can be "cured".
I think it is important to understand short term memory because it could affect you soon in the future.
http://www.wikihow.com/Overcome-Short-Term-Memory-Loss

While reading the chapter on sleep I decided to look further into how lacks of sleep can decrease the performance of your brain. When I went online I found that research suggests that there are three different stages of learning. First is acquisition where new information is introduced. This is followed by Consolidation which is the process where the memory becomes stable. And lastly is recall which is the stage when we can consciously of unconsciously access the information we have picked up. Next the article looked at the different types of learning. The one I will focus on is declarative memory which is "what we know" (Facts like information from a text book). The researchers found that this type of memory is most retained during REM sleep if the information was either complex of had emotion behind it and other simpler information is retained during short wave sleep, which is a deep restorative stage of sleep.
No hearing this I think the information in say our psychology textbook is pretty complex so by getting more time of REM sleep one could better remember and comprehend the material. Now I know we have all been to the point where we have to much studying to do and not nearly enough time to do it. This happens to everyone but maybe next time study as much as you can and get some rest. It will be better to remember most than to barely know all of the information.

Here is a Video to go along
http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/video/sleep07_stickgold_learning/qt-lo

http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/learning-memory

Scientists and researchers, from the University College London, have recently came up with the hypothesis that the number of Facebook friends someone has may be linked to the size of a portion of their brain! And these people are also more likely to have more friends in the real world.
A man, by the name of Professor Rees, conducted a study and found a very strong connection between the number of Facebook friends someone has and the amount of grey matter in areas of the brain. The amygdala was included in this grey matter. It showed that in this area was larger in the people who had a larger social network and larger amount of real world friends. There are also three more areas in the brain that correlated with the social networks but not the real world friends, the right superior temporal sulcus(also associated with autism defects) , the left middle temporal gyrus and the right entorhinal cortex.
The problem with this study is that they have two things that correlate, but they do not know the cause. The researches are also trying to figure out what impact the internet has on our brain. I think that before scientists put this out into the media a whole lot, they need to have an idea of what may be the cause to this.

While reading the chapter on sleep I decided to look further into how lacks of sleep can decrease the performance of your brain. When I went online I found that research suggests that there are three different stages of learning. First is acquisition where new information is introduced. This is followed by Consolidation which is the process where the memory becomes stable. And lastly is recall which is the stage when we can consciously of unconsciously access the information we have picked up. Next the article looked at the different types of learning. The one I will focus on is declarative memory which is "what we know" (Facts like information from a text book). The researchers found that this type of memory is most retained during REM sleep if the information was either complex of had emotion behind it and other simpler information is retained during short wave sleep, which is a deep restorative stage of sleep.
No hearing this I think the information in say our psychology textbook is pretty complex so by getting more time of REM sleep one could better remember and comprehend the material. Now I know we have all been to the point where we have to much studying to do and not nearly enough time to do it. This happens to everyone but maybe next time study as much as you can and get some rest. It will be better to remember most than to barely know all of the information.

Here is a short Video to go along with it http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/video/sleep07_stickgold_learning/qt-lo

http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/learning-memory

(Picture found at http://www.deeptrancenow.com/comics3.htm)

According to the Lilienfeld textbook, hypnosis is a set of techniques that provides people with suggestions for alterations in their perceptions, thoughts feelings, and behaviors. There are several popular notions about the state of hypnosis, many of which surprised me when I learned they were false. Who would have guessed that hypnosis isn't actually a sleeplike state, but rather shows no different brain activity than that of a fully conscious individual; or that hypnotized people are actually fully aware of their surroundings? This video shows an individual being subject to hypnosis that quite clearly remembers everything that happened during the hypnosis "session."

Unfortunately, the public does not necessarily know that a lot of the things they hear about hypnosis are in fact myths. This article tries to sell the public on the idea that lost memories can be regained through hypnosis, when in fact there is no substantial evidence to support this. (Lilienfeld 183) Results showing that hypnosis increases memory have not been successfully replicated on a reliable enough basis. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that this article is advertising pseudo-science.

Just because hypnosis does not have the "power" to restore lost memories, does not mean that it isn't valuable in psychological research. Upon learning this much about the topic, my next question would be: when can we use hypnosis to modern medicine's advantage, and when can't we?

One of the concepts that stood out to me the most in the recent readings of the Lilienfeld text was the idea of cryptomnesia and false memories. Crystomnesia is when you do not understand that this memory that you have actually came from another source. What it seems like to me is that most of these crystomnestic memories tend to have been "encoded" from earlier parts of our lives. It is important to be aware of cryptomnesia and other concepts of false memories. Sometimes having false recollections of the past can lead to dangerous consequences.

After reading this chapter, I discovered that some of my earliest memories many actually have to do with cryptomnesia. For example, what I believed to be my earliest memory, playing in Legoland at the Mall of America with my dad, has been largely based of off a picture of me that I am greatly familiar with. Even though this false memory does not have any dangerous consequences, it is important to know that I did not actually store this memory long-term; rather it was implanted there through repeated viewings of this picture. Other examples of crystomnestic memories in my life where created by repeated stories of myself when I was little being told by my parents. While I did not actually remember these specific events, I believe that I did from hearing these stories so many times.

Reading this section caused me to think about how frequently this occurs. For some people the memories that they believe to be from their early memories may actually be false - in the case that they do not "physically" remember them happening that they just actually think they remembered them through other sources. I hope that in the future new ideas will surface about why we generally cannot remember the earliest years in our lives.

According to Medscape reference, nicotine addiction is the second leading cause of death in the world, and is responsible for nearly 5 million deaths each year. These results make it obvious that drugs such as nicotine are overwhelmingly popular in today's society, but my question is why is that so? In my opinion, it is because it is a stimulant. The heart rates, blood pressure and respiration increases and as the book states, "it enhances positive emotional reactions and minimizes negative emotional reactions." People become so used to state of mind that the use of nicotine becomes an addiction. Personally, I know a great number of people who cannot go a day, or even hours, without the use of nicotine so this drug impacts my surroundings everyday. Additionally, people develop various cancers, and with diseases such as lung cancer claiming the lives of millions of people each year, don't you think people would eventually stop? This is what puzzled me, and encouraged me to write about this topic, with the basic idea being that there are obvious negative effects that are associated with all of the nicotine products ranging from cigarettes to chewing tobacco, yet people continue to use them. They are not healthy for your body whatsoever and it just seems that the desire for relaxation and tranquil experiences is not worth using nicotine.
Works Cited: Gregory Lande. "Nicotine Addiction." Medscape Reference. 2 Aug 2011. 23 Oct 2011.

Many people think that foot fetishes are weird, and to be honest, they are a little weird. However, the Toe Suck Fairy takes it to a new level of weird. According to MSNBC, a man known as the Toe Suck Fairy would walk around and ask to suck on women's toes. However, it is not him that I'm writing about, it's the information pertaining to the reason behind foot fetishes. Proposed by Sigmund Freud, people with foot fetishes perceive feet to be sexy because the resemble penises. This got me thinking, do foot fetishes have anything to do with classical conditioning? After all, their similarity to male genitalia seem to me like feet are acting as conditioned stimuli! Normally, feet do not contribute to sexual arousal (at least I hope not), yet with a foot fetish and their proposed similarity to male sex organs, they create a conditioned response of sexual arousal. Weird, right? Even weirder, as the article continues on, it mentions that the brain may rewire itself so that the person who is missing a foot may perceive that phantom limb to be sexy. Even though that is definitely an extraordinary claim, it sure would be funny if that were true. Hopefully I won't lose a foot anytime soon!

Conditioned taste aversion is a form of classical conditioning that can lead us to develop avoidance reactions to the taste of certain foods. Conditioned taste aversion is not like other classical conditioning reactions though. Most classical conditioning reactions need multiple pairings of the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus, but conditioned taste aversion usually only needs one trial to develop. The delay between CS and UCS in most reactions are usually very short, but the delay with taste aversion can be as long as eight hours. Conditioned taste aversion is very specific and displays little evidence of stimulus generalization. This teaches us to avoid foods that may be dangerous to our well being. Conditioned taste aversions are often adaptive. Poisoned foods and drinks, not lights or sounds, make animals feel sick so as a consequence animals tend to develop conditioned aversions more easily to stimuli that trigger nausea. Conditioned taste aversion contradicts the assumption of equipotentiality, or the claim that we can classically conditioned all CSs equally well to all UCSs. Farmers tend to teach wolfs conditioned taste aversions by poisoning dead livestock so the wolfs will avoid actual livestock. I personally have developed some taste aversions. I can no longer eat Lays chips due to the fact that when I was sick I repeatedly saw a commercial for lays chips and the commercial made me nauseas. I believe that taste aversion probably played a crucial role in human development by teaching our ancestors what foods to avoid.

We've all heard the old, familiar "big fish" tale. From just how much time you spent writing "the biggest essay ever" to how many drinks you slammed back at that house party this weekend, we're all guilty of occasionally bending the truth when it comes to telling a story. However, there does come a time when a story has been told in such a fashion for so long that, eventually, even you start to believe that you "literally spent fifteen hours straight on that paper" or "definitely had, like, sixteen shots that night". The phenomenon taking place here is the psychological concept of creating false memories. This phenomenon occurs when the idea of some event or activity taking place in one's past gets instilled in someone's mind, whether it be from external forces or from one's own stories. Over time, this idea begins to take hold and becomes a regular part of a person's memory, blending into the rest of the story until it becomes a matter of fact to the person. But this idea is not confined to just storytelling. There have been many studies on the development and planting of false memories into ordinary people. One researcher, Elizabeth Loftus, has even managed to convince dozens of people that they do not like hard-boiled eggs because at a young age they got sick from them, a story she made up in its entirety.
With all this in mind, I could not help but wonder why exactly we are so ready to muddle up the truth and discredit our preexisting, established memories. The only conclusion I could come up with was the idea that perhaps this is yet another psychological phenomenon caused by social activity. Perhaps this is why our stories get bigger and bolder with every retelling; the more outstanding the story, the better the social reception. Maybe our brain reads positive reactions from our peers with a reward system bias. But this could also be explained by social taboos and the lengths to which we go to avoid them. Could we really distort our own memories just to avoid a little social faux pas? This could explain why people were willing to change their answers on personal tests after being shown results collected by others. The flip side of this could explain why people were willing to believe Loftus's version of their lives over their own memories. In our society, it is generally frowned upon to totally disagree with someone in a one-on-one social engagement, which could explain why people are willing to forsake their own memory. However, this could also potentially be explained by Milgram's study of obedience to authority figures. Perhaps test-subjects were merely adhering to Loftus's story because they were already aware that she was an authority figure on the field of psychology.
Whatever the reasoning, the idea of instilling false memories is fascinating to me. It really makes you take a step back and look at the stories you've been telling your friends for years and try to think back on exactly how much of that was embellished.
Oh, and for anyone who didn't make the connection, this is totally the premise of Inception. Planting false memories until they grow into full ideas and affect someone's outlook on life?
Christopher Nolan would be proud.

Links:

It is a popular misconception that we only use 10% of our brains. However, it has been proven time and time again that this notion is incorrect. The other 90% isn't used for psychic powers, nor is it reserved for the subconscious mind. In fact, brain scans and other modern research methods have shown that almost the entire brain is always in use.

To disprove the claim, studies of brain damage have proven this fact, "...damage to almost any area of the brain has specific and lasting effects on mental, vegetative, and behavioural capabilities." This means that every damaged part that causes lasting effects on the brain must have some use. Therefore, given that damage to nearly every area leads to lasting effects, nearly every area must have some function. Also, modern brain scan technologies have shown that activity is present in nearly all areas of the brain. While it is true that some areas of the brain lie dormant for some time (while resting, for example), scans show that almost no part of the brain remains inactive in every single kind of activity. It is also true that particular areas of the brain specialize in one action or another, but this doesn't mean that if the area that controls one's legs is inactive while one reads a book, for example. The area would simply be less active than normal. Furthermore, the area is still used in some activity. It isn't dead-weight.

In conclusion, the brain is used to its fullest potential. People don't use only 10% of it by choice or any of that nonsense. People use all 100% of their brain in one action or another.

http://www.misconceptionjunction.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/brain-scan.jpg
http://www.misconceptionjunction.com/index.php/2010/08/you-actually-use-all-of-your-brain-not-10/
http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7633/1288.full
http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/nervous-system/10-brain-myths10.htm

This clip, from NBC's comedy series The Office, is a spoof of Pavlov's original study of classical conditioning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfZfMIHwSkU
In the Clip, Jim attempts to replicate Dr. Pavlov's famous study in an office setting. Jim begins by rebooting his computer, causing it to make a bell like noise, every time he does this he offers his coworker Dwight an altoid, which he accepts. Jim repeats this behavior for a few weeks until one day, he reboots his computer and Dwight sticks out his hand, expecting a mint that Jim did not offer. When asked what he was doing, Dwight responded that he didn't know but that his mouth was dry and tasted gross to which Jim laughs in triumph that Pavlov's experiment has tricked Dwight.
In this experiment, Dwight takes the place of the dog in Pavlov's original study. The altoid is the unconditioned stimulus, causing Dwight to salivate and experience a minty taste (unconditioned response). The rebooting computer noise becomes the condition stimulus, causing Dwight to crave an altoid every time he hears it (conditioned response).
Comical television shows, like this one, that reference serious real life scientific work run the risk of offending the scientists whose work they are altering. Some may argue that it is "making fun" of all of the hard work scientists like Pavlov have done. Personally, I feel that references, like this one in The Office, bridges the gap between the laboratory and the average household, creating a link that helps the typical person better understand the concept while making science entertaining.

When we read about media and its effect on aggression, my mind wandered to violent television shows that I have seen. One of the shows that popped into my head was A&E's "Intervention". I have watched this series many times and have found it to be somewhat of my own addiction (which is very ironic). "Intervention" is a documentary that follows one or two addicts from rock bottom to when their families step up to get help with a final intervention at the end of the episode, hence the name. This series can become violent when the addicts put themselves into dangerous situations in order to obtain their drugs and also when they are confronted by their loved ones to give up this life. This kind of violence is the violence one infects on their own person. Nonetheless, it doesn't not only affect them, it affects their loved ones as well. This series has won the Emmy for Outstanding Reality Series in 2009 for its influence on society; it has profiled 172 addicts since March 2005 and 134 of those profiled are currently sober (http://www.aetv.com/intervention/about/). Here's a video of the founder of "Intervention", Ken Seeley, and his and other experts' word on how to go about an intervention for a loved one. Above all he says, "Get professional help." Website: http://www.youtube.com/user/AETVIntervention?blend=8&ob=5#p/u/1/QdWykdfyrOk
But instead of a correlation with aggression, "Intervention" teaches everyone watching of the horrible effects of substance abuse. As I watch, I learn what drugs have actually done to people and not just a random story my teachers told us in high school to stay away from them. I learn that it is truly better to 'just say no'. Without watching an episode, it can be hard to understand the true effects of drugs. "Intervention" puts many different faces to this disease and sometimes it's shocking to see someone on there that actually looks like you. This series is meant to show average people who are suffering so that we won't make the same mistakes which can be some of the best lessons we learn.

Recently, many people have discovered the act of lucid dreaming. In plain terms, lucid dreaming is when the dreamer knows he or she is dreaming, letting them take control of their dream. It feels like they are awake, yet can do anything they want, like flying. For many, it is a process they have to learn over time. When making the decision to lucid dream, the first step is to keep a dream journal to write in as soon as you wake up from a dream. Doing this for a few weeks will let one recollect what they have dreamt and find patterns in their dreams. For some, a pattern might be the same object showing up (for instance, a blue apple) or a similar scene in every dream (called dream-signs). Once making this discovery, putting your mind into dream mode will help with lucid dreaming. Once a person detects they're dreaming by seeing their dream-signs, they can start to take control of their dreams. Not all of the steps are explained in this blog, but there are many websites and books that can aid in the act of lucid dreaming.
So far, scientists have not found a physical downfall to lucid dreaming (your body and mind still recovers while lucid dreaming), but mentally lucid dreaming can be dangerous. Because your brain feels like it is awake, some actions in the dream can be dangerous. For example, if the person dreaming falls off a building, it feels real to your mental state so it could be traumatizing. There is also the danger of not telling reality from dreaming. Since the person is able to literally do anything they want in the dream, going back to reality can be daunting. Reality might not seem fun anymore to them because they cannot do whatever they please. Although controlling what one does in his or her dream can be exhilarating, it is not for everyone.

While reading through chapter 7 of our psychology text book, I came across an article about "smart pills." These pills are supposedly known to enhance our memories and are suppose to be able to do so in short spans, even as little as four weeks. These pills are known to work by increasing the amount of acetylcholine in our brains. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that is linked to memory in our brains.

I would personally never buy these pills. I think that they are completely ridiculous and I don't believe for a second that they would work. I've never been the type of person who believes that pills are necessary to take if you're not sick. I don't take vitamins even though they're good for you because I believe that I get plenty of nutrients from my food and back in the stone ages cavemen didn't have vitamin supplements and they seemed to survive just fine... :)

It's astonishing to me though the amount of people who actually believe things such as "smart pills" actually work. Studies have shown that when experiments have been done with these supplements compared to a placebo, memory in individuals is minimally effected if at all. Studies have also shown that in some cases these pills can even be harmful! Yet so many naive people continue to spend enormous amounts of money on these seemingly useless pills. I will never understand why people play into these fads but I myself will not become one of them.

It's safe to say that a magority of you, if not all, have experienced déjà vu. For people who haven't been keeping up in the reading, déjà vu is the feeling of reliving an experience that's new. Though the book did offer some explanations of why déjà vu occurs, I was not fully satisfied.
This is my most memorable experience with déjà vu: I was in middle school and I became friends with this one kid named Tyler. Tyler asked me to sleep over at his house one night and I did. In the morning, we went up for breakfast, and this is where it got weird. I walked into the kitchen and I felt like I had seen it before (déjà vu). I proceeded to direct my way to the bowls, spoons, and the cereal like it was my own house (the cupboards were wood so i couldn't see what was in them). As I put all the stuff down, I realized what just happened and so did Tyler. He asked me, "how did you know where everything was?" I replied, "I don't know, I feel like I have done that before." How did that happen? Was it just a coincidence? I don't think I will ever understand what happened that morning. I understand that it could be my mind playing tricks on me, but tell me how I realized I had seen his kitchen before, and how I found everything will no hesitation.
The explanations in the book do make sense for most cases of déjà vu. Failure to notice things is a huge reason déjà vu occurs. The familiar feeling arises because we don't consciously recall the previous experience. I would like to see more research done to get a better understanding of what déjà vu really is, because in my case, it seems like déjà vu is a little more than the book describes.

It has been said that getting a good nights sleep might keep our brains healthy and fresh, but will taking a nap improve our memory? It is nearly impossible to remember everything from our Psychology text, so we have to distribute our information instead of massed practice were we try to cram every information in our brain in the short period of time. When people are sleep deprived, they tend to not pay as much attention in class then the people who do get the right amount of sleep. "A recent study by Harvard researchers shows that when a person is faced with an activity challenge, then sent to take a quick nap, those who dreamed about the task showed better and quicker recall skills than those who didn't." One explanation to this is while napping, the hippocampus is reassigning the information within ones brain, so when they are awake, their thoughts and memory of the task is clearer and the patient is more focused. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that plays a role in our spatial navigation. Taxi Drivers have good spatial memory because they are very good at mapping out the city streets when a passenger wants to go their destination. Assuming that mostly all Taxi Drivers don't get much sleep, this scientific research could be falsifiable.

In my opinion, I believe that this article is somewhat true because when I take naps my brain feels more relaxed and that I can concentrate better in an activity or task. One of my friends in Psychology lecture takes naps during the lectures, but somehow he could still remember most of the information told during lecture. Also on the exam 1, he said that the lecture questions were easy to answer because he could remember them during lecture. Even though this is an extraordinary claim, it could be replicated from class research.

http://www.improvememory.org/how-to-improve-memory/nap-improve-memory

It's amazing how easy it is to place a false memory into someone's mind. An analogy I use is that the brain tries so hard to comprehend everything and be this amazing supercomputer, but when you ask it to retrieve something that it no longer remembers then in its frustration it creates something to give you. I found this video that I will attach that was talking about how the Loftus research works. The video is about a guy who creates this story of getting lost in the mall as a little kid when in fact this event never happened. I believe Loftus is on the right track by doing research on false memories because she is helping so that the wrong people don't get put in prison. We should be doing more research on false memories because I believe that there are a lot of cases that involve false memories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQr_IJvYzbA&feature=related

For me, this weekend's workload included preparation for an important midterm, the psychology exam, and this blog post. As I set out to create a blog topic, I thought I could combine studying with this blog post, all while applying psychology. I do not have the greatest study habits in the world, so I decided to develop a plan where use the two-process theory to improve my inadequate study habits, and further examine psychological learning. In this plan, I will (hypothetically) make myself find enjoyment in studying.

Step one of the plan involves classical conditioning. I will need to find a neutral stimulus to associate with an unconditioned stimulus. My unconditioned stimulus to keep me working is the tasty cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee I have next to me. The neutral stimulus will have to be my fridge, which periodically makes noise to cool itself. My unconscious response to taking a sip of my highly caffeinated UCS is to keep working on my homework. After a number of cycles of my fridge (now a conditioned stimulus) turning on, my conditioned response will be to continue working on homework.

View image

Now that I have classically conditioned myself to do my homework, I will need to reinforce it through operant conditioning if I want these effects to last longer than just this evening. The stimulus will now have to be my desire to get good grades and start working. Positive reinforcement will be necessary to strengthen the probability of me doing my homework rather than being distracted, so I will put myself on a fixed interval reinforcement schedule. The primary reinforcer will be my favorite snack, Triscuits. For every half hour of continuous homework, I will reward myself with two crackers. This will strengthen the principle of homework-doing developed with classical conditioning and will make the effects prolonged.

Of course, experimenting on myself would involve many biases and experimental flaws. That is why this is just a hypothetical example of how the two-process theory could be used. Maybe it will work for me, the next two days and tests will show the results.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfZfMIHwSkU
Above is a clip from an episode of "The Office". Jim conducts an experiment similar to Pavlov's on Dwight with the sound of the computer restarting instead of a the metronome's ticking noise and mints instead of dog food. Every time Jim restarts his computer and a sound is played, the conditioned stimulus, Jim offers Dwight a mint, the unconditioned stimulus. The first time the trial was performed, Dwight does not relate the computer's sound to the mint. However, as trials were repeated, Dwight began to associate the sound with a mint. By the end of the clip, Dwight had completely associated the computer's restart sound with a mint therefore developing a conditioned response.
Although this was solely a TV episode, I found it interesting because it demonstrates a modern Pavlovian experiment. In my life I've realized that I associate numerous things throughout the day that were once neutral stimuli and now produce an elicit response. For instance, just this year I've associated Wednesdays with tough workouts because of acquisition. The conditioned stimulus is a Wednesday, the unconditioned stimulus is the hard workout, the unconditioned response is nerves which come from having a difficult workout to look forward to. The conditioned response is experiencing nerves on Wednesday simply because I associate that day of the week with strenuous workouts.
Pavlov's Classical Conditioning is important today because it helps us to understand advertising, phobias and fears, anxiety disorders, certain reactions and even fetishes. Understanding the process can help to eliminate and treat phobias and fears and perhaps habits.

Recently, I read an email claiming that drinking four glasses of water immediately after waking up was a an effective treatment for a variety of ailments and diseases. According to the email, diabetes, arthritis, epilepsy, cancer, and many other conditions could be eliminated 100% of the time by following this simple treatment. As evidence for this claim, they stated that it was scientifically proven, and that Japanese culture and medicine has adopted this practice due to its amazing effectiveness.
Before this treatment can be regarded as a medical breakthrough, it must be evaluated with scientific skepticism. Because it is an extraordinary claim, it must be supported with equally extraordinary evidence. However, the email is extremely vague regarding its alleged scientific support, and simply states that it is proven. Also, this claim has not been replicated by any other source, and is unsupported by other medical findings. The assertion that this treatment is 100% effective against a long list on varying and complex conditions makes this claim even more unlikely given is overall lack of support.
After analyzing this email with the six principals of scientific thinking, it can largely be concluded that this is pseudoscience, as opposed to an effective medical treatment. Additionally, following the medical advice of this email has the potential to create a significant opportunity cost, since it could lead people with these serious diseases to avoid actual treatment.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/water.asp

It usually involves the same routine. The hostess leads you to your table, pulls out your chair before you sit down, you fold you napkin on your lap and look at the large menu to decide what you will eat for dinner that night. This is what typically happens when one goes out for dinner at a fancy restaurant. Same routine, different restaurant.

What if every time we went to a different restaurant, we had to remind our brain how to act and what to do? This usually doesn't happen and instead we are used to eating at public places because our brain "remembers" what it is like to be in a restaurant. This is because of schema. Schema is an organized knowledge structure or mental model that we've stored in memory. It helps us simplify our world so we don't have to think over and learn about every situation we are presented with. Without this memory process, we would be constantly confused wherever we went.

Some people suffer with something called Korsakov's syndrome, where they are unable to form new memories. They are constantly having to approach new situations as if it were their very first time. The studies of schema, done by Barlett, help demonstrate that long term memories are constantly being adjusted because of the different experiences we encounter in our lives. Schema is a very important part of our memory system and every day lives.

Next time you go to a restaurant, don't worry about now knowing what to do, because schema is there to remind you!

Narcolepsy is a very strange disorder and many people don't know much about it. Narcolepsy is a nervous system disorder not a mental condition. A person with this disorder will experience the incredible urge to sleep at inappropriate times, affecting nearly every aspect of a persons life. Daily tasks that most of us take for granted are much harder to cope with when dealing with narcolepsy. Experts have linked Narcolepsy to low levels of a protein called hypocretin, which is produced in the brain. It's unclear as to why the brain produces less hypocretin than normal. Narcolepsy also tends to run in families.
Unfortunately there isn't any known cure for narcolepsy. Instead, physicians and psychologists focus on treating the symptoms. Narcoleptic attacks are usually very short, ranging from a few seconds to several minutes. Strong emotions such as laughter or anger will often trigger an attack. As you'll see in the video below, narcolepsy is very hard to live with. Psychologists are pioneers of understanding how the brain works and hopefully someday their research will prove helpful for people who suffer from this unfortunate disorder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVEJXldrTIM

For many people, it is much easier to recall where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001 then where you were last Tuesday. Some people who were alive when the United States landed on the moon over 40 years ago can remember that day as if it was yesterday. With the help of a part of our memory called "flashbulb memory", recalling emotional events that happened years, even decades ago can vividly stay in our memories and be recalled anytime somebody asks "Where were you when?".

However, after many different types of experiments testing flashbulb memory, it has been discovered that these memories may not be as accurate as they seem to us. These findings cause me to rethink some memorable experiences of my past and to examine the possibility that maybe they are not as accurate as i assume them to be. "False memories" or "phantom flashbulb memory" are memories that seem vivid to those who recall them but are not fully accurate. The research done by people indicates that flashbulb memories change over time just like all other memories, and that they may not even be a separate class of memories at all, just more intense.

If someone asked me to recall where I was and what I was doing during the terrorist attacks of September 11, I could confidently recall what I was doing. However, these memories may be false which I find fairly amusing because of how confident I feel in them.

Today，I want to talk about the finding named: depth of processing. It is consistent with the levels of processing. This finding said that the deeper information is encoding people are more likely able to recall the information. The three levels of processing are: visual, phonological and semantic. That means sound will be easier for visual to let people remember something, and semantic is the best ways to let people remember something. I agree with that. I remember when I was in high school, we are asked to memorize a lot old Chinese famous people. Our teacher told us to read them loudly, I didn't follow her. I just looked at the names and try to remember them, but I could not remember the names even after several seconds. Then I tried to read the names loudly, I found I can remember them faster and better. For example, after several second, I can still "hear "the names that I just read. When I came to the university, the classes were hard for me. I found that read loudly couldn't help me to remember so much knowledge. So I started to memorize them by give meaning to them and relate the knowledge. That made me learned even faster than just by sound related way. By this way, I can remember the knowledge for a long time rather than just several minutes or days. I think this found is very important for students especially elementary student to learn how to remember things.
http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/226/levels-of-processing-the-effects-of-orthographic-phonologic-and-semantic-processing-on-memory

OCD is an anxiety disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts, feelings, ideas, obsessions, or behaviors that make them feel driven to do something. The question I ask is how this is any different than to what people consider "superstitions".

While looking at all aspects of what people go through with OCD it is very difficult not to relate their actions to the ones of heavily superstitious people go through. For example, if one person who is diagnosed with OCD must complete a certain amount of rituals while getting ready for the day; it is no different than the acts of athletes who do the same actions while getting dressed before every game. These athletic superstitions are heavily publicized and occur from junior high level, all the way up into the ranks of professionals.

As far as I have seen, there have not been any extensive studies into the relation to these two behaviors. If this were to happen, I believe that researchers would find a very large correlation between the two and see the fine line that lies between them.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/570269-the-50-weirdest-superstitions-in-sports

I have been around deaf and partly deaf people my whole life. My brother is 90% deaf in one ear so he has used to go to the doctor for it all the time. There were plenty of other deaf people around and how they interacted was very interesting. Sign language I think is a wonderful way to communicate for those who can't hear. It is called a language for a reason, because it has syntax and signs that relate to certain words. Just for fun a friend and I got a sign language book. The way they taught was almost exactly like my current german class without the writing. The book had a certain structure to put sentences together.

According to the text (Lilienfeld, Steve, et al.), infantile amnesia is the "inability of adults to remember personal experience that took place before an early age." No one is exactly sure why people cannot remember the first years of life, however, it is claimed that it is partly due to the fact that the hippocampus is not completely developed at birth. The hippocampus is responsible for long-term memory. The average age that memories start to be recalled is 3.5 years. My earliest memory is of riding a pony in Texas when I was 4. However, I, like many others, cannot be sure that the memory was not implanted because of stories I may have heard. To this day, I still hear many stories about our Texas vacation, and therefore I could have easily envisioned my first pony ride without actually remembering it occurring. Other than that, I remember nearly drowning when I was 4.5 years old. I believe that actually happened because I can remember the event clearly and people tend to recall traumatic events easier than non-traumatic ones.

There are claims that we store some information from our earlier years, but we are unable to recall them at any given time. Other memories, which are less important, are not stored. As we learned in chapter one of the textbook, psychologists have attempted to make subjects recall past memories through the treatment called rebirthing therapy. This "therapy" resulted in the death of Candace Newmaker. Questions that I have after studying infantile amnesia is which memories do we recall easiest? And, what influences our childhood memories (i.e. stories, traumatic events, pictures, etc.)?

-Baza Haile-Selassie

Below is a photo of Candace Newmaker and her adoptive mother who sought the rebirthing therapy.

photo-
http://abusivesystem.terrylhewettsr.rackhost.net/images/candace2_250x274.jpg

website-
http://brainconnection.positscience.com/topics/?main=fa/infantile-amnesia

Neuroeconomics is the new "dangerously hot topic" according to Drazen Prelec. This topic involves understanding how brains respond to economic decisions through fMRI. People like Prelec have tested to see how people react to goods with different monetary values. Despite the fact that the goods might be the same, people think that the more expensive good is better.
The fMRI measures what part of the brain is activated during the decision-making processes related economic decisions. Professor Shenhav and Professor Greene at Harvard have drawn new fascinating connections between brain activity associated with moral and economic decisions. They have discovered that the same parts of the brain are engaged for economic decisions as well as moral judgments, this was observed by testing how patients responded to situations in which they could save peoples life and comparing those with fMRI results from choices involving economic decision.
Based on the fMRI results, Greene and Shenhav discovered that the parts of the brain stimulated by both economic, self-based, decisions and life saving, group based, decisions have a lot of overlap. They discovered that BOLD (blood-oxygen-level dependence) was an important factor in both of those decisions.
To the extent of how much these decision-making processes overlap and how much these findings can be generalized are still unclear and up for debate. The use of an fMRI inhibits the clarity of this experiment because the fMRI cannot precisely pinpoint what part of the brain is activated during decisions. However, this experiment can easily be repeated; it is just a matter of another scientist doing so, using different brain scanning devices could lead to better results. The reason as to why these two types of decision-making processes are connected is also undefined in this experiment. From my knowledge, I would conclude that these processes overlap because they both involve weighing out two important decisions. Of course, that hypothesis is just my own and I am sure that other people have more concise hypotheses that can be falsified.

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~ashenhav/Publications_Presentations_files/ShenhavGreeene_Neuron_2010.pdf

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/598

This video clip is from a PBS documentary on mirror neurons. It describes how their existence was discovered in monkeys when the brain of a monkey responded exactly how it would if the monkey were picking up a peanut when the monkey observed as researchers picked up the peanut. The findings were generalized to humans who were also found to possess neurons that seem to mirror the actions of others when we are observing them as if we are actually carrying out the action.

In one part of the clip, the narrator walks down a street filled with pedestrian traffic carrying a large stack of unwieldy packages. Many of the people on the street stare at him, some even looking pained as they watch him struggle with the load. The narrator explains the response of the pedestrians as stemming from their mirror neurons which are causing them to feel the sensation of carrying a large stack of boxes as they observe him. Since they have been in situations where they have carried large loads, they are able to feel what it must be like for him.

Applying the scientific thinking principle of Occam's Razor to this scene, it is possible to come up with a simpler explanation for the pedestrians' reactions. It seems more likely that they were staring not because they were empathizing with the pain of carrying boxes, but rather because a man carrying a huge stack of boxes down a busy sidewalk is an unusual sight. Without even asking the pedestrians what they were feeling as they watched the narrator, it is impossible to conclude that they were actually experiencing his pain.

Teachers have always warned about the risks of saving all the studying until the last minute, but students often times neglect this advice anyhow. Research has proven that studying less material over a greater period of time is far more beneficial than trying to cram in all the material in at the last minute (Tips for Effective Study).

If we use the Three-Stage Model, we can see why this is; if you review your notes at the last minute, you can only recall so much. Once reaching your short-term memory, you must continue to recite the items repeatedly until they reach long-term memory. This might not be too much of a problem if we weren't limited in how many items we could remember at a time. This means that we must recite only a few pieces of information at a time to insure we are able to recall the information at test time.

The obvious manner in which this applies to my life is that, as a student myself, I have put significant effort and energy into finding the most efficient study method possible. In high school I found myself trying to do everything the day before or the day of; needless to say, I struggled to remember the more detailed pieces of information. However, as I decided to spread out my study time among several days before quizzes or tests, I saw significant improvement in my scores.

I believe the biggest difference in acceptability of cramming depends on the material being studied; if you can place real-life experiences with the course material, you may not need to study as much as you would for, say, a chemistry exam. For subjects such as math, practice makes perfect; for economics (a lot of theoretical examples), look to ensure you have a mastery of understanding over the key vocabulary terms.

LINK FOR ADVERTISEMENT: http://iq-150.com/lp3/?afid=GG&sid=LP3_GOOG

The manufacturers of IQ150 claim that this magic pill can help virtually anyone improve his or her memory, focus without distraction, ease stress and anxiety, and increase awareness. This claim can no doubt be considered "extraordinary", so precautions must be taken before clamoring to the nearest IQ150 vendor to snatch this seemingly miraculous product. According to the scientific thinking principles, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The advertisement for IQ150 lacks the evidence needed to merit such bold claims. Though filled with anecdotes and seemingly medical terminology, the IQ150 advertisement provides no hardcore evidence to supports its claim of improving memory, focus, stress, and awareness.
If the stories of Barbara Marville and Grand Master Dennis Kelly are to be believed, IQ150 fulfills all of its claims and more. Even if their stories of satisfactory results are true and IQ150 improved their memory, anecdotes do not serve as hardcore evidence. Though IQ150 supposedly worked for these individuals, there is no guarantee that IQ150 will work for everyone.
In addition, the advertisement also fails to note other scientific finding in regards to some of the ingredients discussed. Though Gingko Biloba has been proven to have virtually no impact on memory (or at least as much of an impact as a glass of sugary beverage), the advertisement proudly boasts of Gingko's ability to influence memory capacity. This warning sign of pseudoscience can be identified as a "lack of self-correction", because the manufacturers fail to note scientific findings regarding Gingko Biloba.
According to the advertisement for IQ 150, the product is a cure for those who have issues remembering things, or focusing...problems that are widespread and generic. Before buying a product to cure yourself of a common "ailment", extraordinary claims such as those of IQ150 require extraordinary evidence. Because IQ150 relies on "evidence" such as anecdotes and it fails to recognize scientific research regarding Gingko, the advertisement does not provide the evidence necessary to merit such extraordinary claims.

For just about everyone with an email address, we all know about the hoaxes that come around. Many of them attempt to tell us we have won a huge amount of money, or we're the nth number visitor and therefore we get a prize. We know these are not true, yet often times we still wonder "maybe?". Although time and time again it's proven false. I recently found a very funny hoax, trying to ban dihydrogen monoxide.

Some of you may wonder, what is dihydrogen monoxide? While others i assume know that it is something that we simply call water. We all know the six principles for critical thinking, and here i want to focus on a couple. The first is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. While the hoax does provide some good "criticism" against said dihydrogen monoxide, it's essential to life. The hoax states that dihyrogen monoxide contributes to gobal warning, is a key component in acid rain, causes metals to rust faster and has been found in cancerous tumors. At first glance it appears yes maybe dihyrogen monoxide should be banned, but upon further review we realize that is first off impossible, but secondly we would be dead without it. In my opinion, keeping dihydrogen monoxide around seems to be a pretty good idea.

I think this is a case which the availibility heuristic can be used. The availibility heuristic involves people making judgements based on the ease of which they come to our minds. In this instance, Ppeople hear the initial defects of the dihydrogen monoxide, and they just assume that dihydrogen monoxide must be bad and therefore banned. They often decide not to put forth effort and really understand the claim, but just make their judgement off of the basic facts presented to them.

the link i used is: http://www.pcworld.com/article/150080/eight_crazy_email_hoaxes_millions_have_fallen_for.html

Human memory may seem like a unchangable print on the mind, but it is actualy much more malleable than it would seem. Memory is very easily susceptible to modification and even implanting of new memories. As we looked at in class, the study of Bugs Bunny in Disneyland shows that people can easily recall seeing something which never happened. This is also shown in the case of Paul Ingram, who was accused by his daughters of abuse which never happened. His daughters were influenced by a woman at a religous camp, who made them believe that they had been abused and could not recall it. Paul Ingram believed his daughters would not lie and began to visualize himself commiting those acts so completley that he confessed to his crimes and was convicted. The Bugs Bunny study shows that memories can be changed, especially when they are related (Bugs fits in well with Disney characters) and the Ingram case shows that we can visualize and convince ourselves of a completely new memory.

Roughly 90 percent of college students engage in superstitious behaviors before taking an exam (Vyse, 1997). We engage in many different activities such as eating something special, not shaving, wearing a particular clothing item, or numerous others in order to, from we believe, improve our chances on a test. Yet, with no scientific evidence backing these behaviors, how come we continue to do them?
This question has been plagued many scientists. One study done by Skinner was with 8 pigeons, who received food every 15 minutes regardless of their behavior. What they discovered was the birds developed their own superstitious behavior. Their actions were linked to reward by mere coincidence (Morse & Skinner, 1957). What is so important about this study is it sheds light onto why people preform seemingly quirky things in hopes of eliciting a good outcome. One superstition I have is when I play racquetball. I touch the back wall every time before the ball is served. In my head it's somehow allowing me to perform better and win back the serve. It is because at some point we did something memorable prior to a task that relies on chance and we succeeded or won. Such as when I wore my blue polo shirt to the casino for the first time and won 72 dollars. I began to call it my lucky polo, and would wear it whenever I went in hopes of it bringing me the same "luck". Oddly enough I have never won again since being at the casino, but I still refer to my shirt as "lucky". This seems to relate to the confirmation bias that we seek out the scenario where it did work for us once and somehow as some greater meaning to our success other than simply peer chance. However, there are other hypothesis to the formation of superstitious behaviors, such as if our mother tells us repeatedly that black cats bring bad luck, we may be wary of them (Lilienfeld, pg.221). This seems to support why we still believe in superstitious behaviors despite there being no real scientific evidence to support them.

This video sheds some light B. F. Skinner's experience with superstitious behaviors.

To add to the drama, several movies have given characters a condition known as amnesia. Amnesia is characterized by the loss of one's memories. In anterograde amnesia, a person loses the ability to form new memories. In contrast, retrograde amnesia occurs when someone loses their ability to recall some or all of the events in their life before the onset of the condition. Both of these types of amnesia have been shown to audiences on the big screen, but in many cases there is more flaw than fact to how the condition is portrayed.
In the movie 50 First Dates, the character Lucy Whitmore suffers from what appears to be anterograde amnesia as a result of hitting her head in a car accident. The first flaw in this cinema amnesia is that memory loss rarely occurs following a head injury. The most common causes of amnesia are a stroke, brain infection, or neurosurgery. Second, the idea of memory being wiped clean every night is not plausible. Memory loss has no specific time where things are suddenly forgotten.
Another movie known for its flawed view of amnesia is Overboard. In the movie, Goldie Hawn's character suffers from amnesia as a result of a head injury. Because of this, she drastically changes in her personality and identity. The real cause for such personality change is called dissociative fugue, not amnesia. Another false aspect of amnesia portrayed in the film is the readily reversible effects of the condition. Goldie simply "snaps out of it" in the end, when in reality things would come back gradually.
Amnesia is misrepresented in many movies, including 50 First Dates and Overboard. As a result, many people's perceptions of the condition are skewed. It is important to always think critically to avoid being trapped by false information.

To read more about cinema amnesia see http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/03/amnesia_in_the_movies.php

Cinematic amnesia, while entertaining, is not very accurate at all. The traditional "who am I, where am I??" perception of amnesia is false. People who have it do retain the knowledge of who they are and can generally tell you where they are also. In addition, long term memories usually arent damaged, so the idea of having the slate wiped clean is also false. In the movie 50 First Dates, amnesia is used just for the convenience of the story, not to show what it actually does. The character played by Drew Barrymore got into a car accident on her birthday multiple years previous to when Adam Sandler's character comes to know her. Her experience from her birthday is perfectly preserved, along with everything up until then. Her family goes to crazy lengths to make every day her birthday in order to make her life seem normal to her. Already in the film there are a plethora of errors. A car crash with head trauma wouldnt cause amnesia. As the original post stated, strokes, infections, virusus, and the like cause amnesia. Another flaw: if she actually did get amnesia, she wouldnt remember much of the day it happened or the few days previous. Her short term memory up until the accident is perfect, but she cant remember anything at all after it. People with amnesia still remember some things, like the passage of time on a day to day basis. When Adam Sandler comes into the story, we are led to believe that her memory resets overnight and that she can only remember things from that day until she falls asleep. This also is completely false. While it may make the movie more romantic and sad, amnesia doesnt work like that what so ever. Amnesia is a progressive condition, you may remember some things, but not others. The video tape Adam makes for her is...creative. While it would provide some information for the patient on what happened, likelihood is that they wouldnt recall watching it a short while after it finished. Once again, this wouldnt allow an individual with severe amnesia to live normally for a day because amnesia is progressive. It simply doesnt reset every night at 12:00.

My grandmother has the beginnings of amnesia related to dementia or Alzheimers possibly (we dont know which yet, its in the extremely early stages). Often times she wont recall telling a story or saying something, so she'll say it again. That becomes somewhat awkward, especially for her. My other grandma had a stroke, and amnesia related to that came on very quickly. She wouldnt recall making breakfast or even (in the later stages) who i was or what my relation to her was. At that point, it had practically turned into Alzheimers with dementia sadly soon to follow. Movies and TV dont portray amnesia like it actually is, but even though its inaccurate, it makes for a good and creative story line.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/amnesia/

One American develops Alzheimer's disease every 72 seconds and 42% of people over the age of 85 will develop it. These statistics are alarming because they show just how many people are affected by Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease is the loss of memory, usually recent events first and then gradually losing more and more memory. Alzheimer's patients can have a very clear memory of their childhood or early events in their life. Along with memory loss, patient's brains contain senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, which lead to the death of brain cells in the hypocampus and the cerebral cortex. Researcheres are not sure if the loss of synapses and death of cells directly cause memory loss, but there is a negative correlation between them. One thing that I find extremely interseting is researh that tells us what may help prevent Alzheimer's disease. A few possibilities may be increasing physical activity, mental activity, and social activity. This topic directly relates to me because my grandpa had Azheimer's disease for the last few years of his life. He would constantly forget things that had happened earlier that day, but he could tell me about his days as a pilot in the airforce with no problem at all. It is extremely hard to watch a family member lose their memory, not matter how young or old they are. I think that any research that is dedicated to finding a better treatment or even a cure for Alzheimer's disease would be money well spent, especially considering that it affects millions of patients and their families everyday. In my opinion dealing with losing any type of mental ability, such as memory, is much harder than losing any type of physical ability. The person loses a part of their individual identity and the ability to have the same types of relationships with the people around them. Below is an image of a normal brain compared to the brain of an Alzheimer's patient. As you can see the Alzheimer's brain is missing a lot of cerebral cortex tissue.

The most interesting subject we learned about in the past two weeks to me was memory. I think the overall subject of memory is intriguing and I found false memory to be fascinating. False memories affect a person's identity and relationships. They are incorrect memories that are strongly believed. False memories can be caused by many things. One way is being convinced something happened even though it didn't. Paul Ingram's case is an example of this. His daughters accused him of sexually abusing them, and even though he didn't he formed false memories in which he had. His case can be read in full here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurston_county_ritual_abuse_case. Another cause of false memories may be recovered memory therapy. Recovered memory therapy is based on recalling memories of abuse from childhood that had been forgotten. It's hypothesized that RMT can cause patients to recall instances of childhood abuse that didn't happen, much like Ingram's case. We learned about an experiment in which adults were convinced they met Bugs Bunny at Disney in discussion which got me interested in other experiments about false memory implanting. Elizabeth Loftus goes over some of the experiments in the video below.
False memories are important because of court cases. The majority of false memory cases are for sexual abuse and malpractice. During the late 1990s there were multiple lawsuits against psychiatrists and psychologists on the charge of propagating memories of childhood abuse. Implanted false memories can be extremely dangerous. I think it's important in cases like Ingram's to consider the possibility of false memories.

We see many films and television programs today that deal with the issue of memory. One of these films is 50 First Dates. Drew Barrymore plays a woman who was injured in a car accident and now suffers from amnesia. She is unable to remember anything from the previous day. Adam Sandler plays a man who tries everyday to make her remember him and fall in love with him all over again. He spends his time creating videos and books in an effort to help her remember. Critics believe that this movie portrays many of the common misconceptions of amnesia and while some things are accurate, movie producers change the facts somewhat.
The first misconception is related to Barrymore's head injury as the cause of amnesia. The most common way to acquire amnesia is to suffer from a stroke, brain infection, or neurosurgery. Another misconception is the idea that memories are wiped clean every night. That is unlike any documented case of amnesia to this day. A final misconception of cinematic amnesia is that the characters lead otherwise normal lives without any problem. They are just unable to remember new things. In real life, people suffering from amnesia often lose memories of important aspects of their lives, such as daily routines. This causes their daily functioning to be severely impaired.
It is clear that while movies portraying memory deficiencies (such as amnesia) can be entertaining, they are not always completely accurate when it comes to the facts. They should be seen for that purpose alone rather than for their educational content.

Movie Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErjP5xMTc8I

Information Article:
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/03/amnesia_in_the_movies.php

Classical conditioning is the application of a stimulant while applying another form of stimulant. What this means is that you can get someone or something to see or feel something, and then come to expect a reaction to happen shortly after. This sort of training is used mainly for training animals and pets. Classical conditioning also has had a drastic effect on human beings.

I think this is an important concept because of what it has done to humans. Without even noticing it we have a stimulus such as a smelly room tell us that the garbage is probably full, which then leads to us tending to the garbage to rid the room of any bad smells. Other forms of training occur, such as whenever any football player hears a whistle being blown, that means something has happened on the field and everyone should stop what they are doing. Classical conditioning played a huge roll when I played football. On a friday, if you didnt see our head coach come out of the office it meant that we were simply going to stretch and then go inside and lift. If we did see our head coach come out of the office then it meant we will be outside practicing. We were trained to see something and then infer what will happen next. 1291892960-76.jpg

There is not much that I am still wondering about, except how we can communicate with animals. If we can do this much insane training to animals, there must be a way that we can talk to them and figure out what they are thinking. I believe that with all of the training techniques we have there must be a way for this to happen.

Insomnia is a sleeping disorder in which one cannot fall asleep, wakes up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, or wakes up too early in the morning. Insomnia drastically effects the amount of necessary sleep that a person needs in order to function properly. Severe insomnia, with dramatic sleep loss can cause people to be irritable, make it hard to concentrate and can lead to high blood pressure and heart disease.
Various things can cause insomnia, such as stress, pain, caffeine, depression, and a change in work schedule. Insomnia is a serious disorder that can potentially ruin someone's life because sleep is so necessary and the body can't function correctly without enough sleep. The average person needs to get 7-8 hours of sleep every night and insomnia can drastically effect this and lead to many problems.
Insomnia is treatable though, once the underlying problem has been taken care of (stress, depression, etc.) then the insomnia usually will fade with it. There are also other alternatives, such as sleeping pills and changes in sleeping patterns.
In class we learned how important REM sleep is and waking up in the middle of the night can really effect the sleep cycle and prevents people from getting the REM sleep that they need. After reading the chapter on sleep, sleep is also important in forming neural connections and losing hours of sleep every night can prevent someone from retaining things that they learned that day.
This is a website that talks about the symptoms, causes and potential treatments for insomnia: http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/common/brain/disorders/110.html

You wake up, but you can't move a muscle. You're lying in bed, totally conscious, realizing that strange things are happening, and you're paralyzed. Though this would be a great concept for a new horror movie, it's actually a description of the experience of a medical condition called sleep paralysis. This phenomenon is described in chapter 5 of our textbook as "a strange experience of being unable to move just after falling asleep or immediately upon waking." Sleep paralysis is a strange phenomenon that seems to affect about half the population at least once. People who experience it find themselves conscious, but unable to move for anywhere from a few seconds to 10 minutes. It's also often accompanied by hallucinations with dark undertones. Cultures from everywhere from the Caribbean to Japan have come up with spiritual explanations for the phenomenon. An interesting example from the textbook is the Newfoundlanders, who have attributed this phenomenon to an "old hag" an old witch sitting on the person's chest.

Researchers are finding a neurological basis to this condition. They have found that sleep paralysis is related to REM sleep, a normal stage of sleep characterized by the random movement of the eyes, in particular REM sleep that occurs at the beginning or end of sleep. This can be due to stress, lack of sleep, or a condition called "hypotonia", a state of low muscle tone. Having REM sleep mix with your consciousness is scarier than it sounds. Having experienced it several times myself, I can testify that the fear in those few moments of paralysis is gripping. As many have, I've seen dark shadows, and felt a pressure on my chest, so due to the nature of this experience it's not hard to jump to conclusions about it's causes. If it were just a sleeping disorder, you would think that everyone would experience the physical, paralyzing part. Yet, how is it that we all describe the dark shadows, and its actions as well? It really makes you wonder.

Here's the link to the article I used to learn more about this condition: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ask-the-brains-sleep-paralysis

When my baby sister born in early September was around 2 weeks old, she was diagnosed with a rare genetic order called Prader-Willi Syndrome. This is a relatively unheard of disease as it generally affects only 1 in 25,000 live births and is caused by a deficiency or deletion of chromosome 15. This syndrome causes numerous disabilities and complications, one of which is Sleep Apnea.

Sleep Apnea is a disorder that affects somewhere between 2 and 20 percent of the general population. It is caused by a blockage to the airway during sleep, causing people with it to snore loudly, gasp and stop breathing for 20 or more seconds. People with apnea can stop breathing for periods of time several hundred times in one night. The lack of oxygen and excess amount of carbon dioxide in their system leads to many problems. Apnea is associated with being overweight. Because one of the characteristics of Prader-Willi Syndrome is a chronic and insatiable desire to eat, believed to be caused by the fact that genetic abnormalities in chromosome 15 disrupt the normal functioning of the hypothalamus, sleep apnea can be more common in people with Prader-Willi Syndrome than those without. Also, those with Prader-Willi Syndrome have decreased muscle tone, resulting in increased soft tissue around the airway, further increasing the likelihood of Sleep Apnea in those with Prader-Willi.
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Furthermore, for Prader-Willi Syndrome being a genetic order, infants can be affected by Sleep Apnea, sometimes causing Failure to Thrive(FTT). An eMedicine article on pediatric obstructive sleep apnea notes that, "Indeed, reports from the early 1980s found more than a 50% prevalence of FTT in patients with pediatric OSA."

Because Sleep Apnea has become a source of concern in my family as a result of my sister's Prader-Willi Syndrome, I have looked into treatment methods. While it seems that there are suggestions such as surgery and face masks, there is little to be done, or known, regarding Sleep Apnea and infants. This might be due in part to the fact that Sleep Apnea more commonly affects adults, sometimes children, and very rarely infants. It is hard to imagine, and potentially dangerous, to imagine subjecting a newborn to surgery or wearing a face mask.
http://www.pwsdots.org/Articles/RespiratoryIssues#OSA
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sleepapnea/

Crimes are committed every day around the world, and courts continually rely on eyewitness testimony for convictions. Is this method always effective? The answer to this question is most certainly no. There have been numerous false convictions on account of faulty eye witness identification. One example of this is in the Lilienfield text. Jennifer Thompson, a college student who was raped, incorrectly identified Ronald Cotton as the rapist. He consequently spent eleven years in prison as a result before he was released. This is upsetting because when an eyewitness identifies a perpetrator, the jury almost always believes them. Under stress, it is often hard for an eyewitness to establish an accurate depiction of the criminal. Once a witness identifies the one responsible for a crime, it is hard for them to sway from it, even if they are wrong. This is a real world example of belief perseverance, which is the human inability to accept anything other than their previously held beliefs. So what can the courts due to ensure eyewitness accounts are as accurate as possible? When questioning witnesses, lawyers press those individuals about the accuracy of their memories, and about any assistance they may have received in forming those memories. Police officers also question eyewitnesses as soon as possible after a crime has been committed. They do this because that is when a witness is most likely to recount the situation accurately. In our country's judicial system, there is a heavy reliance on eyewitness accounts for good reason: most of the time eyewitnesses are correct. Yet it is crucial to consider biases and flaws when a witness takes the stand.

I found the topic of false memories very interesting. I thought it was interesting that others can 'trick' us into altering our memories to believe that we did something we didn't, like in the case of Paul Ingram. However, I recently read an article that talks about how we can also sometimes create our own false memories. The article talks about how people alter their stories so that the people they are telling them to are interested in them. What starts as a small alter in the story when telling one person can become the truth every time you tell the story. If this cycle continues, eventually, the story you tell people becomes nothing like what actually happened. The author uses the example of a childhood memory that her brother had put peppers into her Chinese food while she was in the bathroom. She told this story many times; however, the truth is that this actually happened to her sister!
This article caught my eye because in class we mostly talked about how others can change your memory, but this focused on how you can actually change your own memories. Based on what I read in this article, I believe that everyone has false memories implanted into their heads without even knowing. It makes think about memories that I have from when I was younger and whether they are actually accurate, or if I changed the story just a bit so much over time that it is not the same at all anymore.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/how-friends-ruin-memory-the-social-conformity-effect/

Insomnia is a sleeping disorder involving the difficulty of falling and or staying asleep. Roughly 9 to 15 percent of people report severe or longstanding problems with insomnia; although insomnia is more common among people who suffer from depression, pain, or a variety of medical conditions, many individuals may develop brief bouts of insomnia due to a number of factors, such as stress, medications, jet lag and napping. Recently, researchers have discovered yet another factor that may increase risks of insomnia: electronics, particularly laptops and iPads.

Melatonin is a hormone the brain secretes that settles our body for sleep. The presence of light prevents the secretion of melatonin, thus, people are able to stay awake during the day and generally start winding down during the night. But now, with the increased use of electronics, the amount of artificial light emitted during the evenings--when it should be dark--can disrupt humans' sleeping patterns. This particular type of light that triggers wakefulness is blue light. The cells in human eyes are very sensitive to blue light and it is more commonly seen during the day than it is at night. Many electronics emit this type of light from their screens, increasing peoples' inability to fall asleep.

With the use of laptops and iPads becoming more and more popular, it is important that people are able to maintain a healthy living style. But I've realized that it is almost impossible for most people, especially college students, to stay away from electronics during the night. Many students continually use their laptops late into the night to finish homework, go on Facebook, and so on. Thus, I think it is essential for a grater promotion of productive working or studying patterns and the use or creation of products that may help reduce the amount of blue light emitted from electronics.

(Here's an article that provides more information about laptop and iPad induced insomnia: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7731807/Using-laptops-or-iPads-just-before-bed-increases-risk-of-insomnia.html)

Remember the horrifying feeling you got when after being separated from your mom or dad at the local grocery store? Many seem to vividly recall the sudden fear of being lost forever. How do we remember such a fear-inducing experience that took place when we were merely three-years-old? The scary thing about this is that we might not remember. It may have never happened. Implanted memories are a very intimidating concept. This is proven true when discussing the Paul Ingram case. To be able to control one's thoughts through implanted memories just by wording a question a specific way is a scary thought. The concept is often ignored, especially when discussing serious social and political cases around the world. Is everyone living a partial lie?

If implanted memories were brought into the equation of social interaction a lot more, our way of interacting and living might change drastically. This could be especially when controversial trials and influential events happen around the world and within our own nation. People might become a lot more cautious and careful about each sentence heard and said to each other. It would be fascinating to see how important interviews change when each person somehow dissociates themselves from the effect of suggestive wordings of questions. An interesting study could be done to see how much of our memories consist of implanted memories. Next time you tell someone a favorite childhood memory, think to yourself... do I actually remember doing this, or this just an implanted memory?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQr_IJvYzbA

When one wanders into a store, the last thought that comes to their minds is that they are going to be stopped and searched. If that person is an African American, unfortunately this is something they might have to worry about. I found a video of an African American woman going into an upscale store and being searched by the white manager. Both the woman and the manager were actors. They wanted to see how the others in the store would react. The thing is, out of 100 people that came into the store, only 20 stuck up for the African American woman. Usually, the ones who stuck up for her were also African American. This may be shocking to some people, but personally I was not that shocked when most people did not care that the manager was openly racist. One would expect that since the victim was African American, the people who said something and stood up for her were African American.
What does this say about our society today? I believe it tells us that we live in a society where racism is still very much present and the stereotype that every African American is a criminal exists. Although it is true that there are more African Americans in prison than whites, it does not by any means hold true that all African Americans are potential criminals. This is an excellent example of correlation vs. causation.
Although I have never experienced something like this first hand, I can only imagine what it would be like to be searched for being a certain race. I find it disgusting that managers of stores can do this and get away with it. As Americans, we are so used to being bystanders and concerned only with ourselves that we rarely take time to observe all the negative things going on around us. I hope with time this will change, but for now it does not look like racism is going anywhere.

I recently read an article that said behavior can be self-defeating. It may be helpful at the time, but in the long run it only harms you. There is no doubt that everyone has participated in this behavior at least once in their lifetime. For example, you may have eaten food to make yourself feel better, purposely hurt yourself physically to take your mind of emotional pain, or used drugs or alcohol to distract yourself. Although these actions may help for the time being, they are a recipe for disaster.
When I was reading this article, it reminded me of a website where people can ask you anonymous questions and you are supposed to answer them truthfully. The website is called "formspring" and it is common mostly among high school kids. Although it may seem like a fun website, it is the exact opposite. Since the questions are anonymous, many people take advantage of that and write mean and sometimes inappropriate things about that person. The person receiving the questions has the option to ignore it or respond. Being an immature high school kid, of course they are going to respond. But who is really to blame for the negative consequences? I believe the person responding is to blame. They are just asking for it by having a formspring. My friend took the comments and questions she received personally and she would constantly be upset just thinking about it even when she was not on the website. I told her it was her own self-destructive behavior bringing her down and that she could easily delete her formspring in seconds. When she had had enough of the nasty comments, she finally deleted it.
How can we prevent this self-sabotaging behavior from taking over our lives? According to the article, the best solution is to distract yourself with a new hobby or just simply talking to others. Make sure to engage in healthy behavior that will have only positive outcomes.

Here is the article.http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201109/dodging-emotions-the-help-harms?page=2

After reading chapter two, nothing fascinated me more than a procedure known as a prefrontal lobotomy. In this surgical procedure, fibers connecting the frontal lobes of the brain are severed from the underlying thalamus. Mental health professionals of the early 20th century were certain it was an effective treatment for mental disorders like schizophrenia. Later on it was found to be almost completely useless. Why were scientists so certain that a prefrontal lobotomy worked? The answer is simple. Those who believed in the effectiveness of a prefrontal lobotomy claimed to see that it worked. However, there was no actual scientific evidence that supported these claims.

In the cases of prefrontal lobotomies, confirmation bias led scientists to conclude that the procedure treated mental disorders. They wanted and hoped the procedure to work, so when they "saw that it worked," they used it as evidence. Why did so many people back then believe in the effectiveness of this procedure if there was no actual scientific evidence? Perhaps it was because they lacked the technology and understanding that we have today. People did some outrageous and confusing things one hundred years ago that we would never dream of doing today. To say that a prefrontal lobotomy treats mental disorders is extremely far-fetched and in the modern world we have the tools to prove that it is useless.

Below I have provided a link to an article pertaining to patients that received prefrontal lobotomies. I found it to be entirely inhuman how the procedure went about. After it is over, the patients personality is completely rendered. Is this okay to do to somebody?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5014080

The Beauty of Being Bilingual
I recently met a guy at a party that I found extremely interesting. His name was Alex. He was born on an army base. Throughout his childhood, he moved around and lived on different bases in multiple different countries like Germany, Russia, and Spain. He remembers learning and fluently speaking the languages of these different countries that he lived in. When I asked how he did this, he told me that his mind was like a sponge when he was young. Alex said this because he would easily absorb any language that he was surrounded by.

Unfortunately, he lost much of what he learned as a child because he stopped actively using some of the languages. However, he can still speak fluent Russian and fluent English. Alex is an excellent example of a person that is bilingual. Bilingualism is when a person can speak and comprehend two completely different languages.

Bilingualism is an important concept because so many people in the world can speak and comprehend two languages. Also, enhanced technology has created better communication between people from completely different parts of the world. It is becoming more important for people to understand each other in our evolving and more unified world. Therefore, bilingualism is not only common already, but growing in importance.

After reviewing Alex's story, a few questions still popped into my mind. He learned many languages very quickly as a child. Is there a certain age that is more capable than other ages to learn an additional language? Are some people more capable of learning multiple languages due the makeup of their brain? Is capability of learning multiple languages genetic? Does being bilingual effect other areas in the brain?

According to Discoverynews.com (HERE), asymmetrical features seem to be related to great leadership skills. Past research shows that symmetrical physical characteristics are usually seen as more attractive; therefore, people with asymmetrical features need to "overcome more." Does this suggest that symmetry is a survival feature in humans? In other words, will people who are seen by the public as attractive, due to their symmetrical features, have an easier time succeeding in our society? I'm not so sure these can be scientifically argued yet, as research is not yet certain whether there's a correlation-causation relationship.

One thing that I like about this article is that it tells the readers that "causation can be tricky," implying that this is not a concrete finding.

I am not sure whether symmetry affects leadership skills; however, I do not agree with the findings that symmetrical faces are usually more attractive. In fact, I gravitate more towards asymmetrical features. Here's an example:

In my opinion, the symmetrical guy on the right is much more awkward and creepy than the asymmetrical guy on the left.

Perhaps, people are conditioned--via media--to believe that symmetrical faces are more attractive because of their "perfect" balance. It would explain why some people go through plastic surgery without any other reason than to "look better." Furthermore, the media has a tendency to tell consumers what they should like and dislike. With the constant ads about plastic surgery and weight loss, there's no wonder why researchers would believe a correlation-causation relationship exists between symmetrical-to-asymmetrical features and leadership skills (aka, confidence skills).

If you find any other examples, feel free to post them as a comment on my blog! I'm fascinated to see what other people agree with.

Mnemonic devices have helped improve my grades for as long as I can remember. According to the Lilienfeld text, a Mnemonic device is "a learning aid, strategy or device that enhances recall." In other words, a mnemonic device is something that helps you remember things that you otherwise would not have. For example, if you wanted to recall the order the planets are in in relevance to the sun, you could remember the phrase "My Very Earnest Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" to remind you of the first letters of the actual planets. The order of the first letters of this mnemonic device are MVEMJSUNP. This corresponds with the actual planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. I think that mnemonic devices are extremely useful when you have to memorize things that you are having trouble remembering. There are many different examples of mnemonic devices and many people make up different devices to help them study. Our brain processes the information better when it can relate unrelated topics to something that you can better process or remember. For example, you could put a list that you have to remember to a popular song to recall them better. In this Youtube video, a woman raps and sings information about the periodic table to aid people in their memorization of the first 20 elements as well as properties of the periodic table. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAnOUwPfHlk&feature=related. As I reflect upon this research finding, I wonder if there is any certain device that helps us remember things specifically better. For instance, will rapping the elements help me remember them better than making an acronym for them? Are the different parts of the brain that aid in memory made up differently if they can remember one mnemonic device better than another? Overall, whether I remember things from rapping or acronyms, by creating a mnemonic device, I am guaranteed to remember better than if I had not made one.

While reading the chapter on memory in the Lilienfeld text I thought the false memory topic was very interesting. We had talked about it in lecture and also discussion. False memories are memories that can be implanted so people start to believe them. They actually have never happened. One of the false memory techniques we talked about was the advertisement of Disney World with Bugs Bunny. A scientist showed this advertisement to many people. After they were shown they were then asked to tell some of the events that happened when they went to Disney World. Many of the people talked about meeting Bugs Bunny, shaking his hand, touching his tail or ears. The truth is that Bugs Bunny would never be at Disney World because he is not a Disney character. The reason people thought they remembered meeting Bugs was because the advertisement they saw had Bugs Bunny on it. By having him on the advertisement it was a small implantation of memory to the many people that had watch the advertisement.
The false memory concept is very important to understand because of the effects it can have on people. One famous example of the use of false memories and the effects it has on people is the case of the Ingram family. The father was accused by his daughters of sexually abusing them and eventually was sentenced to prison. He pleaded guilty because of all the false memories people had implanted to him. He believed them because the people saying it were they people he trusted.
I think everyone is able to be implanted with a false memory. I think one of the most common false memories are the ones that parents tell their children from when they were younger. Many parents make up some stories like their children got lost in a store for a while and then tell their children about it when they grow up. The children then believe that it is a true memory even though it may not have happened.
Another article talking about false memory is http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm

Have you ever received an email that claims you would die within the next 24 hours if you didn't forward it? As a child, I received many of these chain letters, each with slightly different wordings, but all regarding the same basic subject. This is just one of the many different hoaxes and claims someone might experience on a fairly regular basis. Though many people may not pay any attention to these obvious email hoaxes, young children may find them more believable. Through the application of a variety of the six principles of scientific thinking, it may become more apparent that these types of emails are fabricated.

One of the main principles of scientific thinking we can apply to this type of hoax is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The claim that you will die within a certain time period if you chose not to forward a chain letter opposes what we already know. In order to prove that these forwarded messages are not just fabricated claims, it is necessary to provide sound evidence. Another principle of scientific thinking that can be applied to this scenario is falsifiability. Luckily for the majority of us who decide not to forward one of these emails, we have managed to avoid dying within the time period specified for our death, if we didn't send the message.

As it is easy to see, these chain letters are untrue, though it is still important to examine them through the six principles of scientific thinking. Though many of the different principles can be applied to the validity of these threatening chain letters, it is very relevant to use the extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Next time you receive an email or forward that seems like a hoax, it is important to apply the principles of scientific thinking.

Have you ever received an email that claims you would die within the next 24 hours if you didn't forward it? As a child, I received many of these chain letters, each with slightly different wordings, but all regarding the same basic subject. This is just one of the many different hoaxes and claims someone might experience on a fairly regular basis. Though many people may not pay any attention to these obvious email hoaxes, young children may find them more believable. Through the application of a variety of the six principles of scientific thinking, it may become more apparent that these types of emails are fabricated.

One of the main principles of scientific thinking we can apply to this type of hoax is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The claim that you will die within a certain time period if you chose not to forward a chain letter opposes what we already know. In order to prove that these forwarded messages are not just fabricated claims, it is necessary to provide sound evidence. Another principle of scientific thinking that can be applied to this scenario is falsifiability. Luckily for the majority of us who decide not to forward one of these emails, we have managed to avoid dying within the time period specified for our death, if we didn't send the message.

As it is easy to see, these chain letters are untrue, though it is still important to examine them through the six principles of scientific thinking. Though many of the different principles can be applied to the validity of these threatening chain letters, it is very relevant to use the extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Next time you receive an email or forward that seems like a hoax, it is important to apply the principles of scientific thinking.

While browsing through the memory chapter in the Lilienfield text, I found the topic of implementation of false memories to be quite intriguing. Using suggestive memory techniques, which are procedures that strongly encourage people to recall memories that they had never had, psychologists can make someone believe that they have done, read, seen, or remembered something that really wasn't there.

During discussion, we were given examples of two very common false memories--the "lost in the mall" memory and the "hugging Bugs Bunny at Disney World" memory. Immediately after learning about implanted memories, I thought that I would never be stupid enough to believe such memories. However, after reading how Paul Ingram was not only falsely accused of, but had also easily accepted the charges accusing him of sexual assault of his daughters, I feel like I would be more likely to accept something as simple as an account of me being lost at the mall when I was young. I think it's crazy how Ingram denied the accusations of such crazy actions for so long, but then finally succumbed to the allegations by his own family, church, and town. When we were given lists of words during discussion and then were asked to write down as many words as possible from memory shortly thereafter, I remember I wrote a couple of words--"sweet" and "chair"--that really weren't on the lists, but because they were similar to the words in the list, I had falsely remembered them.

Here is an article explaining how false memories can be implanted for the simplest things: such as locking a door, shaking a bottle, or even just shuffling a deck of cards.
http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/mentalhealth/2010-09-15-falsememories15_ST_N.htm

This video shows the incredible skills of Kanzi, the talking bonobo. The instructor gives Kanzi a specific task to accomplish and he was able to accurately perform all of the tasks the woman asked of him. After watching the video of Kanzi the ape, one would probably be amazed at the tasks Kanzi was able to perform and begin to wonder whether animals are capable of understanding human language.

Two similarities between humans and bonobos are that they learn the language better when they are young and they learn by observing rather than reinforcement, which is used with other species such as dogs and parrots. Another big difference between the bonobos and other animals that have been trained in language is that bonobos use their knowledge to engage in social settings and not just to request food. All of these facts have had researchers wondering whether we may be able to teach our language to a species besides our own.

Although, even bonobos who have been trained their whole lives cannot seem to master the syntactic rules that are essential for human communication. The most advanced monkey can be compared to only a two-year-old on their ability to understand language.

By studying these apes, some may wonder if their abilities compare to those abilities of humans when they first began to conjure up language. Did we begin by simply allocating symbols and sounds to everyday objects? And, if these bonobos housed the same vocal tract as humans, could they too become a species with language? Sometimes research, such as with Kanzi, leads to further questions.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dhc2zePJFE

According to the article, Primate Use of Language (http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/language.htm), many believe that human beings are the only capable primates on Earth to be able to use a language. Noam Chomsky who believed that humans were the sole possessors of the cognitive hardware, which makes language possible, theorized such findings. Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh strongly believes that primates can possess abilities for language and she began to disprove Chomsky's theory with the help of a chimpanzee, Kanzi. Kanzi observed while her mother was taught and acquired a vocabulary of 200 words. He was also able to construct sentences by combining words. One example was caught on video when he was told to give a dog a shot, Kanzi injected the needle into his stuffed toy dog. This proved that Kanzi had the ability to learn the language, but could not master it in such a way like humans.

This finding proves that humans are superior to other primates, but how long would that last? After reading this article about the abilities of Kanzi, it concerns me to think that if we were teaching primates the language, would evolution take place and natural selection work to their benefit? There have been multiple movies out in theaters about animals taking over the world, which seemed farfetched at the moment, but how long before it becomes reality?

Throughout the years, researchers have painstakingly tried to teach primates language and from what Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh have found they have the capability to learn it. If one chimpanzee learns a little bit of the language and has an offspring that inherits his parents use of language whiling furthering its education, will it become too much? If this happens the chimpanzee's Broca's area and Wernicke's area will soon develop and contain very similar characteristics to the human brain. The world would no long be human dominated, but shared by primates.

This may not be possible for many decades later, but should we continue to teach primates the language or continue human domination? Will movies such as, Planet of the Apes, become reality?

Classical conditioning can happen to any person; even actors. Jim mentions a scientist that he learned about who taught dogs to salivate at the ding of a bell. That scientist was Ivan Pavlov and the experiment was a little more complex and had more meaning than Jim's.In an episode of the office, Jim shows us an example of both classical and operant conditioning. He actually only intended to use operant conditioning against Dwight but both ended up showing up in Jim's experiment.

We can conclude that operant conditioning was used because Dwight had to show a response (putting his hand out) in order to get a reward (the mint). Operant conditioning is classified by our textbook as learning controlled by the consequences of the organsim's behavior. Thus saying that the organism (Dwight) must show some sort of response or action in order to receive the reward. Dwight also fell fool for classical conditioning. In my opinion, I don't think Jim knew he was even going to make Dwight have the bad taste in his mouth afterwards. (Obviously he knew since it is a T.V. show, but in reality most people would only look for the response). The book describes many types of stimuli and responses and all of them are shown in the video. The unconditioned stimulus was the noise Jim's computer made when he rebooted it. That, at first, had no effect on Dwight. Then the unconditioned response was the taste Dwight got in his mouth after he took the mint. After many trials of this, Jim reboots his computer and all of a sudden, conditioned stimulus, Dwight sticks out his arm due to operant conditioning and Jim makes Dwight look dumbfounded. After not receiving the mint, Dwight gets a nasty taste in his mouth which is the conditioned response.

This video shows us that anybody can be conditioned in many different ways. Be aware of what people are doing before they give you a snack because you may be the one getting conditioned!

Throughout history there have been many pairs of brothers, or sisters in professional sports. What is the reasoning behind this? Are these siblings so good because of the genes (nature) they were given or are they good because of the upbringing (nurture) they were given? Many of these questions have come about recently, especially with the emergence of adopted athletes.

There are many athletic families, such as the Mannings Click for link . Families such as these have been naturally good at sports and have also been nurtured into the same sport. This is a combination of natural talent and nurtured love and knowledge of the game.

Along with families like the mannings, the NCAA has seen many problems in recent history with dominant athletes being adopted. Some people view this as a scandal, or as if the child's adoption had some other meaning besides giving the child a home and loving it. Many of the NCAA's officials viewed these problems as crooks just trying to get money from the child. These rare cases cant actually be simply for the parents' monetary benefit, can they?

Although these do seem peculiar because these children turned out to be world class athletes, it really isnt fair to tell a mother who raised someone for 15 years that she must have only wanted her son to be a star. This seems crazy to me, and also brings up the idea of nature vs. nurture. Some athletes, such as the mannings have been nurtured to love and be great at the sport they play. Others used pure natural ability to make it into the big leagues.

Thorndike's Law of Effect is one that makes absolute sense when viewing it from a real-world stand point. Everything we have done in our lives creates or sparks some sort of emotion inside of our bodies. Naturally, we remember much of everything we do because we live it and experience it. What this law is saying is that no matter if the event caused good or bad emotion, the absolute value of that emotion determines how long or how much it will effect oneself.
This can be easily shown threw 2 different extremes. On a positive scale, making it to the NFL and making millions of dollars will have a huge positive effect on your life, in terms of salary and fame. This extreme sensation of being a world class athlete would change just about everyone in some way or another. Whether it be that everyone knows your name, or that you earn more respect, your life would be greatly effected. On another note, one negative thing such as dog fighting, can have a terrible negative effect. This is seen in Michael Vick, a quarterback in the NFL. His life was turned around dramatically when he came into the NFL, and probably even more when he was convicted of fighting dogs. Both of these events gained just about the same amount of publicity, and have both made a dramatic change in his life, yet one was positive and one was negative. It doesn't matter whether positive or negative because the scale will always be what your mind stores away.

lucid dream is the dream that you dreamed and know that you were dreaming. remember that movie: inception? It is based on the lucid dreams.In the lucid dream,Lucidity is having "self-awareness" or "clarity of thought" in the dream world. we are ether awake or totally asleep.This funding said that 72 percent of people felt they could control what was happening in their dreams.I think this concept is very important because it may let us control our dreams in the future. For example, if you know you are in the nightmare, you can stop that by let yourself awake.A pilot study was performed in 2006 that showed that lucid dreaming treatment was successful in reducing nightmare frequency I have such experiences. I have lucid dream almost 2 or 3 times a month, in the that dream i can fly or see people i want or kill myself to woke up..The problem is even i know i was dreaming, i can not realize other people in my dreams are not real. I felt they will remember this dream too. On the internet, some website teach us how to make lucid dreams. They said lucid dreaming is good for everything,but I don't know if we experience more lucid dreams means we can not relax our body or not. the text book didn't tell us winch part of sleep dose lucid dream formed. Lucid dreaming must has disadvantages,Another problem i think is that if people know how to have more lucid dreaming, will they be addicted to that?

http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html

Narcolepsy is a serious disorder in which people may randomly fall into a deep sleep, right into the REM stage of sleep in fact. This sleep may last a few minutes or a couple of hours and, often, vivid hallucinations occur. It is usually brought on by strong emotions and orexin plays a strong role in narcolepsy. Victims of narcolepsy usually experience cataplexy, or the loss of muscle tone, before they fall into their deep sleeps.
Recent studies have shown a tie between the H1N1 vaccines that carry pandemrix and increased chance of narcolepsy, especially in Finland. Children between 4 and 12 who have received the vaccine are 13 times more likely to develop narcolepsy. Pandemrix is used primarily to prevent swine flu and, for the most part, its positive side effects out weigh the negative ones. The exact effects of pandemrix on narcolepsy are not completely understood, currently. Right now, we know that pandemrix is an immunologic adjuvant, meaning that it increases the immune systems response to vaccines.
Tests are currently being done to see how pandemrix effects narcolepsy but they are hard to recreate since people will not be involved in them, so past patients is the most effective way to study this. However, this data will probably not produce an accurate cause and effect relationship. Whether or not pandemrix causes an increase in narcolepsy is unclear as well. Other parts of the H1N1 vaccine might be the causes but only tests and scientific thinking will tell. In summary, we do not know if we can rule out other possible hypothesis, how replicable this experiment would be and if pandemrix actually causes narcolepsy directly or if it triggers something that brings on narcolepsy. Only time will tell what effect pandemrix has on narcolepsy but it is currently unclear and intriguing.

http://www.thl.fi/en_US/web/en/pressrelease?id=26352

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-15130951

I found the Ames Illusion fascinating so I decided to look into it more. The Ames Illusion is an optical illusion in which a room has a diagonal wall opposite of a peephole. This make it seems as though one person is a lot taller than the other, assuming they are standing on opposite ends of the back wall, when looking through the peephole. This trick is used a lot by moviemakers to make one person seem like they are a giant even though they are not. The Lord of the Rings used this tactic to make Frodo and Sam appear to be very short, for example. It is a pretty cool illusion. I found the Oatmeal commercial interesting because of how actors change sizes as the move and it really shows how the Ames Illusion works. It is entirely possible that this is completely unreal but I doubt that. It is interesting that the ceiling and floor seem to get closer together as the people get bigger. I wonder if the floor is slanted? It could be slanted or the floor and ceiling could be the same distance away from each other and it just seems like the floor is slanted. It is hard to rule our rival hypotheses because I have never conducted the experiment. In other videos I have seen of the Ames Room Illusion, the floor also seems to be slanted. However, from research on how to build an Ames Room, I found out that the floor and ceiling are not slanted. Based on the replicability of the illusion; my guess is that floor seems slanted because the back wall is diagonal. Most importantly, the floor seeming slanted because of the diagonal is bested represented by Occam's Razor because it seems too complicated for the floor to be slanted itself.

http://www.moillusions.com/2007/03/ames-room-video-illusion.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=Q45diWsVbHY

Get fit quick advertising schemes are always entertaining, especially the ones that promise huge results. It is hard to believe that you could "Melt inches off your waistline" just by rocking back and forth on a chair or lose that gut by electrically zapping your abs. Scams like these are the perfect example of pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is "science" that isnt supported or researched using the scientific method. Extraordinary claims are usually a dead giveaway, as is the lack of independent lab testing or testing at all. In my time working retail, I saw a lot of products claiming to change your life in a few easy sessions. One product that moved off the shelves really fast was a device that promised to eliminate extra chins by essentially having you do chin presses against a spring. While this may work, if you continue to eat unhealthily, you wont lose those chins. Individuals are extremely willing to buy into easy fixes for small (or large) problems without doing any real research on the topic. For this reason, pseudoscience equals money, and therefore continues to exist. A very popular recent exercise device is the ShakeWeight. It promises amazing results by using it six minutes per day for an undefined period of time. This could be a week, a month, or ten years. It also claims to have been scientifically proven, but provides no link to research or any lab names beyond the company that holds the patent for it. https://www.shakeweight.com/ The principle of extraordinary claims can be applied with this scenario. No evidence is provided besides a couple user testimonies and a demonstrative video. In small print at the bottom of the page, the site states that the ShakeWeight also comes with an exercise program. In order to attain the results you desire, proper diet and exercise are necessities. So, what real purpose does the ShakeWeight serve if diet and exercise would do the job just fine? Why is there no legitimate research posted on their website? How come the only button on the site is to purchase it? The simple answer: its a scam.

One topic I found interesting in psychology up to this point was hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is defined as the tendency to overestimate how well we could have forecast known outcomes. One clear example of hindsight bias is the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. These attacks were conducted by the use of hijacked airplanes being crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Immediately after the attacks, many politicians claimed that 9/11 could have been prevented. Really? No one could have foreseen the events of that day. Some have argued that the Gore Commission, which attempted to increase airline security, predicted these events. The fact is that even the Vice President, who has access to some of our country's most secure information sources, never saw 9/11 coming. At best, this commission fell victim to lobbying and numerous campaign contributions in the 2000 elections. As a result, many of the increased security initiatives the Gore Commission envisioned never came to be. Even if they had, who knows what would have happened? Many people become angered over the fact that through lobbying and monetary contributions, the airlines essentially influenced the government to not push through stricter security measures. In a capitalistic society, however, it is natural for the airlines to not want to lose money as a result of more extensive security processes such as screening and baggage matching. September 11 is arguably the most infamous event of the twenty first century. It also brought about in a new type of global warfare, based on ideals, rather then more traditional things like natural resources or land acquisition. An event this horrific and influential could never have been predicted.

In National Football League, there is one superstition that has many players puzzled. The superstition goes, if you become the player who is chosen to be on the cover of the Madden NFL video game, you will soon be cursed and unable to play at the same level ever again. The evidence is clear. After Eddie George appeared on the 2001 cover, the Tennessee Titans lost in the 2001 playoffs and George never averaged 3.3 yards per carry for the rest of his career. Another case that hits close to home is that of former Minnesota Quarterback Daunte Culpepper. In 2000, Culpepper led the Vikings to the playoffs, but after appearing on the Madden 2002 cover, he threw 23 interceptions and broke the record for most fumbles in a season as the Vikings slumped to 5-11. There are several other cases of the "Madden Curse", but there are also times when the curse doesn't seem to occur. Many athletes have made the cover and continued to have great careers. So the question is, are fans experiencing belief perseverance and ignoring the cases where players weren't affected? Or is there an actual Madden curse and these players will soon see their fate? I believe there to be an illusory correlation in the case of the Madden curse. There is no possible way that just because your picture graces the cover of a video game your athletic performance will suffer. The Madden cover should not be seen as a curse, but as a sign of your talent and hard work.

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Madden%20Curse
http://www.sentier.us.com/blog/entry/busting-the-myth-of-the-madden-curse.html

The human brain is complex. Along with performing millions of mundane acts, it composes concertos, issues manifestos and comes up with elegant solutions to equations. It's the wellspring of all human feelings, behaviors, and experiences as well as the repository of memory and self-awareness. Over the past decade individuals believing it to be fact have spread the "10 percent myth" unconsciously. Their sense of belief perseverance has allowed the myth to spread through word of mouth and even a few media creations! This a great example of an extraordinary claim that has little to no evidence supporting it and for this type of claim to be valid, it requires more rigorous evidence than a less remarkable claim. When thinking about this claim we must think to ourselves whether this claim runs counter to many things we know already and, since this does, we can classify it as an extraordinary claim. To further support my position about this claim, there has been a vast array of experiments and techniques that allow us to see that we truly use more than 10% of our brain. For example, there are brain imaging research techniques such as PET scans, which we learned about in class, which yield a picture of neural activity throughout the different regions of the brain and they clearly show that the majority of the brain does not lie in a dormant state. Many individuals may believe this claim to be true because it is constantly showing up in social media in many advertisements, and additionally the brain is a very complex part of the human body with much of the information about it being unknown by the typical American citizen. Therefore, the concept of many of the large parts of the brain remaining unused, and subsequently being "activated" for conscious use could seem believable for many people and lead to the popularity of this myth. The truth is that this myth has been refuted by many experiments and it "so wrong it is almost laughable" says neurologist Barry Gordon at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Extraordinary claims surface each day, but we most use critical thinking strategies and approach them in the correct manner.

Radford, Ben. "The Ten Percent Myth." A Center for Inquiry Affiliate. Volume 23.2/ April 1999. 9 October 2011.

A simple mistake can make a really big difference. An example of such mistake can be described as inattentional blindness. This happens when people are so "blinded" from focusing on something that they forget to pay attention to something else that should be so apparent to the eyes. Their focus takes them away from the obvious. This phenomenon is demonstrated in the video, " The Selective Attention Test" by Simons and Chabris that we watched in lecture. This concept of the role of attention in people is important because it shows us how easily we are able to miss critical information from the way we perceive the situation. One situation that his could be very dangerous in is when people are talking on the phone and/or talking the phone while driving. When people are focused on their phone, they lose their sense of driving safely and are more likely to get into an accident. Knowing that this kind of phenomenon can happen lets us know that we can prevent it. We need to take a closer look at not just one thing, but everything around it also. This happens to me all the time, because I am very unobservant. And I finally found out that it is common, so it doesn't make me think that I am the only forgetful person.

Sleep paralysis isnt very well known, however it is a legitimate sleep disorder. I know a few people, including myself who have experienced it, and it is not a pleasant disorder. In sleep paralysis, you lay completely awake, but unable to move or use your body in any way. These symptoms can vary in widely in duration, but usually lasts a few minutes. In the instance where I experienced it, I could not move, I was essentially trapped within my mind. This disorder can be caused by many things, including stress, lack of sleep, and inactivity.

As highlighted in the prompt, Sleep Paralysis (also called Hypnopompic paralysis) may be a simple explanation for some pretty bizarre occurrences. People report being abducted by aliens or having horrifying experiences and hallucinations. By using the principle of Occams Razor, we can debunk a lot of these stories. Research has proven that during sleep paralysis, hallucination can, and often does occur. Some individuals understandably would not be able to tell the difference between reality and these hallucinations, because while they are happening, they seem completely real. In my experience, I never had hallucinations, but I can see how terrifying and lucid they would appear to be. This phenomenon is a great example of how a crazy occurrence can have a very simple explanation.

http://www.trueghosttales.com/paranormal/sleep-paralysis-hallucinations/

Sources of facts: http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html
http://www.sleepdisordersguide.com/sleep-paralysis.html

Does someone you know snore a lot? Though throwing a pillow at them or slapping them in the face might quiet them for a little bit, they will eventually start again (hopefully you fall asleep before that happens). This night might not be a case of just snoring, it could be sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a disorder caused by a blockage of the airway during sleep, resulting in daytime fatigue.
I have first-hand experience of this. My dad has sleep apnea and it affects more than just him. When I'm with him, there is no chance of falling asleep. Whenever my family used to go camping or stayed in a hotel room, I had to try to fall asleep right away or else I would be up all night. It was terrible. Here's an example of sleep apnea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etZ5uHHIyRM. Can you imagine trying to sleep during this? It sounds like a bear sleeping. My dad finally got diagnosed a few years ago so now it isn't so bad. Sleep apnea affects 2-20% of the general population. It is characterized by instances of low breathing during sleep that can last from a few seconds to minutes, and may occur 5 to 30 times or more an hour. This is very dangerous because your body still needs oxygen while you sleep, and if your body doesn't get necessary oxygen, it can be negatively affected.
Weight is often associated with sleep apnea, so doctors typically recommend weight loss as a first treatment, my dad could use that. Now my dad sleeps with a face mask that blows air into his nasal passages. My mom says he sounds like she's sleeping next to Darth Vader. I strongly suggest keeping your weight down so not only you sleep well and healthy, but so you don't have to wear a mask sleeping next to your partner.

In the Lillenfield text, I found multiple parts of the Chapter 5 talking about consciousness very attention-grabbing, especially the part on sleepwalking. Sleepwalking is as plain as its name--walking while fully asleep. I find it truly remarkable and almost scary that humans are able to do things that they normally do while fully conscious when they are asleep. Apparently, almost anything can be done while sleepwalking--eating, cooking, driving, using a computer, etc.

When I was younger, I used to sleepwalk a lot. I would fall asleep in my bed and, according to my parents, sometime during the night, I would walk to the kitchen, or go to the back door of the house and try to unlock it, or I would wake up somewhere in one of my brother's rooms, or they would see me wander aimlessly throughout the house with my eyes closed. When I first heard these stories, I was shocked and embarrassed, and quite frankly, surprised when I woke up disoriented somewhere in my living room, for example. However, I have grown out of sleepwalking and now look back and laugh at my previous nighttime activities.

One part of the text that really intrigued me was reading about how a man killed his mother-in-law with a tire iron from a car in the middle of the night and was not accused of murder. I cannot believe that he was deemed not responsible for his behavior just because he said that he was asleep. I bet he was extremely relieved that he was let off the hook, but I feel like perhaps he had thought of killing his mother-in-law subconsciously while he was awake one day and then realized that he hated her and just never told anyone, and his subconscious just took care of his worries while he was unconscious. Is it possible that actions done while sleepwalking reflect our wants during consciousness? Unfortunately, it appears as though homicidal sleepwalking does not always work in favor of the killer, especially if they don't really hate the person they are killing, such as Brian Thomas in this article. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6920860.ece

The most interesting thing to me from the past two weeks was the subject of attention, more specifically inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness is the failure to perceive things that are in plain sight. It is caused by an absence of attention to the unseen object. This proves that without attention we are blind. I think inattentional blindness can be ever more specific to just refer to the failure to see unexpected objects. Of course this can be best demonstrated by the invisible gorilla test first done by Daniel Simons.
Inattentional blindness is important because it proves we have selective attention, meaning it allows us to focus on important things going on around us without distraction from irrelevant events or objects. Of course there is a drawback to our inattentional blindness. For example, many automobile accident reports report drivers saying they "looked but failed to see" the other vehicle. Many collisions between cars and motorcycles involve cars turning in front of an oncoming motorcycle, with the car driver not seeing the motorcyclist. Given that motorcycles are less common that cars, inattentional blindness is likely to be the cause of the accident because the car driver is expecting to see another car when they look instead of a motorcycle. This also applies to things like talking on cellphones. While talking on a cellphone people are less likely to detect objects and events. It is also used in many magic shows. The audience focuses on something while the actual manipulation of the trick is being done away from the distraction.

While reading the Lilienfeld textbook, one of the concepts in the consciousness chapter that really interested me was sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is a sensation that happens either right after falling asleep or right before waking up where the body is unable to move, but the mind is still aware. Often it is accompanied with pressure on the chest and auditory and visual hallucinations.

Here is a video found on youtube that explores further into what sleep paralysis is and why it happens more in depth than what the textbook does, as well as the various experiences people have with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCSqT5nZ9n4

What I found most interesting about it though was not the disorder itself, but the misconceptions surrounding it are much more fascinating. Many people are not aware that this is a sleep disorder and that it is fairly common. There is a lot of folklore attached to it, such as in Pakistan, where it is believed evil jinns or demons take over one's body. Today, people who unknowingly suffer from sleep paralysis often attribute the signs to alien abduction, as described in the text, or as some other kind of paranormal activity. It can especially seem like a haunting to someone who experiences sleep paralysis multiple times.

I think that it is important for the general public to understand what sleep paralysis is and what the symptoms are in order to help rule out rival hypotheses for some extraordinary claims. When looking into accounts of paranormal activity in personal homes, it seems that many of the stories can be attributed to sleep paralysis. What's unfortunate is that these people cannot recognize what is happening to them and make it out to be an even scarier situation than what it already is. I have never experienced sleep paralysis, but I am fortunate enough to know what it is and what the symptoms are to be able to recognize it and not attribute it to something extraordinary

Since the paranormal has always been somewhat of an interest to me, it makes me wonder what other claims could possibly be disproved through other psychological means. While some of it may truly be extraordinary, it is interesting to think about what percentage of it could be caused solely by our minds.

Extransensory perception, or ESP, is the process of perceiving events outside of the known channels of sensation, such as seeing, hearing, and touch. Is it possible to predict the future? Is it possible to read someone's mind? Is it possible to detect the presence of a person or object that is hidden from view or perhaps invisible to the human eye? These are the questions that rage in the widely debated subject of ESP.

The skeptic's view of things is that there is no hard evidence for the existence of ESP, no scientific proof or data to back it up. There are many reasons why so many scientists deny the existence of ESP, such as the fact that if an experiment was done that showed proof of ESP, the results were a fluke, or that it was simply a faulty experiment. Say there is a subect sitting at a table with cards in front of them, and the experimenter watches from beyond to see if they pick the correct card, thus demonstrating ESP. Skeptics would say that the subject could easily pick up on the experimenter's body language, and would thus be able to tell which card to pick. Another large problem with ESP is that it is unreplicable. ESP, if it existed, would be different with different people, and there is no real way to measure it for the purposes of collecting data.

As for the believers, they find fault witht he implication that providing a logical explanation for apparent psychic phenomena disproves the existence of ESP. Even the believers know that many psychic demonstrations are fraudulent, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

In the end, the only sure conclusion that we can come to is that the existence of ESP is uncertain. Some would say that just because something doesn't make sense, or we don't know how it works, that doesn't mean we can just rule it out as a possibility.

Extrasensory Perception (ESP) is perceiving something outside the known channels of sensation (sight, hearing, taste, touch, and balance). One highly debated topic in our society is whether or not we as humans can feel the presence figures of those who have passed away. Many people believe that ghosts are real, but very few have reported seeing something of the paranormal. So is this phenomenon just people's imagination or real examples of ESP? I have had one personal experience that has made me a believer, but what about those who haven't had this opportunity? Here is an article showing the scientific side of perceiving paranormal activity.

http://www.newsmonster.co.uk/paranormal-unexplained/have-scientists-found-proof-that-ghosts-exist.html

I guess the only true way to believe is to see for yourself.

Rapid eye movement sleep is where the eyes of the person sleeping dart around, it's the last stage of sleep. It takes a person close to thirty minutes to enter REM, over the course of the night a person will enter and leave this stage of sleep multiple times. Increased blood pressure and blood pressure are associated with this stage of sleep. REM is also associated with deep vivid dreams. When a person sleeps poorly for a night or more they will enter into deeper REM sleep and have more intense dreams.
REM is the most important part of our sleep. It produces our most intense and vivid dreams. REM is also important as it allows people to get a good night's sleep. Without REM humans may not be able to survive.
A recent article drew my attention to REM and its role in dreaming. The article was about the affects prescription drugs have on dreaming. When people start a new drug or suddenly stop taking a drug they can have terrible nightmares. Researchers believe that these nightmares occur because the drugs interfere with REM. Medications that affect neurotransmitters seem to have the largest effects on REM. These drugs include antidepressants, antihistamines. Researchers can't conclude how large of an impact prescription drugs have on dreams due to the fact that so many people have nightmares so proving cause and effect is difficult. Researchers also can't explain why these drugs bring on nightmares instead of peaceful dreams. Disturbed REM may not only be caused by drugs, it can be an early sign of epilepsy, dementia, and Parkinson's disease.

Article Link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204524604576608800923793190.html?KEYWORDS=the+next+nightmare

Having insomnia for nearly 5 years, I know how tempting it can be to take sleeping pills. However, even though they are an easy way to fall asleep at night, I found them to harm my natural ability to sleep. At first, sleeping pills were a great way to fall asleep at night. I would pop one in my mouth and before I knew it, I was out cold. Soon though, I became dependent on the tiny pill, and had trouble fully waking up in the morning and would feel groggy throughout the day. Shortly after that, I quit taking the pill. This resulted in me not being able to sleep nearly at all! According to page 172 of the psychology textbook, this is known as rebound insomnia. Rebound insomnia occurs after longstanding use of sleeping pills, which results in dependency and difficulty to sleep once the person quits taking the medication.
On top of that little problem, I would wake up in the morning feeling cramped, like I slept on the wrong side of the bed. Apparently, having not so good sleep from Ambien is a common side effect, on top of what seems like a million others, which you can check out on http://sideeffectz.com/ambiensideeffects/. Long story short, I tossed the pills and adopted other ways of falling asleep. I quit drinking caffeine, took a shower before sleep, and would go through a nightly rhythm letting my body get ready for sleep. What I came to find, ironically, was that sleeping pills hurt my ability to sleep, rather than help.

OCD- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

OCD is an anxiety disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts, feelings, ideas, sensations, or behaviors that make them feel driven to do something.
Often the person will carry out the actions to relieve the extreme anxiety of these obsessions, but this only provides temporary relief.

OCD is shown to be more common than once thought.
Most people who develop the disease show symptoms by the age of 30.

There are several hypothesis about the cause of OCD but none have been confirmed. Some studies have looked at head injuries or infections, while others have looked at brain abnormalities.
Also 20% of people with OCD have ticks which could mean a link between OCD and Tourette's syndrome but it is unclear.

The symptoms of OCD are of the following:

Obsessions and/or compulsions that are not due to medical illness or drug use.
Obsessions and/or compulsions that cause major distress or interfere with everyday life.

The obsessions and compulsions span a wide range of possibilities.
Also the person is aware the obsessions and compulsions are unhealthy.

Alcohol: Friend or Foe?

In our society, it is impossible to go anywhere without being confronted with the option to consume alcohol: sporting events, restaurants, groceries store...even the college dorms! It is such an important topic today because of the huge number of people drinking alcohol. According to our textbook, two-thirds of adult men in America report using alcohol in the past month and even 39% of children under the age of 14 have reported they've had alcohol at least once in their lifetime.

Many people like to go out, have a few drinks and "party." What many people don't realize is that alcohol is actually a depressant, not a stimulant. Yes, a small amount of alcohol can lead to feelings of relaxation and even increased activity, but after the blood alcohol level reaches a certain point (0.05-0.10) the brain begins to slow, impairing motor skills and thinking.

Even though many people may look at alcohol and immediately think of partying and having a good time, the facts are, when used irresponsibly, alcohol consumption can be dangerous. According to the Los Angeles Times, the number of drunk drivers and fatalities from drunk driving incidents should result in more precautions from the U.S. governments such as sobriety checkpoints or alcohol taxes. Also, according to a survey conducted by the Center of Disease Control, the Midwest has the highest number of drunk drivers and binge drinkers. This means, here in Minnesota and our neighbors to the east, Wisconsin, there are many people driving drunk which puts everyone on the roads at risk.

When thinking of the issues of alcohol in society, I begin to think how those who drive drunk often get off with merely a ticket and an alcohol class, but is this enough??? If drunk driving is the leading death of teenagers (MAAD.org/statistics), why isn't more being done to punish and to stop drunk drivers??
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/04/news/la-heb-drunk-driving-down-20111004

Recently, I read an article claiming that canola oil is significantly more dangerous than other types of cooking oil, and is extremely toxic. The article claimed that canola oil causes blindness, respiratory diseases, a weakening of the immune system, emphysema, and many other ailments, including mad cow disease in animals. Additionally, the author asserts that canola oil depletes a person's life force and flow of energy. To justify these claims, they state that this oil was used to make mustard gas in World War I, and that canola oil led to significant health problems for rats, when they added the oil to the rat's diet.
Since the overall claims made are quite expansive and substantial, extraordinary evidence must be provided. However, most of the evidence the author uses is not backed with any validity or justification for why his ideas are true. One of the only exceptions to this is the test with the rats. While the rats did show a build-up of fat and other negative health conditions, there was no control group in the experiment. Also, a simpler explanation for these results would be that adding oil to a rat's diet produced this result, as opposed to it being a result of toxins specifically in canola oil. Other researchers later provided evidence that any type of cooking oil would result in these effects, thus suggesting that this rival hypothesis is more likely. Additionally, the assertion that it inhibits a person's energy flow is not falsifiable, and canola oil is simply not used to make mustard gas.
When analyzed using scientific skepticism and the six principles of scientific thinking, it can be concluded that this article is largely pseudoscience. This is further supported by the author's stated aversion to using modern scientific methods when making this claim.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.whale.to/m/canola.html

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blcanola.htm

Recently, we learnt the visual system in the sensation and perception chapter. One concept I found very interesting is the dilation of the pupil when we were learning the structures of the eye. We see sclera, iris, and pupil when we look someone in the eye. The sclera is the white of the eye, the iris is the color part of the eye, and the pupil is the circular hole. Light enters our eyes through pupils so that they will close or dilate as a reflex response to light and other things.

The dilation of the pupil can make one person more attractive due to psychological causes. You may find your girlfriend prettier when you are walking out of the movie theater because our eyes respond with papillary reflex from a darker place to a brighter place and pupils dilate. Moreover, in the Lilienfeld text, researches show that men and women tend to find the faces of each other with larger pupils more attractive. That explains why there is always a trend of large pupils. Models in magazine and ads are so appealing because photographers enlarge their pupils. Today, we can even make our pupil dilate by wearing cosmetic contact lenses or Circle contact lens. A Cosmetic contact lens is designed to change the appearance of the eye. We usually see actors wearing them in horror film and zombie movies. They enlarge pupils but in kind of scary ways. A Circle contact lens enlarges the pupil and the iris that makes eyes attractive but looks more natural.

View image

Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome occurs when a baby is born addicted to a drug that was taken by the mother during or throughout the pregnancy. The newborn shows signs of going through withdrawal symptoms because the drug is no longer present in their system. There are serious complications that can arise from drug abuse of the mother. These include birth defects, low birth weight, premature birth, small head circumference, or worse sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) (http://drugster.info/ail/pathography/708/ ). I cannot imagine the amounts of pain and suffering these babies have to endure while being only days old. While most people only hear about the effects of drugs on an adult, they are much more serious for a newborn. For instance, these babies suffer from tremors, vomiting, rapid breathing, sweating, sleep problems, poor feeding, diarrhea, seizures, and hyperactive reflexes which are explained in the web article. This topic is important to me because although drugs are harmful to adults, it can be passed to their children which can lead to the death of the child. This raises serious social concerns. I am concerned for the infant's health but I am also concerned for the mother. I hope that this disease will soon be unheard of although doctors have said that the occurrences are rising (website). The mothers who are addicted to drugs should have proper prenatal care and should motor the baby's health. However, this would happen in only the ideal world. Most people who are addicted to drugs don't have access to this kind of health care. I believe that as a society, we should help these mothers out in order to stop NAS so that future generations aren't affected by the poor decisions made today by their mothers or fathers. Although this health care comes at a price, it costs taxpayers $1,500 a day to care for one baby with NAS (according to Drug Withdrawal Syndrome in Newborns "Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome" found on the website http://www.sanantonio.gov/health/pdf/Drug%20Withdrawal%20Syndrome%20In%20Newborn%20IV.pdf which was found by them Texas Hospital Inpatient Discharge Public Use Data File Texas Health Care Information Council, Austin, Texas. June 30, 2008). This same website also speaks of the increased risks for domestic abuse found in the homes of the child affected by NAS. This social concern is serious to the country's future generations and needs to be addressed by those who can help.

Déjà vu. This is a phenomenon that has reportedly been experienced by many, 70 percent of the population approximately, but no one knows exactly what it is they are experiencing or why they are experiencing it. Is it possible that our brain remembers specific events or situations that we think we are just experiencing for the first time? Many people will report the feeling of experiencing a situation where they are visiting a place or having a conversation with someone for what they believe is the first time, but their brain, or mind, tells them otherwise.

Why does this happen? You could be taking a trip to a foreign country for the first time in your life, but you get a feeling like you have been there before. How does your brain remember the scenery if it hasn't seen it before? Scientists still aren't exactly sure why this experience occurs in humans, but they have some theories as to why it does. Scientists believe that déjà vu is directly related to the temporal-lobe epilepsy and déjà vu has reportedly been occurring before a temporal-lobe seizure. Déjà vu occurs in many people without this condition, so some psychoanalysis contributes déjà vu to fantasies or wishful fulfillment. Others believe that it is a mismatch in the brain where it confuses the past from the present. There are still many theories as to why déjà vu occurs. Many things may be correlated as to why déjà vu occurs, but because it is such a complex occurrence in our minds, it is hard to tell what truly causes this confusing experience.

I found some information on :http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/question657.htm

For the longest time, many people believed that people that were born with a learning disability were helpless and could never reach a 'normal' learning level. A woman named Barbara Arrowsmith Young had many different learning disabilities as a child. While growing up, she had to spend much longer than other students just to learn the basics and barely pass class. At the time there was no help for people in Barbara's situation. Eventually Barbara came across some studies done by a Russian scientist that seemed to prove that the brain could rebuild itself to do the tasks that were currently hindered by learning disabled people. Barbara studied his work and created a series of exercises to train her brain to enhance that parts that had been disabled for her entire life. After many months of hard work, Barbara was able to basically rebuild her brain and eliminate her 'learning disabilities.' Barbara went on to start a school that focused on helping children over come their learning disabilities. This link leads to the website of the school and a video that explains some of the exercises to help the kids to learn and also how they intend to help them, http://www.arrowsmithschool.org/video-broadband.htm. This helps to show how plastic the brain is and how neurons that fire together wire together and how the brain is able to rebuild itself with enough work. It really shows how powerful the brain is and a small amount of the capabilities of the brain that are still misunderstood.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/emotions/faceperception2.shtml

On Saturday, I participated in the long-awaited Zombie Pub Crawl in Minneapolis and St. Paul. My friends and I spent hours creating "wounds," applying fake blood, ripping clothing, and shadowing our eyes to appear as close to the real thing as possible. We even discussed how hilarious it would be if people flirted and exchanged numbers with each other dressed as zombies. However, as the night progressed, we realized that flirting still occurred amidst this ugly event. Cat-calls were a common occurrence and we witnessed several heated make-out sessions. This raised a silly question: "What's blood got to do with it?" Do the costumes, makeup, and fake blood really make a difference in how attractive people find each other?
While searching the internet, I found this article about "Facial Prejudice," which presents the relationship between certain facial features and attraction. Professor David Perrett of the University of St Andrew has been studying this relationship by digitally manipulating faces and asking research participants to rate the faces' levels of extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and neuroticism. According to this study, the more "feminine" a face looks, the more agreeable they seem. The article continues by discussing that "our perceptions of agreeableness exactly mirror the action of the male sex hormone testosterone. Several studies have shown that testosterone tends to make men more confrontational and anti-social." Based on studies such as these, it now makes more sense to me as to why--despite all of the blood and makeup--flirting was still a common occurrence during the Zombie Pub Crawl.

Recently, there has been much debate about the effects of Marijuana. Many people claim that it has positive effects on people who are in pain. According to an article in Time Magazine, no one has ever died from Marijuana overdose, as it would take a 160lbs person 900 joints before reaching a lethal dose. Marijuana is classified as a Psychedelic, because it "produces dramatic alterations in perception, mood and thought." Although not lethal, there are tales of the numerous side effects of usage, such as addiction, stupidity and cancer. So if Marijuana can be potentially harmful to healthy people, is it really beneficial for sick people?

Joycelyn Elders, MD, former US Surgeon General, wrote the following in a Mar. 26, 2004 article titled "Myths About Medical Marijuana," published in the Providence Journal:
"The evidence is overwhelming that marijuana can relieve certain types of pain, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms caused by such illnesses as multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS -- or by the harsh drugs sometimes used to treat them. And it can do so with remarkable safety. Indeed, marijuana is less toxic than many of the drugs that physicians prescribe every day."

What Joycelyn Elders said can be summarized as what the pro-Marijuana legalization parties think in general. However in this, they exhibit cases of confirmation bias, choosing to ignore all the potential side effects of marijuana and pushing for legalization. The problem with the swift push for legalization is that there still is not enough evidence to support the claim that Marijuana is "good for you." So while marijuana might indeed help with pain, the theory that medical marijuana is good for you is still not fully backed up by facts.

http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001325
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003570-2,00.html

Recently, in the chapter about Consciousness, there was a section about drug abuse. One of the highlights of this section was evaluating the question of whether or not there is such thing as an "addictive personality". Scientists have begun to wonder if this plays a role in substance abuse. Having an addictive personality is essentially being a person who gets addicted to things (not just drug related substances) easily. Some research shows that there is no such thing as having the personality profile of an addictive person. Other researchers find that there are some personality traits that tend to lead to drug and alcohol abuse.
This is a fascinating concept to consider. If researchers could find out if this is true or not, it would be easier for people to predetermine the possibility of them abusing substances. This could lower the alcoholism rate, if people were smart enough to realize that their addictive personalities could lead to alcohol dependence. I know that personally, I seem to have an addictive personality. I'm not saying that I get addicted to substances, rather, I get addicted to ideas as well as food. There are times in my life where I have to have certain foods everyday, at times, even multiple times a day. Also, I will get an idea in my head, and it will never go away. Or if it does, it is after a long time. Things such as these make me worry about myself and my seemingly addictive personality. Here is a video of a woman who is addicted to eating chalk. The question is- is this chalk addiction due to an addictive personality? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TN1_EgYdfU
This concept of an addictive personality brings up a lot of questions. It makes me wonder if we could use this knowledge of people having an addictive personality to prevent the possibility of substance abuses.

Ever been asked a question and the answer is on the tip of your tongue but you can't say what's on your mind? Then you shut your eyes and all of a sudden you brain flashes images that help you remember the answer you want to give. This article talks about a study that explains why you can suddenly remember the answer once you take your sight out of the equation.
A huge part of your brain is constantly working because it helps control your senses. So when you try to answer a tough question while your eyes are focusing on something, your brain can't answer the question because it is distracted by what you are looking at. But if you have your eyes shut or you focus on something simple like the sky, your brain can focus on the question because it doesn't need to focus on the visual aspect.
The study wanted to show that if you focus on just thinking about answering the question then you are more likely to come up with the answer you are looking for. The study had four different groups of people watch an 8-min movie clip and then answer questions about the video. The first group stared at a blank computer screen while answering the questions. The second group had their eyes closed while answering the questions. The third group had random pictures flashed at them while they answered questions and the fourth group had a different language speaking at them while they tried to answer questions. They two groups that had no distractions answered the questions better then the groups that had the distractions. The reason behind this study was to prove to that if you take out one of your senses you can focus more than if all five of your senses are working.
So the next time you are sitting there staring off into space while answering a question, tell your friend to give you some time because the answer IS coming to you!

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201110/why-do-you-close-your-eyes-remember

I chose to write a blog on the "BBC Horizon-The Secret You" video, but I am focusing on the question "Who is in charge of your decisions, your conscious self or ????". Researchers know the interactivity of the brain and our neurons are what help us be aware of our surroundings, but many researchers seem to be very skeptical on whether it is ourselves who are conscious or if it is our neurons that are conscious. But they still are not certain if there is even a difference!
A man, by the name of Marcus Du Sautoy, had volunteered to be experimented on to find out what is actually going on with our conscious. He was put into a fMRI scanner that scanned his brain. During the scanning the researcher would play a beep on one side of the head phones and Marcus had to press the corresponding button, with his finger, whether the sound was on the left side or the right side. After the experiment was over, the results showed that his brain activity was able to detect what button he was going to push, 6 seconds before he even pushed it! Parts of the brain reacted, before the experimenter even made up his mind, depending on whether Marcus was going to push the left button or the right button. The experiments reveal that our consciousness is, in fact, our actual brain activity! The two are known to work together and the video referred to our consciousness as being an aspect to our brain activity.
I found this video very interesting, shocking, and intriguing! I had no idea what the theory may have been behind our consciousness, but after watching this video I think I would have to agree with them. It seemed to make sense now, and their evidence was very valid and reliable. I kind of think a part of our brain makes the decision, then the decision is sent to the part of our brain that 'acts' on this decision. This may be why the researchers were able to tell what was going to happen 6 seconds before an action actually took place.

By blog was from the 47:53 minute mark until the end
http://youtu.be/8Biv_8xjj8E

Selective attention allows us to focus in on what we want focus on and drown out what we do not. The part of the brian controlling Selective attention is the reticular activating system, which then activates regions of the cerebral cortex during selective attention. An important psychologist dealing with selective attention was Donald Broadbent. His filter theory of attention see attention as a bottleneck through which information is passed. This filter allows us to pay attention to what we want and ignore what we don't. To prove his theory he used dichotic listening where one message would be delivered to the left ear and a separate message would be delivered to the right ear. The subjects would be told to ignore one message. when asked about the ignored message they had little to no knowledge of the message. Anne Treidman replicated his finding by using shadowing. Only the subjects in her tests would sometime mix the two messages together if it made logical sense. Also another important part of selective attention is the cocktail party effect, which is our ability to pick up important messages in a conversation that doesn't involve us. I know I use selective attention almost every day, whether it be while I'm doing homework and the television is or when two people are talking and I only want to hear one conversation. I find the cocktail party effect working all the time, like when I hear my name I start to pay attention to where i heard it. The only question I have is how much of the ignored part of our selective attention is being processed?

We have all heard of the blockbuster hit, Inception. But what happens when what occurs in films becomes true? Lucid dreams are what Leonardo Dicaprio and Ellen Page strive to master during Inception. Lucid dreams are also a part of some people's reality. According to Lilenfeld's text, about one-fifth of American society has a lucid dream at least once a month. Lucid dreaming is the experience of becoming aware that one is dreaming. It has been speculated that being able to control your dreams for the better will enable someone to make their psychological issues less severe. This has not been proven because it is difficult to directly link the lucid dream with the psychological betterment. If someone suffers constant nightmares, it might be helpful to learn how to lucid dream so they can begin controlling their dreams and not have any nightmares. There are a couple of types of lucid dreaming; one where during sleep, the person realizes that they are dreaming. The other form of lucid dreaming occurs when people focus on lucid dreaming and seemingly skip from consciousness directly to dreaming without being aware of it. Some inquiries that I have about lucid dreaming are whether or not it is something that we can really control or if it's just a part of people's dreaming. Because it is so difficult to do experiments with lucid dreams, some of the information that has been reported may be skewed by the people who reportedly have them. The different forms of lucid dreaming are difficult to attribute as credible, but we know that lucid dreaming is something that happens, nonetheless. Lucid dreams have and will continue to interest scientist's interests, just as it has for the band Franz Ferdinand. In their song they sing,
"I'm living in a short wave stream tonight
Lucid dreams
I'm living on lucid dreams.
Now there is just plain mystery"
Lucid dreams will continue to fascinate us for years to come.
The song can be heard at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__p_MbzZ6LE

You can find the original article here. I agree with the initial analysis of the article; however, another point worth noting is the author's inability to define the difference between male and female results. All that was said was "9 out of 10 people" lost weight thanks to their program. It says nothing for how many males or females attempted the program, nor how many of each gender experienced success. Not only that, maybe they only tested a total 10 people; this leaves a lot of room for anomalies. Potential customers should remain skeptical of advertisements such as these.

My own personal belief on weight loss is simpler; all it takes to change yourself is to force your mind to change. Let the mind adapt to a new type of lifestyle, hopefully a healthier one, and you can gradually accomplish whatever your goal may be. Weight loss is achievable with determination and patience; there are plenty of online sites with healthy recipes to update your diet as well, such as this. If the issue is a lack of physical exercise, start simple; a few crunches before every meal, a couple push-ups before bed, or a quick run for a few blocks every morning before class or work are all acceptable ways to warm your body up to the idea of exercise. Being out of shape should be treated the same way an injury; work back into health slowly. If you rush it, you may burn yourself out and cause other activities to suffer due to the exhaustion. Following the injury analogy, if you rush back into an activity with an injury still in tow, often times that injury will simply be aggravated; all this accomplishes is more frustration, more stress, and backwards progress.

Take the simplest route to achieve the greatest success; as told in Tortoise and the Hare, "Slowly does it every time!". (Tortoise and the Hare)

LSD, or acid as it is commonly called, is a powerful hallucinogenic drug that has long been rumored to make a person legally insane in some states after so many uses. The rumored doses range from 2 to 10 hits of the drug while states that supposedly declare people insane for taking these doses include Virginia and California. This rumor is based solely on anecdotes and the belief that LSD causes long term brain damage after use, which scientists have not proven. This rumor is clearly pseudoscientific as it overrelies on anecdotes and has no clear scientific evidence to support it. It also violates the scientific thinking principle of extraordinary claims. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence to support it, but this claim has no proof behind it whatsoever and is therefore not a sound conclusion. While LSD is a powerful drug, the rumor that it will make a person legally insane is completely unfounded.

This article from the New York Times talks about the studies that have been done recently looking at the relationship between doctor fatigue and medical errors.
In 2003, a nationwide 80-hour per week limit was placed on doctors in training. These reforms were prompted by the death of an 18-year-old who died after being treated by a doctor who had be working for nearly 24 hours straight. In 2004, a study that looked at the correlation between long shifts for interns and medical errors found that those working long 30-hour shifts made 36 percent more mistakes than those limited to 16-hour shifts. A much larger study was published in 2009 that found no major difference in medical errors since the 2003 reforms. The author goes on to talk about the lack of solid evidence for the 80-hour limits reducing hospital errors. He describes how there are likely multiple issues at play, including a lack of sleep that are causing doctors in training to make errors.

The article provided a good example of the ruling out rival hypotheses and replicability scientific thinking principles. By focusing on only the amount of sleep that interns were getting, the medical community neglected to think carefully about the other factors that could be leading the errors, such as lack of supervision and decreased continuity of care that would result with the 80-hour rules. The 2004 study that found a strong correlation between long shifts and errors is a good example of the replicability principle. The study was relatively small and when a larger study was published in 2009, it found no improvement with reduced working hours. This shows the importance of not immediately accepting the conclusions of a study and highlights the pertinence of sample size for scientific studies. DARSHAK SANGHAVI

Sanghavi, D. (2011, August 5) The Phantom Menace of Sleep Deprived-Doctors. The New York Times. Retrieved October 7, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/magazine/the-phantom-menace-of-sleep-deprived-doctors.html?_r=1

Have you ever been dissatisfied with your medicine? Ever had a bad reaction to a prescription? Personally, I've endured two situations in which I've suffered allergic reactions to prescription medication that left me worse off than I was to begin with. However, for those of you considering making the jump from your family physician to your local witchdoctor, I recommend sticking with modern medicine despite its occasional faults. The concept of alternative medicine has been around for a very long time and is a fantastic example of a pseudoscience. Alternative medicine is classified as any medical procedure or prescription that falls into one or more of the following categories:
-Abandoned therapies, procedures, medications, etc. due to improvement in method or technology
-Procedures that are not based on empirical, theoretical, or experimental evidence
-Untested medications or procedures
The basis of alternative medicine (and most other pseudosciences) lies in its extraordinary claims. A prime example of this is the spiritual healer. In alternative medicine, a spiritual healer is a person who claims to have supernatural abilities to communicate with some supernatural force (typically deities or forces of nature) and channel that energy into making someone feel better. Spiritual healers make these incredible claims and expect people to believe them just... cause. Furthermore, alternative medicine practitioners tend to explain that their methods cannot be quantified or proven under experimental conditions. This makes alternative medicine neither replicable nor falsifiable.
Lastly, the explanations behind alternative medicine are just downright too far-fetched and complex to believe. Many spiritual healers claim they can convince gods and spirits to cure your ailments by serving as a vessel for a supernatural force and bringing that supernatural goodness right on into your infected kidney or what have you. Other alternative medicine practitioners claim they can alter your body's natural energies by sticking a series of sharpened pins into your skin. By comparison, your annual flu shot seems a hell of a lot less complex. Hail, Occam.
In conclusion, I am all for people's decisions to seek out alternative methods of coping with certain things, whether they be emotional, mental, or physical. However, pseudoscience can be dangerous, so I recommend using caution when it comes to alternative medicine. Take the following excerpt from the International Journal for Quality in Health Care published by Oxford for example:

Have you ever been dissatisfied with your medicine? Ever had a bad reaction to a prescription? Personally, I've endured two situations in which I've suffered allergic reactions to prescription medication that left me worse off than I was to begin with. However, for those of you considering making the jump from your family physician to your local witchdoctor, I recommend sticking with modern medicine despite its occasional faults. The concept of alternative medicine has been around for a very long time and is a fantastic example of a pseudoscience. Alternative medicine is classified as any medical procedure or prescription that falls into one or more of the following categories:
-Abandoned therapies, procedures, medications, etc. due to improvement in method or technology
-Procedures that are not based on empirical, theoretical, or experimental evidence
-Untested medications or procedures
The basis of alternative medicine (and most other pseudosciences) lies in its extraordinary claims. A prime example of this is the spiritual healer. In alternative medicine, a spiritual healer is a person who claims to have supernatural abilities to communicate with some supernatural force (typically deities or forces of nature) and channel that energy into making someone feel better. Spiritual healers make these incredible claims and expect people to believe them just... cause. Furthermore, alternative medicine practitioners tend to explain that their methods cannot be quantified or proven under experimental conditions. This makes alternative medicine neither replicable nor falsifiable.
Lastly, the explanations behind alternative medicine are just downright too far-fetched and complex to believe. Many spiritual healers claim they can convince gods and spirits to cure your ailments by serving as a vessel for a supernatural force and bringing that supernatural goodness right on into your infected kidney or what have you. Other alternative medicine practitioners claim they can alter your body's natural energies by sticking a series of sharpened pins into your skin. By comparison, your annual flu shot seems a hell of a lot less complex. Hail, Occam.
In conclusion, I am all for people's decisions to seek out alternative methods of coping with certain things, whether they be emotional, mental, or physical. However, pseudoscience can be dangerous, so I recommend using caution when it comes to alternative medicine. Take the following excerpt from the International Journal for Quality in Health Care published by Oxford for example:

Substance abuse and dependence is a fairly well known topic and many studies are geared toward finding out why it is such a problem in society. First of all, there are many factors that come into play when discussing drug use and abuse. These include sociocultural influences, personality, and genetic influences. These are all probable causes of substance abuse and/or dependence. I say probable because although each of these factors have strong data showing correlations, we know from chapter 1 that correlation doesn't exactly infer causation.
Sociocultural influences as you can probably guess are the influences that both society and culture put on an individual. Each culture has their own views on how drugs, particularly alcohol, should be used. Some cultures, such as Muslims or or Mormons, strictly prohibit the consumption of alcohol. On the other hand, so-called "wet" societies such as France or Italy view alcohol consumption as a healthy aspect of life. Therefore it doesn't come as a surprise to see a higher percentage of alcohol abusers in these "wet" societies. As I was reading over this material in the textbook, I started wondering which of these influences are stronger. For example, what would the correlation data look like for the Muslim population in downtown Minneapolis? Would these individual be more accepting of alcohol because of their surroundings or would the strength of their religious views overcome the influence of society?
Another proposed explanation for alcohol abuse is the idea of an Addictive Personality. Psychologists have long thought that there is correlation between certain personality traits and alcohol abuse. In particular, studies have found that impulsivity, sociability, anxiety, and hostility. One problem with this explanation is that researchers have no way of determining if these traits cause alcohol abuse or if they're a product of it.
One of the most convincing explanations of alcohol abuse comes from the studies on genetics. Alcoholism tends to run in families but its hard to rule out the cause given that families typically share the same genetics and environment. By using adoption studies and twin studies, researchers were able to determine that genetic factors play a key role in the vulnerability to alcoholism. Researchers are unable to "peg" the specific inherited gene although they can still find strong general characteristics.
Of all these explanations, which of these do you think affects you the most? which one has the greatest impact on society? Alcoholism is an undesired aspect on both the individual and social scales. Which one of these explanations should be addressed? In other words, which aspect of alcoholism should society fear the most?
I think that psychology does a good job of identifying issues on both the individual and social levels, alcoholism being only one example.

Lilienfeld Text.

A lot of people believe that if a piece of gum is swallowed, it will remain in the digestive system for seven years! I myself believed this to be true until I did some research on it recently. I always thought that seven years was a really long time, but I figured gum was just made of something that takes a really long time to digest. However, ediatric gastroenterologist David Milov said if the myth were true, "that would mean that every single person who ever swallowed gum within the last seven years would have evidence of the gum in the digestive tract, but colonoscopies and capsule endoscopy procedures turn up no such evidence. " This demonstrates one of the principles of scientific thinking-falsifiability. In this case, there is a myth and science clearly proves that it is a myth.

Most myths do usually contain some truth though. In this case, it is true that gum is made of highly indigestible materials. The Food and Drug Administration says gum "may be composed of any number of natural or synthetic elastomers, or rubberlike materials, as well as plasticizing softeners, resins and preservative antioxidizing agents." Milov says that gum "is pretty immune to the digestive process..." So, if that is the case, where does the gum go if it does not stay in the stomach? Well the gum usually takes longer to go through the digestive system than most food, but it will eventually make the whole journey, as Milov outs it "... eventually the normal housekeeping waves in the digestive tract will sort of push it through, and it will come out pretty unmolested." Perhaps one benefit of the myth is that it discourages people from swallowing gum, because although it does not stay in you're the digestive system for seven years, it can have negative consequences, especially if it is done often.

Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-chewing-gum-takes-seven-years-to-digest&page=2

Here is a link to my high school's Senior All Night Party Facebook page, where like most other high schools we had a hypnotist hypnotise some classmates of mine. I found it extremely hilarious at the time and so amusing to talk to my friends who were able to feel the effects of hypnosis. Yet after learning all about the Scientific Thinking Principles, I am looking back on the experience with a more skeptical approach.

After our party's hypnosis show, I was able to talk to people who were hypnotized. Participants claimed to remember only the moments when they hypnotist had their eyes open. They felt like they were doing the things he told them to do simply because they wanted to. In the Lilienfeld text, they discuss how "volunteers often feel compelled to do outlandish things because they're under intense pressure to entertain the audience" (182). Although I believe this, I also understand the people involved in our show. There are things that occured throughout the performance that if they were in their normal state, they would have responded completely different. This may be my own belief preservance working against me, though. So how exactly do I know that my friends were hypnotized, even after they claimed that they do not remember the hypnosis?

According to Myth Five, hypnotized people do not forget what happened during hypnosis. Spontaneous amnesia is rare and most of the volunteers I talked to claim to have had that experience. Although their memory is not completely wiped out, there are significant parts they cannot remember? So how exactly do we account for that? Myth Four describes that people under hypnosis can recall their immediate settings and events that occur under hypnosis. So between those two myths is where my friends must lie.

It still seems fishy, doesn't it? If you watch the first video of my class being hypnotized, you may see a few moments where the hypnotist could have been participating in what is referred to as the stage whispers technique. During the show I did not notice these actions, but now I can see the hypnotist physically moving the arms of multiple people at different moments throughout the show. Does this help prove the point against the validity of hypnosis?

Overall, the text asks if we can rule out the rival hypotheses for our findings. I have not been able to find an alternate reason for the events my friends participated in under hypnosis. Although my experience with hypnosis can arguably agree with a myth of hypnosis, I believe it was a true hypnosis experience that I witnessed. This can not simply be my belief preservance because of my inability to rule out rival hypotheses. Yet even if I could, who doesn't love the excuse to watch your friends act like crazy, hypnotized fools?! I sure do!

There are many advantages and disadvantages of the new technology in this current day. Facebook, Myspace, and other websites on the Internet open a door to more access and new communication. Teens social life has been greatly impacted by the new "social-networking" movement. Most teenagers socialized less because they are forced to interact through a technological window. The relationships that people face now are often formed online. On the website for Psychology Today I found an article titled "Teens and the Sex Partners They Meet Online" by Michael Shelton.
The article is based on the increase of sexual relationships due to the growth of the Internet. There are many ideas surrounding what causes victims to fall prey to a predator. It is rarely thought that these victims go online to find sources of sex, money, and love from older (or the same age) men. This article focuses on an idea that allows more than one scientific principle to be used. To be more specific, that is correlation vs. causation and ruling out rival hypothesis. Readers and researchers can not be certain what, if anything, causes victims to link with offenders or what makes the offenders go out and find victims. We know that social networking has affected the sexually drive in teenagers, but we don't know the definite reason why.
In conclusion, the new world of technology has given us many great things, but it unleashes many bad things too. Curious girls go online searching for answers and creepy men find the girls. The age difference and naive sense from the girls is just the beginning of how sexual relationships are formed online. Most of the research that has been done goes after how these resources give more access. I believe we should be researching that thoughts of victims, as well as offenders. For example, the reason that the show "Dateline: To Catch A Predator" is very liked by the population is because at the end Chris Hanson sits down and questions the online predator to fully understand what exactly they were thinking. Eventually we will understand what pushes both sides to one another and be able to prevent it.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/weight-loss-hypnosis/AN01617

Hypnosis has been used through the ages in both legitimate and somewhat questionable ways. Most recently, however, people are looking to hypnosis as a way to lose weight. Reading the article Breakthrough Weight Loss Hypnosis Program: Works For 9 Out Of 10 People, I discovered some interesting information. Using the skills I have learned in Psychology, I will break down the scientific and pseudoscientific techniques used in the ad for a hypnosis diet.
What first jumped out at me was the article, right away, promised scientific facts. I thought this was a good start, so I continued to read on. Right away the author's ad mentioned the doctor that had her name as the cover for the product. (Dr. Roberta Teme's powerful Enjoying Weight Loss). As I got further down the article, it became clearer that the "scientific" they promised in the beginning was not being included. They cleverly disguised pseudoscience techniques to account for their information. The key point for me, after reading one doctor's short input on the diet, was the immediate jump to testimonials. The ad was full of them! I also noticed when the ad referred to "investigators"; they failed to provide the credentials of those people. We don't know who they are, or if the "investigators" used and valid scientific reasoning when making their claims.
Overall the ad for the hypnosis diet failed to provide any real scientific evidence. While, making my analysis I kept in mind "Occam's razor". The simpler solution to the problem the ad claimed to solve was that each participant stuck to a strict diet and regular exercise. Although I will still hold open the possibility that their product may actually have some significant effect on weight loss, I will need to see actual scientific evidence.

I'm sure that as college students we've all heard the popular saying "liquor before beer, you're in the clear" and "beer before liquor, you're gonna be sicker." Well, before you start living by these supposed to be true sayings, just know that they aren't actually accurate. Switching between beer or wine or liquor doesn't mean that you are going to get more drunk than you would if you chose to only drink one type of alcohol. How drunk you get depends on your blood alcohol content. The rate at which alcohol is absorbed into your blood stream determines how intoxicated you feel.
Some myths that all of us have heard are actually true though. "Never drink on an empty stomach," that is definitely one that anyone who choses to drink should abide by. The more food that you have in your stomach makes the rate in which alcohol is absorbed into your blood stream slow down, therefore you don't get drunk as fast as someone who hasn't had anything to eat all day.
Another myth that also proves to be true is that men can drink more alcohol and be less affected than women. This is true because women have more body fat than men and alcohol is not fat soluble. Women also have less water in their bodies than men do therefore when men drink it is diluted more than it is in a women's body.
Overall, if you choose to drink while you are here in college, make smart decisions and know what is true and false when it comes to drinking myths.

I was recently reading an article about a psychological phenomenon called "synesthesia". Webster's Dictionary defines synesthesia as "the production of a mental sense-impression relating to one sense by the stimulation of another sense." It's 2 different sensations being produced from one sensory stimulus. An example of this phenomenon that caught my eye was "Grapheme - Color Synesthesia", defined as a form of synesthesia in which an individual's perception of numbers and letters is associated with the experience of colors. For example, in the word "synesthesia", the S's are purple, the Y is dark green, the N is blue, etc. What kindled my curiosity of this subject was an article I read about Cassidy Curtis. Cassidy, it was described in the article, had an "implicit sense of a relationship between letters and colors." She described she was somewhat "aware" of a word's color and the color of its component letters. The effect was described to be a visual stimulation in hue was associated with letters or numbers. It was completely involuntary. I found this concept very interesting because I wanted to find out what neurological process yielded this process. One of the factors that makes it so interesting is how it interacts with memory and attention. People with this affliction can look at a block of colors and determine, to some extent, what the word may be. What makes it so interesting is that Synesthetes often report that they were unaware that their experiences were unusual until they realized other people did not have them. In our Psych textbook and discussion sections we explored the different stages of perception. Condensing the concept it looks like this: Event => Sensation => Transduction => Perception. In discussion we discussed different events and how they travel along this path. In the case of synesthesia the neural message is changed in the transduction stage, where sensory stimuli are integrated. Research from cases like Cassidy's have led to the development of technologies intended to improve the retention and memory of graphemes by individuals, like most of us, without synesthesia.

Article used: http://otherthings.com/uw/syn/

I was recently reading an article about a psychological phenomenon called "synesthesia". Webster's Dictionary defines synesthesia as "the production of a mental sense-impression relating to one sense by the stimulation of another sense." It's 2 different sensations being produced from one sensory stimulus. An example of this phenomenon that caught my eye was "Grapheme - Color Synesthesia", defined as a form of synesthesia in which an individual's perception of numbers and letters is associated with the experience of colors. For example, in the word "synesthesia", the S's are purple, the Y is dark green, the N is blue, etc. What kindled my curiosity of this subject was an article I read about Cassidy Curtis. Cassidy, it was described in the article, had an "implicit sense of a relationship between letters and colors." She described she was somewhat "aware" of a word's color and the color of its component letters. The effect was described to be a visual stimulation in hue was associated with letters or numbers. It was completely involuntary. I found this concept very interesting because I wanted to find out what neurological process yielded this process. One of the factors that makes it so interesting is how it interacts with memory and attention. People with this affliction can look at a block of colors and determine, to some extent, what the word may be. What makes it so interesting is that Synesthetes often report that they were unaware that their experiences were unusual until they realized other people did not have them. In our Psych textbook and discussion sections we explored the different stages of perception. Condensing the concept it looks like this: Event => Sensation => Transduction => Perception. In discussion we discussed different events and how they travel along this path. In the case of synesthesia the neural message is changed in the transduction stage, where sensory stimuli are integrated. Research from cases like Cassidy's have led to the development of technologies intended to improve the retention and memory of graphemes by individuals, like most of us, without synesthesia.

Article used: http://otherthings.com/uw/syn/

I was recently reading an article about a psychological phenomenon called "synesthesia". Webster's Dictionary defines synesthesia as "the production of a mental sense-impression relating to one sense by the stimulation of another sense." It's 2 different sensations being produced from one sensory stimulus. An example of this phenomenon that caught my eye was "Grapheme - Color Synesthesia", defined as a form of synesthesia in which an individual's perception of numbers and letters is associated with the experience of colors. For example, in the word "synesthesia", the S's are purple, the Y is dark green, the N is blue, etc. What kindled my curiosity of this subject was an article I read about Cassidy Curtis. Cassidy, it was described in the article, had an "implicit sense of a relationship between letters and colors." She described she was somewhat "aware" of a word's color and the color of its component letters. The effect was described to be a visual stimulation in hue was associated with letters or numbers. It was completely involuntary. I found this concept very interesting because I wanted to find out what neurological process yielded this process. One of the factors that makes it so interesting is how it interacts with memory and attention. People with this affliction can look at a block of colors and determine, to some extent, what the word may be. What makes it so interesting is that Synesthetes often report that they were unaware that their experiences were unusual until they realized other people did not have them. In our Psych textbook and discussion sections we explored the different stages of perception. Condensing the concept it looks like this: Event => Sensation => Transduction => Perception. In discussion we discussed different events and how they travel along this path. In the case of synesthesia the neural message is changed in the transduction stage, where sensory stimuli are integrated. Research from cases like Cassidy's have led to the development of technologies intended to improve the retention and memory of graphemes by individuals, like most of us, without synesthesia.

Article used: http://otherthings.com/uw/syn/

I was recently reading an article about a psychological phenomenon called "synesthesia". Webster's Dictionary defines synesthesia as "the production of a mental sense-impression relating to one sense by the stimulation of another sense." It's 2 different sensations being produced from one sensory stimulus. An example of this phenomenon that caught my eye was "Grapheme - Color Synesthesia", defined as a form of synesthesia in which an individual's perception of numbers and letters is associated with the experience of colors. For example, in the word "synesthesia", the S's are purple, the Y is dark green, the N is blue, etc. What kindled my curiosity of this subject was an article I read about Cassidy Curtis. Cassidy, it was described in the article, had an "implicit sense of a relationship between letters and colors." She described she was somewhat "aware" of a word's color and the color of its component letters. The effect was described to be a visual stimulation in hue was associated with letters or numbers. It was completely involuntary. I found this concept very interesting because I wanted to find out what neurological process yielded this process. One of the factors that makes it so interesting is how it interacts with memory and attention. People with this affliction can look at a block of colors and determine, to some extent, what the word may be. What makes it so interesting is that Synesthetes often report that they were unaware that their experiences were unusual until they realized other people did not have them. In our Psych textbook and discussion sections we explored the different stages of perception. Condensing the concept it looks like this: Event => Sensation => Transduction => Perception. In discussion we discussed different events and how they travel along this path. In the case of synesthesia the neural message is changed in the transduction stage, where sensory stimuli are integrated. Research from cases like Cassidy's have led to the development of technologies intended to improve the retention and memory of graphemes by individuals, like most of us, without synesthesia.

Article used: http://otherthings.com/uw/syn/

Discovery channel's coverage of lucid dreaming:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASf55cov5F8

Sleep seems to be a confusing concept to most Americans. Though many people claim they need sleep, 150 million Americans claim to drink coffee daily in an attempt to live off of as little sleep as possible. The book illustrates the importance of sleep and effects that lack of sleep can have on an individual. In addition, chapter 5 discusses the concept of "lucid dreaming", an idea that has been popularized by the media. According to chapter five, lucid dreaming is defined as being an, "experience of becoming aware that one is dreaming".
I see lucid dreaming as being an experience in which one comes to realize that he or she is dreaming due to events in the dream that are beyond the realms of reality. When thinking about this concept, I can not help but think about the artist Nelly, and his immensely popular song, "Just a Dream". In the song, Nelly sings, "...wish she'd come back, but no one knows, then I realized, it was only just a dream". This lyric describes (though perhaps not purposefully) the experience of lucid dreaming as an experience in which the dreamer realizes that he or she is dreaming.This awareness can come about by bizarre events in the dream that cause the dreamer to correctly assume that it can not be reality. I believe that this concept is important because the book states that "one-fifth of Americans report dreaming lucidly on a monthly basis". If individuals are experiencing this type of dream, the fact that a psychological concept exists that puts a name to the experience is beneficial. The fact that lucid dreaming is experienced by many individuals is evidenced by the popularity of the idea (as shown by the discovery channel video excerpt link at the top of the post). This video and "lucid dream" references in the media demonstrate the popularity of the concept.
The concept of lucid dreaming can be applied to my own life because, like most Americans, I have experienced lucid dreams before. This concept, along with many mentioned in the book thus far, has shown me the fact that Psychology is very apparent in our everyday lives. Reading about the topic of lucid dreaming also left me with some questions. Are we truly able to control our dreams in a nearly unconscious state? Does lucid dreaming a function of being asleep, or are we actually partially awake?

For those of you who have not heard Nelly's "Just a Dream":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6O2ncUKvlg&ob=av2e

A common belief among our population is that women over the age of 40 have a greater chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married. This legend was started by a Newsweek article that reported women over the age of 40 have a 2.6% chance of getting married. Like many headlines in the media, there is more to this study than the title suggests. For example, the study, which was releases in 1985, was only based on women with university educations. These women tended to wait until their educations were complete and their careers were started to get married, which put them well into their thirties. Another factor that lead to these results is that men at this time were less likely to marry women who had their own careers and could not stay at home. So it was partially influenced by the cultural context and time period. Women are definitely more likely to get married over the age of 40 then be killed by a terrorist. Replicability, one of the six scientific principles of thinking, can be applied to this concept. No other study found these same results or reported the same findings. Also, it is an "extraordinary claim" to say that it is more likely to be killed by a terrorist and there is not sufficient evidence to back up this statement. In fact, the study's findings were not consistent with the U.S. census bureau, which stated that women over 40 had a 26% chance of getting married. This headline reminds us that it is important to think critically of bold media claims.
http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/terrorist.asp

I was really interested in how drugs affect the brain. I took a Rock and Roll history class last year and we had a whole unit on the influence of drugs on the musicians in the 60's and the 70's. Psychedelic Drugs were very popular during that area. We talked about the drugs, but we never talked about how they actually worked. What exactly causes these hallucinations or these states of euphoria? In lecture we talked about what exactly drugs do. They can increase or decrease the releasing of neurotransmitters, they can block NT clearance, or active or block the receptors. What I have discovered I learned that PD exhibit or inhibit levels of certain NT, which in turn causes a drastic cognitive and perceptual alteration and delineation of thought, and causes hallucinations. They are mainly used for religious reasons but are also popular as a street drug. This increasing or decreasing of NT is very interesting and to me would be quite scary.

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/grinspoo.htm

In Freud's Dream Protection Theory, a dream serves the purpose of masking true desires in symbolic forms. In dreams, we are allowed to pursue childish wishes and behave in ways not tolerated in society. The details of a dream are called the manifest content, and the true meaning behind each symbol is the latent content. Even though Sigmund Freud passed away in 1939, his belief on the significance of dreams is still practiced today.

Dream interpretation is a popular form of pseudoscience today. After researching, I have found there are six top symbolic dreams: naked dreams, chase dreams, teeth dreams, flying dreams, falling dreams, and test dreams. In a naked dream, the dreamer is feeling vulnerable. Losing clothes represents exposure of the true self. Dreamers who are suffering from finding their unique identities or who feel foolish in their own skin tend to have these dreams. The second type of common dream is the chaser dream. This dream reflects the waking anxiety and stress in the dreamer's life. Running away in your dreams shows that one tends to avoid or run from conflict. I have found that this is the most common type of dream that I have, which makes sense since I am a harmonizer and have been profiled as having a somewhat avoiding conflict management style.

The third type of common dream is known as the teeth dream. In these types of dreams, the dreamer is struggling with feelings of unattractiveness and/or aging. In a scientific study, women going through menopause reported a higher frequency of these types of dreams. The fourth dream is called the flying dream. This type of dream is considered lucid since the dreamer is aware they are dreaming. These dreams represent the conquering of some challenge or a new perspective. Feelings of accomplishment empower the dreamer.

The fifth type of dream is the falling dream, which indicates the dreamer is struggling with insecurity, instability, and anxiety. Fear of inferiority or losing one's position at work or school contribute to the occurrence of these dreams. The last type of dream is the test dream. In this dream, the dreamer struggles by some means to finish a test or to succeed. This dream indicates feelings of negative self image, the fear of being judged, and the fear of not measuring up to other's expectations.

All six of these interpreted dreams show how Freud's Dream Protection Theory is still practiced today. The manifest content of each of these dreams shows a deeper latent meaning according to these interpretations. Although dream interpretation is not a phenomenon that is falsifiable, it gives us a way of coming to terms with our dreams.

We have all seen the supposed "light weight" people who appear to be hammered drunk after one drink, or the people who instantly become more social and outgoing once a red cup reaches their hand. We assume that they are simply "unseasoned" or "a really happy drunk" but one has to wonder how much of this behavior has to do with alcohol in the body and how much has to do with the idea of alcohol? Let's find out how large of a role our mind's anticipation of alcohol plays in these scenarios.
The Lilienfeld textbook described an experiment in which participants were divided into four groups, one being told they were receiving alcohol and actually were, one being told they were receiving alcohol and really weren't, one group that was told they had alcohol but didn't and the final group that was told that they did not have any alcohol and really did not have any. This is called the balanced placebo design and it is used to determine the effects of placebos on the participants. The study showed that those who were told that they had received alcohol but didn't acted similarly to those people who were actually drunk. This demonstrates that our anticipation and how we think we should act when we drink significantly affects our actions even if the alcohol level in our systems are not high enough to be producing such behavioral changes.
I found this section very interesting and I believe this experiment also proves that one kind of alcohol should not bring about different results from another kind of alcohol. For example, many people claim that they get angry and aggressive when they drink whiskey while tequila makes them do crazy things. However, do they really or is it simply the person being told that he will become aggressive while drinking whiskey and crazy on tequila believing they will act that way and so they do. Same goes for our lightweight and happy drunk who haven't had enough alcohol to affect their brains yet but they believe it has. I guess you really can't blame it on the alcohol.

Have you ever been in the moment of doing something and you stop because you realized you have been in the same exact situation before? This is deja vu. Deja vu is having the sense that you have been somewhere or seen something before in the same exact circumstances, but in reality the experience is new. You may be having a conversation with a friend and suddenly you stop because you think you have been in that same experience. What you're talking about, who is there, and what people are doing are all felt during deja vu. This is an important concept because it's hard to understand why our brain makes us think that we have been there before. It's almost impossible that we have actually been in the same situation and seen it before, but we still believe we have.

In the Lilienfeld text, it says that an excess of dopamine in temporal lobes may play a role in deja vu. Deja vu also happens when the present experience resembles a past experience. The sense of familiarity comes into play because we don't consciously recall the previous experience. Although it is believed that deja vu is a memory from the past life, it is not falsifiable. Deja vu is firmly associated with temporal-lobe epilepsy, but then why do people who have don't have these seizures get deja vu? Clearly there is a lot more investigating that needs to be done.

I have had many experiences with deja vu. I will be talking with friends and I stop and say that I am having deja vu. Even while I am aware I am having deja vu, it is still occurring. It's a very weird feeling because I actually believe that I have been in that same situation, or almost like I knew what people were going to say and do next. What I am wondering is why does this occur at such random times and why do we still believe that it actually happened? I think deja vu happens because our mind tricks us into thinking we have been there before. I had deja vu once while driving to my friend's cabin. Our conversation and location felt like we had done the same thing before, but it was my first time going to her cabin. This forms one big question of how can deja vu be from a past similar experience if something is completely knew, like location or current issues? When we were turning onto County 25 I was still having deja vu. That intrigues me because how can I have the feeling I have turned down this road before when I never had?

Deja vu is something that I think is very hard to explain and find the real reason why we have it, or what makes us have it. Similar experiences definitely lead to deja vu but it really interests me why we feel like we have been there. I think that deja vu can be due to a simple fantasy or something you wanted to happen. It's an unexplainable feeling when deja vu occurs. One movie I really enjoy is Deja Vu. This explains the feeling of deja vu very well.

Dreams are often a great topic of conversation among groups of students eating breakfast at dorm dining halls. However, one of the more interesting topics of discussion about dreams is lucid dreaming. It is debatable whether lucid dreamers actually have that experience while sleeping, or have the supposed feeling right after waking up. This would be something that would make a very interesting research study. Do people actually lucid dream in their sleep? Lucid dreams are interesting in that they combine a person's conscious thoughts with a sub-conscious brain pattern of sleeping. A problem with trying to research and study lucid dreams, however, is getting people to actually lucid dream while examining them since lucid dreams seem to occur randomly. What many people believe, though, is that lucid dreams can occur on command by the dreamer. This leads to my next question. Can one lucid dream on purpose?

If one could lucid dream whenever he or she felt like it, sleeping would probably be revolutionized. It would be great if lucid dreams could help people overcome depression or anxiety. However, how can one lucid dream on cue? The contradictions of controlling one's dreams while actually sleeping maintain this gap of further understanding lucid dreams. There are several recommended techniques to try and get someone to lucid dream whenever he or she wishes, but there definitely aren't any actual clear cut scientific explanations for how one could lucid dream. If scientists ever discover more about lucid dreaming to an extent that we can then lucid dream every time we sleep, it would definitely change many aspects about society. People would be able to do work in their dreams, or try and make different discoveries in their dreams. Since there are no limits in dreams, people could use lucid dreams to try things that are currently unimaginable in real life. Lucid dreams could be a social revolution for future dreamers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASf55cov5F8

In the 1960's and 1970's the activation-synthesis theory was developed by two scientists; Alan Hobson and Robert McCarley. The activation-synthesis theory is the theory that dreams reflect inputs from brain activation originating in the pons, which the forebrain then attempts to weave into a story. This can also be stated as dreams reflect brain activation in sleep, rather than a repressed unconscious wish. These scientists said that dreams reflect the activated brains attempt to make sense of random and internally generated neural signals during REM sleep. This theory provides that during REM sleep neurotransmitters are sending signals to many places in the brain including the pons, thalamus, forebrain and amygdala. By all these signals running through the brain a dream is then formed. I think this is the most scientific explanation of how dreams are formed. It explains the processes of the brain to form a dream. Most of the other theories about how dreams are formed are just opinions. They have no scientific evidence and can not be falsified by any evidence.

Another article also provides this kind of information on how dreams are formed. It states where the signals are transmitted throughout the brain and what each part of the brain purpose is to form the dream. The link to this page is:
http://dreamscience.org/idx_science_of_dreaming_section-3.htm

In my opinion this theory is the best explanation of dreams. Although it can never fully tell us why we have certain dreams. It can not tell us why some people have nightmares and others do not. I do not think there will every be and answer to all our questions about dreams.

In our time, we are much worried about what are weight is and how we can lose some fat. We usually think that we can lose weight by just working out or eating less which could lead to disorders. Now scientist have found groundbreaking research that sleep deprivation can increase levels of a hunger hormone and decrease levels of hormone that makes you feel full. That might be the reason why college students and night shift workers get bigger. That is why it is better to sleep earlier then late. "Sleep does indeed appear to be an important piece of the weight-control puzzle, says Stanford University sleep researcher Emmanuel Mignot, who also is releasing new research." 63% of American adults do not get the recommended eight hours of sleep a night, according to the National Sleep Foundation. This might be why 65% of Americans are overweight or obese, which increases their risk of heart disease and cancer.

The two hormones that are involved in regulating food intake are ghrelin and leptin . Ghrelin is an appetite stimulating hormone released mostly by the stomach. Basically when the ghrelin levels goes up you will feel hungry. Leptin is considered the fullness hormone which tell the brain about the current energy balance of the body. "The hormones have been called the yin and yang of hunger," Van Cauter says. One is the accelerator for eating (ghrelin), and the other is the brake (leptin)." In my experience for losing weight, I usually sleep after midnight and wake up in the noon. At noon I start my workout and then after that I get a really big appetite and I believe that is due to my increase level in ghrelin. In the end I eat too much and that is one reason on how we gain weight.

This article can be found here
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-12-06-sleep-weight-gain_x.htm

I have read, (a few times now), about the claim that a man, while under hypnosis, is told he is about to be executed, and ends up dying of a heart attack. There have been claims of this happening, more than once, so I figured it would be time to delve a little deeper into the subject.
There's a case, in 1986, where some students from Birmingham were wondering the same things that I am wondering right now. So, they decided to try out a little experiment and brought in a laboratory assistant, who they were not very fond of. They explained to him the simplistic rules of hypnosis, that you can not do what you are not willing to do, and that, essentially, he would be fine.
They had him kneel down, and his neck exposed, as if he was about to have his head sliced off. Then, they took a wet towel, and dropped it across the back of his neck, while he believed he was about to be executed. The person, then dropped dead, by a heart attack, which killed him.
So, here is the question. Can hypnosis lead the physically unharmed to die, just based on the fact that they are under hypnosis?
I don't believe it at all, to be honest. After I just read chapter six out of our textbook, there were quite a few "misconceptions" about hypnosis that make me think this is absolute rubbish.
For starters, there is the fact that those that are under hypnosis are completely aware of their surroundings. It is not as if he is whisked away to this dream world where he is brought to his utter demise. He would have had the ability to tell where he was. There has also been people brought out hypnosis that were able to recall details on a telephone call that was made during hypnosis.
This is my main point, along with the fact that it sounds absolutely asinine to think that just because someone drops a wet towel on the back of our necks when we're under hypnosis, that we feel as if we are dying. Maybe the poor chap was shocked by the feeling of the towel, and ended up going into cardiac arrest. Maybe it was a freak coincidence. I believe that the fact he was undergoing hypnosis had nothing to do with the case, whatsoever.
But, there hasn't been enough evidence to truly support that it was hypnosis, or that it wasn't. I guess we will have to do more research, and find out.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/execute.asp

Maybe I'm just paying to much attention to the statuses of my friends on Facebook or coming up with a new explanation about the brain...But I too, have experienced this random awakening in the wee early hours in the morning. Yawning and turning over that lasts until an hour or so before your scheduled alarm goes off. This annoying state of wakening described as insomnia. Either getting to sleep or staying asleep is difficult. And I wonder why? Sometimes I chalk it up to just not burning enough energy throughout the day...my body just didn't get 'x' amount of exercise, you know something like that. Or having to much on my mind that even my dreams cant suffice my soul to be content and let me get a good or decent nights rest. Because to me personally at the end of the day that's what it comes down too. That internal state of being within us. I mean we can have transmitters and receptors, chemicals that send off certain alerts and things of that sort biologically. But all in all were humans not just body's with systems and a control panel(brain) we think, make conscious decisions, whether they are good or bad and those are the qualities that make us. The thoughts and schemes and desires we constantly turn over in our heads unconsciously or not. So again, "What is it really that keeps us awake? Why can't we go back to sleep?" We have both logical explanations but what sees fit the best?
http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/04/trouble_sleeping_experts_share.html
http://www.velveteenmind.com/velveteenmind/2008/11/whats-the-passw.html

In our college years, us students hardly sleep. We have class and homework to do all day, and then we try to spend our nights having fun with our friends. Not to mention that we're up in to all hours of the night on weekends. Due to our extreme lack of sleep, we tend to come up with our own mechanisms to staying awake. One of the main ways is through caffeine such as soda and coffee. However, some students take caffeine in the form of pills and shots. The question is, does caffeine really keep us as awake as we think?

Caffeine is proven to give us a boost in energy for a short period of time, but one brand claims to do more. 5 Hour Energy shots are tiny shots of caffeine that are supposed to give you 5 hours of energy without a crash. This is an extraordinary claim because there is no way that a drink can give you 5 full hours of energy, and without a crash. There is no scientific evidence to prove that these shots work other than users' anecdotes. These stories do not solidify the validity of the drink because the affects of 5-hour energy shots are different for each user.

Caffeine also has a diminishing effect. First, once a user has drunk 500-600mg of caffeine, which is equivalent to 6-7 cups of coffee, the drinker will start to feel sick. Also, the more caffeine you drink on a daily basis, the more caffeine you need to stay awake because your body assimilates to caffeine. The best way to stay awake is not through drugs like caffeine, but through well balances meals, plenty of sleep, and good time management.

Baza Haile-Selassie

http://www.pain4glory.com/5-hour-energy-drink/

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=5+hour+energy&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1024&bih=631&tbm=isch&tbnid=JGVB7RH9YsUXsM:&imgrefurl=http://www.blantonio.us/5-hour-energy-hours-of-energy-now/&docid=TEWFc8thqByrSM&w=200&h=200&ei=vL6QTu6YEcSNsALhjeWMAQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=439&vpy=323&dur=208&hovh=160&hovw=160&tx=67&ty=78&page=1&tbnh=152&tbnw=160&start=0&ndsp=11&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0

Sleep deprivation is a serious condition that affects nearly all college students at one point or another. Students are just beginning to understand how this condition can negatively affect both their academic and leisure activities. According to a study done, as reported in the article that I read, two-thirds of the students reported pulling at least one all nighter in the past semester. The article also states that many college students believe that staying up all night is a rite of passage, and sort of fun. However, there are serious consequences to staying up all night. On average, students who pull all nighters have slightly lower GPAs. They also have slower reactions and are more likely to make mistakes. Sleep deprivation can also affect athletic ability. In a study done on Stanford's basketball team, it was shown that when the players got ten hours of sleep per night, they were more likely to perform at a higher standard. Similar reactions to lack of sleep were found in adults as well as college students. I believe that sleep deprivation affects people younger than college aged as well. I found this article interesting, but I would be a bit shocked if someone didn't know the outcomes of not getting enough sleep by the time they were in college.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-09-16-sleep-deprivation_N.htm

It seems these days that just about anything can cause cancer. People are continuosly being warned not to do something, or to change their lifestyle because something in it could be a cause of cancer. Now there is a new one, a woman has claimed that she has gotten breast cancer and the primary reason is because of the Dioxin in plastic bottles. While Dioxin has been identified in high levels in breast cancer tissue, I don't believe it should be blamed completely on the water bottle. A critical thinking principal is that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence to be proven. Although yes, Dioxin is in plastic bottles, does that mean thats the absolute cause?

I want to pinpoint the principal of ruling out rival hypotheses. I think that this woman decided to point at the water bottle as the only possible cause. She didn't take time to check out what else contains Dioxin. I decided to do this, upon my research it appears as if Dioxin can also be found in pork or beef, freshwater fish, milk, saran wrap and weed killers. It is clear that her breast cancer may have been caused from Dioxin poisioning, but i don't believe she can place all the blame on the water bottles when there is the same substance found in so many other places.

I used the following sites:
http://www.urbanmyths.com/index.php?/Celebrity/does-dioxin-in-plastic-bottles-cause-cancer.html
http://www.cqs.com/edioxin.htm

Reading this past chapter in my psychology textbook, I found the section about the sleep cycle intriguing. I pondered about the different stages of sleep, and what happens in each stage. The sleep cycle is divided into two main categories: REM sleep and NREM sleep. REM is an acronym for "rapid eye movement" and NREM stands for "non-rapid eye movement. Each of these categories have unique psychological and neurological features. NREM sleep actually consists of three stages. During stage one, the alpha waves in the brain power down from a frequency of 8-13 Hz to a frequency of 4-7Hz. This is the stage where people also experience random twitches or feelings as if they are falling into space. Conscious awareness of the external environment fades away. In stage two, brain waves referred to as sleep spindles operate at 11-16 Hz. During this stage conscious awareness disappears, and almost half of an adult's sleep is spent in stage two of NREM sleep. In stage three, delta waves only range from .5-2 Hz. This stage can be characterized by night terrors that children and few adults can experience. Finally, after the three stages of NREM, do we fall into REM sleep. REM sleep can account for 20-25% of an adult's sleep cycle. In REM sleep, we experience the most wild and vivid dreams. In REM, our eyes move frequently and dart around. One hypothesis is that this could be due to the fact the human eye is trying to make sense out of what we are "seeing" in dreams. Throughout the night, humans cycle in and out of REM sleep. So there you have it, a brief summary of one of the human body's most important functions.

Psychology Blog #2

Earlier this week, I took great interest in Professor Gail Peterson's lecture on the unconscious mind. I found it intriguing that when flashed a word very quickly the mind does not consciously recognize it, but the unconscious mind does. In the New York Times, there was an article called "Who's Minding the Mind?" that had to deal with exactly what Professor Peterson talked about in his lecture.

In this article, a psychologist at Yale studied college students and their unconscious mind. The students were unaware, but when they bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers, and a cup of coffee (hot or cold) and asked for a hand with the cup, students would rate that person colder and less social when they held an iced coffee. The student who held a hot cup of coffee rated the stranger as more friendly. This is amusing because the student could not necessarily state why they rated the strangers the way they did.

Another similar experiment had to do with placing subjects into two different rooms. The subjects were told to sit in the desk and chair provided in the room and to eat a pastry that produced a lot of crumbs. The catch is that one room smelt clean and the other dirty. Researchers noticed that the subjects in the clean room picked up their crumbs more often whereas; the subjects in the dirty room would often leave the crumbs on the table. Both of these experiments showed great effects due to environment that registered under unconscious thoughts. There have been controversial messages about subliminal influence, but more and more evidence points toward the effect unconscious really occur.

Teams of English and French neuroscientists have performed brain imaging to prove that unconscious brain activity occurs. The imaging shows that the brain uses the same neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a conscious one. The part of the brain that is activated during the unconscious activity is the area called the ventral pallidum. This shows that most people use the bottom-up process by first unconsciously deciding the reward, which then interacts with the conscious level.

This is interesting because as Professor Gail Peterson talked about, your brain takes in everything whether you know it or not. This is very interesting to me because it makes me think about the T.V. commercials I have seen. Does Mcdonald's color their packaging in red for a reason? Do they use red, so that wherever we see red, we automatically think of Mcdonald's, making us want to go there? Advertising agencies have probably taken this spectacular phenomenon into account and using it to their advantage. Is it right to take advantage of people's unconscious thoughts? How far can we claim that it was just our unconscious thoughts that led us to do what we did? I believe that whatever a person's action is, it is still their responsibility even though there could be a slight influence due to unconsciousness. Although people may not know what they are doing at the moment, the brain is always conscious of their actions. This is still a topic that is going under intensive research and is very controversial worldwide.

Article Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html?pagewanted=all

To an observer of a sleeping person, sleep may seem like a very uncomplicated function of the body. Seemingly at peace, the body remains mostly still and little emotion is being conveyed by the person asleep. This would give somebody the idea that sleep is the ultimate, natural state of rest... This, however, is not totally true. In recent years, much has been uncovered about the truth of sleep. The brain goes through a series of stages that are actually fairly amazing if you spend the time to learn more about them.

There are 5 different stages of rest that the brain typically goes through while asleep. In stage 1 your brain powers down by 50%, producing theta waves which typically occur four to seven times per second. This stage of rest is very calm, and the sleeper may not even be totally sure whether or not they are awake. During stage 2 your brain powers down even more. Your heart rate slows and your muscles become relaxed, this is the stage we associate most often with being asleep as you spend up to 65% of your time in the second stage. In stages 3 and 4, your brain only produces waves once or twice a second. Stage 5 of sleep (otherwise known as REM Sleep) is where your brain kicks into high gear and the any typical rumors of your brain resting while asleep are debunked. During this stage, your brain produces high-frequency, low-amplitude waves that are very similar to being awake. A quickening heart rate, increased blood pressure, and irregular breathing are all typical of REM sleep. We typically cycle through these stages of sleep 5 to 6 times per night! Along with theses 5 stages are a variety of sleep disorders and other unconscious behaviors that can make some people even more active while being asleep.

It is interesting how our brains can be so active throughout the night without us having to think at all about what we are going through. These unconscious processes can be so complicated that is is a wonder how we can wake up feeling so well rested in the morning!

Fantasy-prone personality seems to be a rather odd diagnosis for someone--a diagnosis that may have been given a definitive name for the sake of defining it. In other words, diagnoses are usually termed as such when there needs to be some type of treatment to "fix" the diagnosis. Fantasy-prone personalities do not seem to require a treatment; they just may appear odd in popular culture.

Looking at The Weiler Psi blog online, there is an article called "The Myth of Fantasy Prone Personality (FPP)" that combats the idea that this personality type needs an official diagnosis. Typical fantasy-prone personality individuals display about six of the following characteristics: "(1) being an excellent hypnotic subject, (2) having imaginary playmates as a child, (3) fantasizing frequently as a child, (4) adopting a fantasy identity, (5) experiencing imagined sensations as real, (6) having vivid sensory perceptions, (7) reliving past experiences, (8) claiming psychic powers, (9) having out-of-body or floating experiences, (10) receiving poems, messages, etc., from spirits, higher intelligences, and the like, (11) being involved in "healing," (12) encountering apparitions, (13) experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations (waking dreams), and (14) seeing classical hypnagogic imagery (such as spirits or monsters from outer space)." The blog claims that diagnosing people with a fantasy-prone diagnosis is just a way for people to judge or point out how people are different from the cultural norm. According to the blog, these characteristics are usually related to people who are hypersensitive to feelings and emotions, which can cause yelling and arguing to appear traumatic.

I find it difficult to agree with either "side" in this blog post... A "diagnosis" of this personality seems to be rather extreme; however, I can see how this personality type exists. I, personally, would be on the weaker side of the fantasy-prone scale. I exhibit some of these characteristics, but maybe not to the extreme that the blog insists on. I believe environmental factors increase the extremities of the characteristics, especially when cultural fixations are on the paranormal or supernatural, like the Twilight frenzy.

One common trait among students on campus that can be seen is a strong lack of sleep. Many students are overwhelmed with classes, trying to balance a social life, and homework.While all this seems normal there is one thing all of them are compensating, thats sleep.

The most important part of our sleep cycle is REM sleep. REM sleep is a stage of sleep during which the brain is the most active and when we are most likely to dream. This part is important because it allows our bodies to relax and become more or less paralyzed. It is even considered an essential part of staying healthy. One test performed on rats showed that when they were deprived from REM sleep they soon died.

One reason college students are not getting enough of this deep sleep is from the use of cell phones, laptops, and ipods. These distractions keep them from entering REM and they are only reaching stages one through four of their sleep cycles.So an important factor to remmeber when in college is that even though it may be hard to come by, it is important to allow yourself to reach stage five sleep on as many occasions as you can. Even if it has to happen during lectures for a few of those week night party animals out there.

Many people may be familiar with the over-the-counter drug that helps regulate sleep. The drug triggers melatonin receptors in the brain that help reactivate one's biological clock. Naturally, melatonin is regulated in the body with higher levels at night and lower levels during the day. But there are exceptions and circumstances that interrupt the cycle and a typical biological clock. World travelers, late shift workers, the visually impaired and those with sleep disorders have the most experience with irregular sleep schedules. These disruptions of one's biological clock can lead to an increase in injury, fatality, and health problems such as heart disease and diabetes. Therefore, drugs triggering the release of melatonin have proven to be positive and beneficial.
However, some studies have shown cases of abuse both intentional and unintentional with the drug. Depending on one's sleep disorder or condition, it must be taken at a certain time of the day with a certain dosage. Too much of the drug can lead to further complications regarding one's biological clock. The body's sleep schedule is important to keep regular for health reasons both physically and mentally. Do not take this drug unless suggested by a doctor or fully informed on the instructions.

As college kids now we have bigger classes, a bigger responsibility, but better yet, bigger parties. Friday and Saturday nights consist of students walking around intoxicated or in search of a start to their intoxication. Whether that's going to frats, walking around in Dinkytown and ending up finding nothing, or just chillin' in front of McDonald's. Nothing unusual about that on a UofM weekend. Is Thursday considered a weekend now? For those of you who haven't heard of thirsty Thursday, it is pretty much summed up as students who don't have an early class Friday, party Thursday night and get a head start to their weekend. Is that really a head start though? Most people think, "Well I only have class at 11 tomorrow." I'm assuming most of those kids either end up skipping or being so tired that they don't retain anything from lecture. They then take a nap and go out again Friday.

Those kids probably wonder why they are so tired. Don't you get better sleep when you drink? No, but you fall asleep quicker. What you don't get is delta waves during stages 3 and 4 or our sleep cycle. Those delta waves are essential for us to feel refreshed in the morning. The alcohol suppresses the waves causing you to not get into a deeper sleep. Have you ever heard of a hangover? Obviously this all depends on how much you drink and at what point you pass out, or fall asleep. C'mon though you're not going to just go out and drink a little. It just might not be in the smartest sense to go out for thirsty Thursday if you even have class on Friday.

I'm not saying drinking is bad because it does happen in college. Most kids experience or already have experienced it. But when you're failing class, Thursday might be better as a study night. See you all later tonight!

Have you ever woken up only to find out you can't move at all? Well, I have on a couple of occasions, and it was absolutely terrifying. This experience is called sleep paralysis, and it is described as the inability to move right after falling asleep or right after waking up. It may be related to narcolepsy. If you haven't experienced sleep paralysis yet, there's a good chance you will considering up to one-half of college students will experience it at least once.

After experiencing sleep paralysis personally, I was left wondering what just happened and why. It wasn't until I took psychology my senior year in high school that I even knew the condition had a name. Sleep paralysis is a result of an interruption to the sleep cycle. To my surprise, it also has meaning in many different cultures. In Fiji, sleepy paralysis is interpreted as being eaten by a demon. In Swedish folklore, it is interpreted as being caused by a werewolf-like creature who causes nightmares by sitting on villagers while they sleep. In Turkish culture, sleep paralysis is called Karabasan and is interpreted as a demon known as Cin strangling its' victim. In Europe, in the nineteenth century, many believed sleep paralysis was caused by a change in diet. Sleep paralysis is even mentioned in A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, when Ebenezer Scrooge sees a ghost, supposedly because of undigested food. Also, a Swedish movie, Marianne, was just released, and explores the phenomena surrounding sleep paralysis.

Though there are many different types of sleeping disorders, sleep paralysis can be quite common, though it is less known. Sleeping is a very important part of our lives, so learning about sleeping disorders is also very important. Though sleep paralysis can be very terrifying, it is nice to know that many people experience it at some time or another, and that is usually isn't dangerous.

In the world today, nearly three million people and even some animals suffer from a chronic sleep disorder called narcolepsy. According to PubMed Health, narcolepsy is a condition that causes "excessive sleep and frequent daytime sleep attacks." These attacks can occur at anytime during the day including during work, school, or while driving. They can be extremely dangerous for both the person suffering from the disorder as well as others around them when the attacks occur. Narcolepsy is a nerve disorder that tends to run in families, which means there is no way to prevent it. There is also no treatment for this disorder but prescription drugs and lifestyle adjustments can be used to manage the sleep attacks and symptoms.
This sleep disorder is a growing issue in our society today. It is important for us to learn about it because not only does it effect people with the disorder, it also effects those who come in contact with them in everyday life. Normal people go through the REM cycle after ninety minutes of sleep whereas narcoleptics go through the REM cycle within ten minutes of sleep. This is why they fall asleep for fifteen minutes and wake up feeling refreshed. Narcoleptics feel extremely tired every three to fours hours and usually they end up falling asleep for a short time. I once had class with a boy who suffered from narcolepsy. He would randomly fall asleep in the middle of class and stay asleep for close to fifteen minutes. Everyone was very confused because we were unaware that he had this condition. That is why it is so important for people to learn the basic information about narcolepsy. You never know who you will meet with the condition. It could be anyone.

This article discusses the signs, symptoms, treatments, and causes of narcolepsy:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001805/

This video shows a dog with narcolepsy during a sleep attack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbmbQkX7czo&feature=related

With all the escalating stresses in our society, you, like many people, are probably hoping for a few extra hours of sleep every morning. But what if you were allowed a few extra days? People suffering from the rare Sleeping Beauty Disorder can fall into deep sleeps lasting for days, weeks, or even months, turning them into real-life sleeping beauties. But unfortunately, unlike the fictional story, the cause of this condition is unknown and thus unpreventable; and most importantly, there is no savior to awake the individuals with this condition from their deep sleeps.

The Sleeping Beauty Disorder, also known as the Klein-Levin Syndrome, is a neurological disorder. Sufferers of this condition experience periods of excessive drowsiness and sleep, and only wake to eat and use the bathroom. But even when awake, these sleeping beauties are often confused, disoriented, lethargic, and apathetic. Though the cause of this disorder is unknown, some researchers speculate the possibility of hereditary predisposition, malfunctioning of the hypothalamus (which regulates sleep), and dopamine deficiency. Certain stimulants, such as ampehtamines, methylphenidate, and modafinil, have been used to help reduce symptoms, but there are still no definitive treatments for this disorder.

Particularly after entering college, I realized how important time is. With all the organizations I want to join, activities I want to participate in, and work I have to do, it seems as though there is never enough time in a day. Thus, I can understand how frustrating it would be to have such a disorder. Although, this is a very rare disorder, I do not believe this problem should be overlooked. Hopefully the cause and cure of this disorder will soon be discovered, along with the many other illnesses in the world.

(Here provided is an article on Louisa Ball, a sufferer of the Sleeping Beauty Disorder mentioned in the Psychology book, that further details her experience with the disorder: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249895/Louisa-Ball-Real-life-Sleeping-Beauty-sleeps-weeks-time.html)

Psych Blog #2 by Cody Nelson

Professor Gail Peterson's lecture on biological psychology was, without a doubt, my favorite lecture of the semester thus far. The first lecture involved consciousness; how it may be a result of brain areas and how we are aware of it. As a musician and someone fascinated by all types of art and creative thinking, I particularly wanted to see how the topic of consciousness may pertain to creativity. Upon further research, I found almost exactly what I was looking for.

Ed Sarath is the founder and director of the University of Michigan's Program of Creativity and Consciousness Studies, as well as a respected jazz and improvisational musician. (watch this video for an introduction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W--75FIKlc) His study of consciousness focuses more on meditation, rather than the biological basis we focus on in class. In the video above, he shows examples of how his students meditate before practicing music. They claim that the meditation directly correlates to better performance, although there is no evidence to support that meditation is the cause (a direct example of correlation not equalling causation). It would be interesting, however, to monitor brain activity during meditation and musical practice to see if the meditation really does stimulate the brain's creative centers, compared to a control group that did not meditate prior to practicing.

My theory on the study is that there is no legitimate biological reason for why meditation helped boost performance, other than that it increased focus. Obviously, I do not have the means to test this, but my logic tells me that the idea that meditation improved creativity is largely a psychological construct. The meditation may have made the musicians more focused, giving them the sensation they are performing better, but their performance was really based on their prior knowledge of music theory and their experience playing.

Although I am not sure about meditation affecting the creative part of consciousness, I still have questions about thought and consciousness. The main one is what separates creative people from those less inspired. I would like to know what in the brains of Handel or Kanye West from the average person. It is a question that may never be truthfully answered, but is one to wonder about.

I am posted this about a week ago but I was not sure if I actually posted it in our section so therefore I am reposting it in our section. Sorry if it is on here twice.

After reading chapter three in our Psychology book the most interesting topic talked about was about what part of our brain we use for what functions. Many different functions rely on one hemisphere over the other. This is called lateralization. Language and verbal skills are the functions most connected with lateralization. Roger Sperry won a Nobel Prize for showing that the two hemispheres serve different functions. He showed that by his studies with patients who underwent split-brain surgery. In this surgery the patients corpus callosum would but severed. The corpus callosum held the two hemispheres of their brains together. In their testing they would present stimuli to either visual field and test the reaction or response of the patient. I found this experiment to be very interesting. It showed how the brain worked together as a whole and also how it would work and send signals when the two hemispheres are no longer connected and can not send signals across the hemispheres. This study was very important and helpful in helping us further understand the brain and its functions. I am still wondering about other functions though. The book mainly talked about the functions language and verbal skills. What about our actions or characteristics. For example, if you are more artistic then others do you use one hemisphere more than the other? Does it change for everyone? There is still a lot of research to be done and also in progress that might help us understand the brain more.

For many years, I criticized my mother for her horrendous snoring. She literally sounded like a large man howling when she went to sleep. She would go to bed much earlier than I would. She would wake up much later, also. Our rooms were right next to each other. This affected my sleep because she would wake me up in the morning with her snoring and make it hard for me to fall asleep.

Due to the recommendations of friends, she went to a sleep specialist. This specialist told her that she stopped breathing for ten to fifteen times an hour for thirty-three seconds at a time on average each time she went to sleep. She was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Apnea is a disorder in which a person's airway is blocked repeatedly throughout their sleep and often causes snoring and fatigue. Many people with sleep apnea are often tired and overweight.

I believe this is an important topic to study because the percentage of people with sleep apnea is growing each year as obesity rates go up. Most people that have sleep apnea are not aware of it, so it is important to be educated on it. Also, sleep apnea is positively correlated with strokes. In addition, it negatively affects a person's health and can lead to an earlier death. However, I still wonder, how can a person become aware of their sleep apnea without their family and friends' evaluations?

Thankfully, there are ways to help people with sleep apnea if you know you have it. Many wear a mask that forces air into the person's airway at night. There is also a retainer-like device that can correctly realign the wearer's jaw to open the airway during sleep. My mother wears this device at night and does not snore anymore. She has successfully reported to her doctor that she no longer feels fatigue in the day and has lost a significant amount of unnecessary weight. Others can be helped, also, if they are aware of this important topic.

Have you ever exclaimed "UGH I KNEW IT!" after looking up something that had been bugging you all day? Well this describes hindsight bias, in psychology known as the "I knew it all along" tendency to overestimate how much we know. This idea is so important to understand because it is a crime that humans commit all the time. We must look at situations and make sure we have proven our facts correct and not just assume we know what we're talking about, especially when it comes to scienctific thought.

An example of hindsight bias can be as simple as any day-to-day occurrence, especially when it comes to gossip. Often times, a friend will come up to me and whisper in my ear, "did you know Kelly and Jake started dating?!" I would, of course, respond with "I KNEW THEY LIKED EACH OTHER!" Did I really know this? Or am I just commiting the crime of hindsight bias?
This example may not seem like such a big deal, but when taking on scientific research and acting as if the results to our problems were already common knowledge to us, may lead to overconfidence or mistakes in further analysis.

Even though sometimes "I knew it all along" tendency of hindsight bias can be seen as a bad quality in science, does it ever do good?

After eating dinner with a friend the other day, she proposed to me that she found herself a website that explained how she could lose 20 pounds in 30 days, without having to do any exercise at all! Now, I know that this sounds extremely possible, but I decided to check the website out to see if it was all it was cracked out to be. Hopping on my computer, I went to http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/06/how-to-lose-20-lbs-of-fat-in-30-days-without-doing-any-exercise/ and read a little about what their weight loss regiment, and what I found nearly made me laugh out loud.
The weight loss plan is fairly simple, avoid white carbohydrates (because that makes sense), eat the same few meals over and over again, don't drink calories, and take one day off per week. Off the bat, this website is ripe with things that disprove its validity. There is no scientific proof stated on the website, and all of the facts come from the first-hand experience of the author. He then imposes the reader on the bandwagon fallacy, stating that "the most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few means over and over again", trying to sum up that success is derived from that point, but remember that correlation doesn't mean causation! There might be another variable that affected weight loss, like exercise maybe? Long story short, as great as it sounds to be able to eat infinite amounts of junk food one day out of the week to lose weight, this weight loss diet has no scientific backing, and is more of a pseudoscience than a proven weight loss regiment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z36LxkWt0Dk&feature=related
http://discovermagazine.com/2003/jun/feattongue/tongue_3.jpg (another picture)

The video above is about a woman named Cheryl Schiltz, she lost over 98% of her vestibular system capabilities. The vestibular system's function is mostly balance, but also effects spatial learning and head position. Cheryl woke up one morning and found that she couldn't balance and could barely stand up right, and without something to hold on to, she would completely lose her balance. In the video they show a new piece of technology that has been able to help her. The device utilizes the brain's plasticity and the substitution effect. The way that the device works is that a electrode is placed on Cheryl's tongue and that is hooked up to a computer, the helmet that she wears can determine the tilt of her body when she makes slight movements and sends the signals to the electrode on her tongue and allows her to feel her balance through various electrical signals on her tongue. Because she has lost her vestinbular sense through damage to hair cells in her inner ear, she needs to use another method of getting the signals of her direction to her brain, that's why she wears the electrode on her tongue. After wearing the device and removing it, they found that she was able to still balance for some time with out the device.

Being able to balance afterwards is due to a residual effect. They believe that when Cheryl is using the device, that the brain is utilizing this new stimulus to build a new connection to the vestibular part of the brain. This has to do with the phrase, "Neurons that fire together, wire together." After using the device for several months, they found that the residual effect was lasting longer each time and after so many months, Cheryl was able to cut down the amount she used the device to only once every two to three months. It is amazing to see and learn about how amazing the brain is and how it is able to compensate for things and even repair itself. I found this specific study very interesting and it makes me wonder what else can be done to people that have lost some sort of sense or have some other brain function.

In our book, there is a section in the first chapter about the dangers of pseudoscience. It talks about the case with Candace Newmaker who died because of a pseudoscientific treatment. The re-birthing therapy has children reenact the trauma of the birthing process. Candace died because therapists wrapped her in a blanket and sat on her. The young girl was strangled to death and was even voicing her pain and concerns. How could someone, who claims to be trying to help a child, put so much weight on them and continue traumatizing them after witnessing them vomit and complain of pain? This situation made me really sad and anti-pseudoscience. I could not believe that people have actually died because of these strange ideas of therapy. It also surprised me that so many people believe that things with no connection to someone's problems could be the solution.

Recently, we learnt the visual system in class. We can see shape, color and motion through our eyes, and when we process different ways of visual perception, we use different parts of our visual cortex. We also learnt about illusions. The book talks about how some "illusions can illustrate principles of sensation and perception." If we observe, we can see many interesting illusions are very common and useful in real life.

One style of art that makes use of illusions is called Op art (optical art) . It is a perceptual experience related to how vision functions. Op arts use connections between illusions and picture planes that make art abstract but meaningful. When we look at op arts, we see movement, hidden images, flashing and vibration, patterns, or alternatively, of swelling or warping. So op art is not just a piece of art, it is so vivid that we can see life in those abstract figures.

Op Art is also being used in fahion, interior decoration.

Things we studied in psychology classes, like illusions can be very useful in our real life.

When I was looking through the internet to try and find something to write about I can upon some articles about the creature called Bigfoot. Bigfoot is a large humanoid creature covered in dark hair, like a gorilla, that is said to live in the Pacific Northwest, in the states of Washington, Oregon, Northern California, and British Columbia, Canada. Bigfoot sightings and reports pop up sporadically from time to time, but there has not been any solid evidence to support its existence.
The thinking behind Bigfoot being real definitely does not follow the six principles of scientific thinking. First off, it is not falsifiable; there is no way that someone can prove that Bigfoot does not exist. Even though many have tried to find it, no one has found any solid evidence. Proponents of Bigfoot still claim that it is out there; they were just looking in the wrong spot. Since one person cannot be everywhere at once, it is impossible to disprove the existence.
Also based off the fact that is has been so many years and so many people have looked for this creature, Bigfoot is definitely an extraordinary claim. Therefore, it would require a vast amount of real hard evidence, for example the actual creature, for it to be proven true.
Lastly, when it comes to Bigfoot, it would be best to follow the principal of Occam's razor where the simplest explanation is usually the best. In this case it would be that the evidence supporting Bigfoot is usually fabricated or it is something common like a bear track that is being misinterpreted as a Bigfoot track. For example, there is a man that came forward and admitted to playing Bigfoot in the famous 1967 Hoax footage.

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=23657
http://www.oregonbigfoot.com/sounds.php

While reading the Lilienfeld textbook, the one concept that really stood out to me was the concept of selective attention. According to the textbook, this means using one sensory channel to focus on one thing while all the other channels are either completely ignored or completely minimized. This idea really stood out to me because I can apply it to my life nearly every single day. For example, sometimes during class I get distracted by a doodle on my notebook. Soon all my attention is then focused through my eyesight onto this doodle and I completely block out my hearing and what the teacher is saying. Another example of when I am subjected to selective attention is when I am watching a hockey game on TV and I pay attention to absolutely nothing else around me since I am too emerged into the game. This this idea happens so frequently to just about everyone that it is important to understand what it is and when it is happening. If this theory was not developed, many people would happen to miss a lot of important information and not even realize it. Thanks to this concept if we find ourselves "getting into the zone" we may be able to snap out of it if we feel like we might miss something important. While it is maybe ideal to never reach this state, unless a lot of focus is needed, it is very difficult to avoid. Which makes me think, is there any way that it can be avoided or prevented? Because I know, at least for me, I would be able to get many more things done.Selective attention is frequently featured in a variety of magic tricks. One of the most popular is a quick change routine, where a women quickly changes from dress to dress as a man distracts with props and lighting, as shown here in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89G5DbZrZ7s

The Phantom Limb

I was amazed when we watched that video during lecture when the scientist was running tests on the patient with an amputated arm. When the doctor would touch the man's cheek he said he felt it in his "phantom arm". I don't understand how the man could still feel it in his nonexistent arm even though his brain new that it wasn't there. I was intrigued by the fact that the brain could rearrange itself so that you could still feel a limb that wasn't there. So I did some research and found a related article that was talking about how to cure phantom limb pain. It said that the reason why you feel pain in limbs that aren't there is because the brain has distorted maps of where the body part actually is. The article goes on to say that to treat phantom limb pain you have to train the brain and correct the distorted maps. They found during a study that people with phantom limb pain would activate phantom pain when they imagined pursing the lips, opening and closing the intact hand, and opening and closing the phantom hand. During the study that the article explains nine out of thirteen people with phantom limb pain said that their pain was cut in half. They were able to train the patient's brains so that they would feel less pain. I just thought that this was a cool idea.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain

October has arrived, and you may have notices various sign of Halloween not too far off. Given this time of the year, I wanted to see if there was a correlation of Schachter's Theory and customers of "haunted attractions" such as Valley Scare, Frightmares at Buck Hill, etc. In high school I had the opportunity to be apart of an "attraction" in my home town. It was a fund raiser for the local fire explorers, and we would turn a 9,000 square foot horse barn at the county fair grounds into a haunted house. I was apart of this event for four years and experienced many interesting situations throughout.
When thinking about Schachter's classic experiment, I couldn't help but to compare it to the way people act inside a haunted house. As an actor in the haunt I had a first hand experience in seeing how the various patrons would react to many different settings.
The independant variable would be the same as Schachter's, there are high fear situations such as a group of people being surprised by an actor in the dark or even such things as certain classic horror film scenes being recreated. There can also be low fear situations such as empty hallways connecting the rooms or the final exit while leaving the haunted house. The subjects or patrons are selected at random but all have the knowledge of what they are expecting, they would enter the building in small groups which usually consisted of people they know.

High Fear Situation:

Just like Schachter's experiment concluded, when a group of people are exposed to a situation that unanimously conducts fear they tend to stay together in a group (a very tight group). The patrons would practically climb on top of each other because that would be their natural response to the thrill they were seeing.

Low Fear Situation:

Even though these situations are rare in a haunted house, I was able to see them first hand. One great way I saw this was in what we call a "Drop Panel".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo9APQAaY6I
In the video you will see that a section of a wall will slide down to reveal an actor behind it. This was especially good to see low fear situations because the customers would be caught off-guard, usually walking down a dark hallway. The one year I was behind the drop panel, I saw the same situation. The group would be walking down the hallway, still single file, but somewhat staggered. As soon as the panel would drop and I would be revealed the patrons would almost freeze in place, but then scurry off in a much condensed group.
I think this experiment and my perspective of haunted house customers are pretty closely correlated. People exposed to high fear tend to stay together, where as people who are not exposed to fear at all are more likely to be independent.

Stay up late, and turn on the television. You will find nothing but infomercials trying to sell "gods-gift" to get the body you've always wanted. For an easy payment of $29.95, you can buy this handheld machine that is guaranteed to make you skinnier in just 6 minutes a day. Maybe you have seen this one... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbsSeVr5NSI. The commercial tries to fool you into thinking that lifting real weights are ineffective. Quite the contrary! You need to lift weights or have some form of resistance that stress the muscles just enough for there to be results. Even if you're an old, old lady, the resistance of the 2.5 lbs. model for women and the 5 lbs. version for men is not going to be enough weight.
Could this be an example of ruling out a rival hypothesis? Can we believe that the people who lost weight using the Shake Weight didn't work out other than shaking plastic? Diet and nutrition are the important factors in weight loss. By watching what you eat, you are much more likely to see a difference in your arms and the rest of our body. The fact is, without diet and a regular exercise routine that includes weights and cardio, you're never going to see extreme results, period. The people who received positive results from the Shake Weight must have watching what they were eating and working out regularly
We all need to pay attention and watch out for these kinds of scams. To do this, simple common sense is needed. When we see that results are "scientifically proven" in infomercials, we need to ask ourselves; "are there any other variables that the commercial isn't mentioning?" The results of the weight loss could be due to the fact that the people who showed results using the product also dieted and exercised. If we don't use common sense to avoid purchasing these scams, our wallets will soon be empty and our houses will be cluttered with useless products.

My generation has become a trendsetting, technological new-age. With the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Apple products, the Android system, Google, and so much more, most of us have no choice but to live our lives through devices. On the Psychology Today website I found an article about the theory that people are more emotionally invested in technology than in their family members. The title of the article is "Do you love your iPhone more than your mother?" by Ron Doyle. I found this article very intriguing because I recently lost my brand new iPhone 4 and since now, I've been handling it like it's a tragedy.
The article outlines many good and supporting ideas surrounding the love theory. To analyze this theory we would use the 5th principle of the critical thinking principles. The principle states extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence meaning to prove this theory correct, they would need to support it with a lot of thorough evidence. Personally, I do not love my iPhone more than my mother, but I miss it so much that it sometimes feels that way. According to the article, humans tend to like softer, cuddlier things more than hard, metal ones. So most humans would instinctively love their mothers more, besides everybody needs their mom. In the end the underlying question of whether people love their iPhones more than their mothers is disproved.
Extraordinary as the claim was it never seemed true, but most people wouldn't think so. It's a pure attachment to technology and social-networking that drives us to need our mobile devices. Especially the new and improved smart phones that virtually do everything. This article caught my attention and made a lot of good points and now I'm even more excited to buy my new iPhone 5.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/you-20/201005/do-you-love-your-iphone-more-your-mother

For the longest time, scientists have been debating whether a human's behavior is genetic (from nature) or learned (from nurture). There have been researches that show either effects of nature or nurture's role in a person's psychological trait.
A study that supports the nature-nurture debate is from the article that we had to read for week three's discussion: the long line of criminality in the Bogle family (http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/f11psy1001/pdf/BIO.Handout.bogle_family_story.pdf). In this study it showed the violent and criminal behavior in the multi-generation of the Bogle clan. Along with "Rooster" Bogle, many of his siblings and their children, his own children, and grandchildren have been arrested and convicted; 28 counts to be exact. Was it the blood line that led them to such behaviors or was it the environment they were raised in?
After reading this shocking article I realized how important it is to really find out if nature or nurture has the bigger effect on the human behavior. Once the source of any situation is found, coming up with a solution becomes more simple. Finding out if it is nature or nurture will help us prevent (future) unwanted behaviors from occurring. If it is nature, is it possible to influence a person's doing for the better? Can we break the cycle? Trying to change a quality that is born within a person is going to be very difficult to do and I'm not even sure if it is possible. I think if it is nurture, it will be easier for researchers to see where and what went wrong so it will also be easier to create better outcome. Anything learned can be unlearned.
Because this debate is still going on it makes me wonder about myself and my future. Will it be nature that will influence my future children or will I have to nurture them with what I want? I worry at which will have a stronger affect because not knowing becomes not knowing how to deal with it later.

The concept of a heuristic caught my attention while reading the Lilienfeld text. Heuristics are "mental shortcuts that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world." -Lilienfeld 46. In other words, heuristics are something that we already know, and since we know them, we can shortcut doing or learning things over and over again. They are sort of 'rules of thumbs.' I think heuristics are important because we use them in our everyday lives. For example, if I look up the weather forecast for the day and it says the high temperature is going to be 55 degrees, I know that is going to be chilly so I plan to wear a jacket. If I didn't use a heuristic, I would have to go outside and decide if I would wear a tank top and shorts or a jacket and jeans. Heuristics save us a lot of time and mental energy, which is why they are so important to us. Although heuristics save us a lot of time, they also may be used by the media against us. The media reports on increasing cases of violence in the public, and by using our heuristics, we believe most reports. Oftentimes, media reports are swayed and are not the full truth. As shown by John Stossel, we have to be careful of the stories that the media plays on our tendency to use heuristics with. When should we use heuristics; where do we draw the line between rules of thumbs and things we must investigate? This video shows a good example of an availability heuristic and why we must always mentally be on our toes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOzAxhu6w2s&feature=related

"Subliminal Advertising Leaves it's Mark On the Brain" was an article published in Science Daily, a news website in March of 2007. As its name suggests, this article focused on the use of subliminal messaging in American advertisements and their effect on the human brain. To answer the question of whether or not subliminal messages could be picked up by the subconscious mind a series of experiments were performed. In one such experiment, an fMRI was used to monitor the activity in the primary visual cortex of a subject's brain as they were exposed to images that they were not consciously aware of. The results showed that the primary visual cortex picked up on these images even though the subject did not remember seeing them, hence providing evidence that our minds do retain information without us realizing it.
Some, like me a few weeks ago, hear the words "subliminal messaging" and either don't believe in it or assume it means mind control. The Lilienfeld text book sheds some light on this question and proving both opinions wrong by highlighting the difference between two very different psychological terms. Although subliminal perception, the process of sensory information that occurs below the level of conscious awareness, can be supported by scientific evidence, subliminal persuasion, sub threshold influences over our decisions is not. This means that just because subliminal images can reach our minds, that doesn't mean we will subliminally act on them.

I think that one of the most important concepts we have learned about so far is the concept of nature vs. nurture. This has become a very controversial issue, especially recently. Nature vs. nurture is an idea that questions why people are the way they are. One theory is that people are born with certain biological traits that define who they will become. The theory of nurture says that it is not, in fact, our genes that generate our traits, but the way in which we were brought up in society.
Most scientists are entertaining the possibility that both nature and nurture determine how a person comes to be who they are. On the nature side, there is much evidence that supports the theory that biologically, every person receives some of their traits from their parents. This could be eye color, hair color, height, or even liking or disliking certain foods. Personally, I know that there are a number of biological factors I get from my parents. One of those is my stubbornness. That is a quality that runs in both sides of my family. Here is a YouTube video that I found that shows a pair of identical twins that were separated at birth. Upon finally meeting, these two women realized that there were similarities between them that were more than just coincidences. They soon found out that biological factors do take a part in defining who you are. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yTCShemS_0&feature=related
It is also very possible that nurture is an important aspect in why people are the way they are. Nurture includes not only the way a person was raised, but also the social culture they were brought up in. A person raised in a wealthy family who had every opportunity placed in front of them would turn out differently than a person who grew up in a high-crime neighborhood just on the poverty line. Factors such as these will determine how a person is later in life, but with the help of biological factors too. One thing I am still wondering about is whether it is nature or nurture that determines things more. Chances are, it is not an even 50/50 split of nature and nurture. There is some sort of balance between the two.

Intelligence is the single most important contributing factor for humanity's rise to the most dominant species on the planet. This trait distinguishes humans from other animals because of how much greater our capacity is for it. However, the question remains whether or not our high level of intelligence is governed more by our heredity or by our environment. In the Lilienfeld text, three types of studies are described and they are family studies, adoption studies, and twin studies. These studies are very useful in determining differences in genetics and environmental factors. These studies have been used with various intelligence tests in order to determine correlations between people with similar genetics or environment. This allows scientists to analyze the relationship and make hypotheses however in this particular case no conclusion about whether nature or nurture plays a bigger role in the development of intelligence. In my opinion genetics plays a bigger role as it sets the bar for a person's intelligence level as well as determines the ease with which environment can achieve intellectual potential.

Before the tragic events of 9/11, the only thing passengers had to remove before stepping in the scanner at the airport was their shoes. Now they have to remove almost all of the contents of their bags only to have to repack everything two minutes later. We all know it is unacceptable to say bomb anywhere near an airport but what if a passenger is called aside for an extra in-depth screening merely for the way he or she looks, or based on little, trivial behaviors?
As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 came and went, a new form of security was introduced at many airports across the Untied States. SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observational Techniques) is a program that monitors the behavior of passengers as they wait in line to pass through security. If someone's behavior is even remotely suspicious, that person is then pulled aside for an "extra" look at his bag. Many officers will start a casual conversation just to see how the spotted passenger responds. If they don't find the given answers suspicious, they will clear the passenger to board. If they suspect that he is trying to hide something, they will send him to another officer that will just observe the passenger's behavior, and from there determine whether or not he is clear to board the plane.
So how should one conduct one's self to ensure one can board the airplane without enduring unfair searches and questioning? In reading this article, I feel that one should behave in a normal fashion and refrain from getting nervous in front of the officers. I also feel that maybe this strategy is taking security one step too far because the mere presences of authority figures often puts even the most innocent of people on edge. Then again, the people hired to "people watch" are trained professionals in the study of psychology so I guess they know what they are doing!

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/201109/airport-screening-post-911-what-happens-you-even-get-any-the-machines

Superstitions

While reading Chapter 2 in the Lilienfeld textbook, the idea of correlation vs. causation was one I could directly relate to in my everyday life. Many times when "coincidental" things occur in my life, I associate them with a superstitious idea instead of just coming up with a reasonable answer of why that may have occurred.

There have been many instances in my life where I reach for my phone to text my mom, but she beats me to it and it vibrates as I pick it up. Instantly the thought of "wow, my mom and I must have mental telepathy because how did she know I wanted to talk to her" crosses my mind. The textbook describes that we assume there are usually two factors that play a role in a situation. The A and B factor for short. In this case the A factor would be I wanted to text my mom, and the B factor would be her texting me first instead. People, like myself, instantly assume that the A factor "causes" the B factor. Or in other words, the thought of texting my mom caused her to sense this and text me first. In reality, we should know that this so called "mentally telepathy" indeed does not exist and maybe there is another factor, or factor C that plays a role in the situation that we simply ignore because we immediately assume the first situation. The book asks you to think about the situation in other way. In this situation, you could ask yourself the question of how many times do your receive texts a day? Or, because your mom is the closet person to you and the person you most frequently text (if this is the case for you), the amount of times you receive a text from her a day is very frequent. By asking yourself these questions, you realize that yes; maybe there was a C factor that played a role in this situation. It may have just been coincidental that I picked up the phone at the precise time my mom texts me, because when in reality, I receive multiple texts from her a day.

Out of curiosity one day, I decided to do a little research on phrenology to see how far the study of psychology had come in the last few hundred years. I was surprised at what I learned about this science of the nineteenth century.

A few centuries ago, Phrenology was widely considered as a valid psychological science. In modern society, scientists have been able to disprove the vast majority of claims made by phrenologists (there is no bump on your skull that can be specifically correlated to your sense of humor, for example). Despite some of the more ridiculous claims made by phrenologists, it could be argued that the science did indeed push forth psychological studies.

You may be wondering, "How does a pseudoscience that originated in the 1800's have any positive impact on the psychological world?" Well for one thing, there were a few things that phrenology had right about the human brain: certain enlargements in the brain can indeed have an impact on certain abilities (such as abilities with language), however; even the few positive traits of phrenology studies seem to be shadowed by its glaring errors. So what did phrenology do for the study of psychology?

http://www.innominatesociety.com/Articles/PHRENOLOGY%20IN%20AMERICAN%20MEDICINE.htm

As this article points out, phrenology was one of the first sciences to point to the fact that the human mind may be centered in the brain. Society was so naïve about how our conscious worked at all. Though in modern times phrenology seems a bit silly, at the time it was a good science. It was falsifiable, had evidence to support certain aspects of its claims, and was replicated several times. Though it has been proven false today, it was a huge stride forward yesterday. We never know how silly the things we believe today will seem in a few hundred years to a new generation of individuals.

As I was perusing through the online site for "Psychology Today," I stumbled upon a rather interesting article that I have chosen to do my blog on. It is about Xanax, the anti-anxiety drug, and why more and more people are beginning to abuse it. It caught my eye because it is a drug that a lot of people have heard about and I even know quite a number of people that use the drug themselves. So I began to wonder, why is it so addictive, and why are people just rushing out to get it?
First, allow me to cover what Xanax is, and a short summary of how Xanax works. Xanax is an anti-anxiety drug, which means essentially that it calms you down. It relaxes the body when you are wound up. The thing about Xanax is, that it has a very short half-life, so it doesn't last long. But on the other hand, it is very lilpophilic which means that it enters the brain quickly. So it kinda hits you right away. So what I got out of it was that the pill relaxes you, the effects hit you quickly, but don't stay with you for very long. The half-life time is about six to twenty hours.
Apparently Xanax is all the rage these days because a clinic in Kentucky had to shut off their prescriptions to Xanax because people were coming in waves asking for prescriptions and refilling their own. Many of the clinic workers believe that it is being abused. So, instead, they cut off the prescriptions and began handing out different anti-anxiety medications.
But another aspect of Xanax is the fact that you can get withdrawals from not using. This most common of these effects being delirium and violent seizures. So the clinic is still helping to wean these users off of Xanax and hopefully breaking them of this addiction.
But my question for you, the readers is this. Why Xanax? There are many other anti-anxiety medications out there. What makes Xanax so special? I can honestly say that I hope that psychologists and pharmacologists figure out this issue soon, so they can help all of the poor addicts.
http://psychiatrist-blog.blogspot.com/2007/02/why-docs-dont-like-xanax-some-of-us.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shrink-rap-today/201109/xanax-is-my-favorite-palindrome

According to the article, Why you'd be stupid to cheat on your wife: Unfaithful men have lower IQs, say scientists, those men who are not faithful have lower IQs than those men who are faithful. They say that it all stems from evolution. In the past, polygamy was a common practice. As evolution took its toll on human development, polygamy has declined. Thus, "sexually exclusive relationship is an 'evolutionarily novel' development for them [men]." According to the article, more intelligent people are more likely to partake in "new practices".

The article didn't provide any actual data or findings from the study, so it fails the fifth scientific principle in our text book, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". All that the article said was conjecture based on theories and claims without actual data or findings. Thus, without extraordinary evidence, or evidence of any kind to support the extraordinary claim, the study fails to provide an effective argument.

The statistics provided in the article detailed the intelligence of people (both men and women) who are either religious or not religious. While there may be a connection between conservative ideas and liberal ideas and "new practices", this study doesn't provide evidence to prove such a connection. Even so, if there were to be a connection, the evidence is still based on correlation implying causation which isn't the case. It could be true that a third variable, perhaps life style, that causes an increase in infidelity. If a family is constantly in turmoil, then relationship conflicts will cause decreased happiness; thus, increased infidelity. It also so happens that people with a lower IQ tend to have less fulfilling careers, a major cause of lower-income life styles. It is also not out of the question that people with higher IQs just don't get caught as often.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254420/Men-cheat-wives-intelligent-faithful-husbands.html#ixzz1ZfnI4zPd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WMicvkgVdQ

The debate between nature and nurture is far from over; psychologists still argue over which has the greater influence in making a person who they are. (Nature vs Nurture). I often find myself wondering which has had more of an impact on creating me. Looking back, I frequently imitated my parents and peers, mimicking behaviors and then determining whether the outcome was preferable or not. I act a lot like my father before me; I think carefully before acting, but all it takes is one positive experience for an addiction to form. Yet, as I have grown older, I have become less like my father and more influenced by the ideas presented to me by schooling and friendships. I started keeping careful track of my habits, ensuring they were in check and not becoming an addiction; my environment has taught me addictions are bad, despite something inside of me pushing back. So which is the more important aspect of human behavior, nature or nurture? Let's take into account the way a person appears; does that not influence how others act towards another, thus creating a chain reaction into their own behavior? How is this possible? Nature defines how we physically appear, yet impacts, and is impacted by, how we are nurtured? Nature is the instructions we are given before the test, and nurture is what we learn to prepare us for the test. It is not "Nature vs. Nurture", but "Nature AND Nurture". Without instructions, you don't know what is important; without answers, you can't complete the test. Both are equally important to being successful, and both have an equal impact on whom we become.

Psychologists conduct adoption studies to determine how traits vary in people raised away from their biological parents. Adoption studies are a way to look at the nature versus nurture debate. If an individual raised away from his or her family grows up to have similar characteristics to their biological parents then the characteristics are strongly influenced by genetics rather then by the environment. If the individual raised away from their biological parents have characteristics that differ from their biological family then those characteristics are influenced more by the persons environment. One set back of Adoption studies is that the adoption agencies use selective placement, where they place the child in a home similar to there biological parents. I believe adoption studies are important because they help us determine what characteristics are influenced by either a persons environment or by their genetics. I really like the idea that a persons environment can influence their characteristics just as much as genetics do, and adoption studies are great way to determine which characteristics are influenced by genes or a persons environment. Another adoption study that can more closely examine the influence of characteristics would be a twin adoption study, where a monozygotic twins are adopted by two different families. Since monozygotic twins share 100 percent of their genes if they grow up and have different characteristics then those characteristics are very strongly influenced by a persons environment. Adoption studies are a great way to determine what influences a persons characteristics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J71L_15mO4M&feature=relmfu

One concept that I find interesting in the Lilienfeld textbook is selective attention. Selective attention gives us the ability to focus on one stimulus even when we are receiving many inputs from our surroundings. There are so many things happening around us in our everyday lives, it would be impossible to function if we could not "turn down the volume" of certain stimuli. This particular brain function occurs in the reticular activating system and the forebrain. This concept is important because it affects everyone on a daily basis. It affects our ability to have a conversation with someone while walking down the street, pay attention while driving, or respond to our name being called across a room. We tend to hear things that are important to us, such as our names. This phenomenon is called the filter theory of attention and the basic steps are shown in the image below.
One real life example of selective attention that is important in my life is rowing. In rowing there are many stimuli around each rower and the boat; the wind, the water, splashing, other boats, riverbank scenery, and the cold temperatures. However, the stimuli that are important to pay attention to are the rower in front of you, the voice of the coxswain, and your own muscle and body signals. Selective attention allows me to pay attention to what is necessary in order to perform to my best ability. Rowing takes a lot of focus so this concept is very important to my teammates and I. Without selective attention rowing and many other sports would not be possible.
I wonder if certain people have a better ability to ignore certain inputs because some people can do homework or read in a loud room, whereas others have to have complete silence. Also, some of my teammates are much better at focusing in the boat than others. I'm sure there is a reason for this but I don't know if it is related to selective attention or another function of the brain.

I found the section in chapter 3 in the text book about Twin Studies very interesting. A twin study analysis how traits differ from identical twins and fraternal twins. Identical twins are monozygotic meaning they originate from one zygote, while fraternal twins are dizygotic because two different sperm fertilize two eggs instead of one. Identical twins share 100 percent of their genes and fraternal only 50 percent.
A twin study looks at how identical twins are more similar than fraternal. They look at different traits of each. For example if identical twins are similar in intelligence and fraternal are not then if shows that intelligence can be genetically influenced. This study is a good way to study the Nature v. Nurture concept. They can use twins to see what is genetically influenced and what is caused by environment.
I found this particular section interesting because I am an identical twin. My brother and I are similar in many ways. I feel if we were being studied we would be great examples of what traits are from our genes and what comes from our environment. The only problem with that is that we grew up together so it would be a little more difficult. As we grew up we became less alike. We dress differently now, and some of our biggest differences is our taste in music, food, and how we act socially. So it seems to me as we got older we became less and less alike. One thing that still puzzles me about this is how two people can share 100 percent of their genes but still be two completely different people(although we are also alike in many different ways.

http://www.narth.com/docs/whitehead2.html

Nature vs. Nurture

It is obviously known in the psychology world that both heredity and environment shape how our behavior matures. However, the extent to which affects you more is not known (and will probably never be fully known), and scientists are constantly conducting experiments to learn more about nature versus nurture. To find more about hereditability, scientists use behavioral genetic designs, which include family studies, twin studies, and adoption studies. In family studies, the researcher studies how a trait runs in an intact family, meaning the family members have been raised in the same house under the same conditions. Twin studies are done (obviously) amongst identical twins. Because the twins are more similar genetically than non-twin siblings, a twin study allows the researcher to find out how the twins' genes affect their behavior. Adoption studies are done between adopted children who are not like their parents genetically but allow the researcher to see how their environment affects the adopted child (Lilenfeld 116-117). By conducting these studies, the researchers can see how much genes and environment affect the behavior of the families.
On an article on the PBS Nova website, some scientists came to the theory that the nature vs. nurture issue swings heavily to the nurture side. The researchers did a study on what had been recently discovered as a "cancer gene". On a group of 45,000 sets of twins, the researchers concluded that it is ones environment that causes cancer and not-so-much hereditability. They conducted a twin study to find out the correlation between the twins' environments and if they get cancer. Although this study had profound affects on the cancer gene theory, it does not disprove the theory of the cancer gene.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/nature-versus-nurture-revisited.html

At one point or another, we are all "Mentally Ill". Society is becoming aware of this fact because psychological procedures are popularizing. They are now a common part of our society. Due to the abstract nature of psychology, we have not yet even scratched the surface. Therefore, as psychological procedure becomes more popular, so does pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is best defined by defining what makes a concept science. If a concept does not fulfill these criteria it is pseudoscience. In our Psych 1001 textbook, Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding, author Scott Lilienfeld explores pseudoscience in chapter one. I believe that the way that pseudoscience is explored in the textbook raises a fundamental question: is pseudoscience necessary for science, or is it just arbitrary and dangerous to society? For me, this question was raised from the case of Candace Newmaker. Candace was a 10-year-old girl subject to a pseudoscientific therapy for her behavioral problems. The therapy was scientifically doubtful, and led to her death showing that pseudoscience is dangerous especially in psychological procedures because that is when we are most vulnerable. Many argue that pseudoscientific theories, like ESP, are purely based on coincidence. Others argue that they are valid because they sometimes yield successful results. I would argue the former because I have also been subject to some "pseudoscientific" ideas. Last year I used something called "binaural beats", sound frequencies that were allegedly supposed to alter brain waves to produce sleep, weight loss, increased concentration, etc. After a month using this therapy I stopped to evaluate it, realizing that it had no effect on me. However, had I received even a fraction of the desired result, I would have believed it was real. So, I really have no way of knowing if it worked or not. Critics of pseudoscience say that it exploits the belief of people by making false claims. I disagree slightly because all science begins with pseudoscience, but criticism and evaluation make for safe use of it. Thus, I do believe that pseudoscience is inherently dangerous but also that it is necessary in order to distinguish scientific ideas.

Recently, I stumbled upon an article on the NPR website about identical twins who were separated at birth. While I do realize that this is not the same as a typical twin study, studying these twins was fascinating and eye-opening to me. In the past few days, I've read up on more stories of cases in which identical twins are unaware that they have a sibling until well into their adult lives. The results are consistently staggering.
In almost all of the cases, the separated twins had an incredible amount of commonalities in spite of growing up in entirely different families and places. The commonalities ranged from similar hair and facial hair styles to the names of spouses, children, and household pets. While the separated twins have proved to be eerily similar in spite of growing up in completely different environments, it really does make me wonder how much of it is coincidental. It may seem crazy to simply chalk all these incredible similarities up to pure coincidence, there really isn't any tangible evidence from these stories that suggests that the similarities are caused purely by genetics. While the twins' environments were entirely different, there simply just is not any evidence that says the observed similarities are not by totally random happenstance. The observed levels of commonality could very well exist in two different people who share no kinship.
The articles I read were very intriguing, but I wish there were a way to believe the implications. However, due to the ethical controversy, another study of twins being separated at birth is highly unlikely. Which really just leaves me to sit and ponder over what commonalities can generally be caused by genetics and what was purely coincidental.

Checking, sniping, dangles, just a few of the technical terms used by hockey players and fans. If you've played or watched hockey you probably know what these words represent, and if you haven't well you're in luck because you live in Minnesota now.

Now lets start to talk about the psychology of playing/watching the sport and its impact on the language used. In 2008 the University of Chicago conducted research on hockey players, fans, and non-fans. The research shows that the brain regions normally involved in action and planning is activated when engaging in conversations about hockey. this research shows that playing and watching sports has enduring effects on language understanding by creating neural connections between the action areas of the brain and the language areas. This also shows that the adult brain may be more flexible than we have previously thought.

The research consisted of the 3 groups listening to sentences about hockey and everyday activities. All 3 groups scored consistently the same when understanding language associated with everyday activities while the 2 hockey groups scored substantially better when understanding language associated with hockey. The reason for this may sound obvious but when their brains were examined for activity the 2 hockey groups showed activity in the action parts of the brain while the non-fan group did not.

During lecture, We briefly covered the plasticity of the brain. In other words, the ability of the brain to change its structure as new knowledge is obtained. The fact that experiences from our daily lives shape the structure of our brain is simply amazing. In order to understand this, think of an imprint of a coin on a piece of clay. The clay (your brain) has to physically change in order to take on the imprint of the coin. This process occurs during our entire lifetime. The type of plasticity taking place depends on the age and situation of the person. For example, very young children have nearly twice as many synapses per neuron. As they grow, weaker synapses are deleted through a process called synaptic pruning. Neurons need to have a function and purpose in order for them to exist without the threat of being "pruned". So not only does the brain build new pathways and structures, it also has the ability to break down structures that are deemed useless.
Neuroplasticity is also very prevalent in people who suffer from brain damage. In these cases, the brain not only tries to repair the damaged areas, but also maximizes other areas of the brain in order to make up for the loss of function. In one study, rats were given brain damage in particular areas of the brain. They found that cells surrounding the damaged areas actually changed their function and shape so that they could take on the functions of the damaged cells.
I'm obviously no doctor, but neuroplasticity seems like a likely source for finding new advancements in the treatment of brain damaged patients. Even with all the technology we have, brain damage is still deemed irreversible in many cases.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-pZMi8JYw4

Drubach, D. (2000). The Brain Explained, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Gopnic, A., Meltzoff, A., Kuhl, P. (1999). The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind, New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
John F. Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development, Vanderbilt University Staff. Brain Plasticity, Retrieved July 28, 2002 from http://kc.vanderbilt.edu/kennedy/research/topics/plasticity.html
Kandel, E.R., Schwartz, J.H., and Jessell, T.M. (2001). Principles of Neural Science. (4th ed.), New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kolb, B. (Winter 2000). Experience and the developing brain. Education Canada, 39(4), 24-26.

Is synesthesia genetic or is it something that can be developed? Are the same experiences shared among people with synesthesia? For example, do people who see colors when hearing music see the same colors for each musical key? A problem with defining synesthesia is that one could think they see color while listening to music when another person can see them vivdly. There may be considerable exceptions in that some people may have slight synesthesia that isn't as developed as people who have been able to notice it a lot more. That is where the question of whether or not it is genetic or developmental comes in. It seems that many great musicians seem to have this ability to see color while listening or writing music, which takes away from the creative ability of those without synesthesia.
There may be scientific ways of proving whether or not someone has synesthesia by analyzing their brain activity when hearing music. It would be interesting to see if people that think they have it begin to have more brain activity as they try to train themselves more and more to see colors when listening to music. If they do have more brain activity, would it be the same as someone who already clearly has synesthesia?
A bias that many people have is that musicians are the ones who are most likely to have synesthesia in relation to music. However, if synesthesia were truly genetic, then non-musicians could be just as likely to have the ability to see color while listening to music. I would really like to know if someone without synesthesia could develop it or if it is something that can only be passed down genetically.
The image below shows which colors are associated with which keys. What I am wondering, then, is how they determine that these are the set colors? If a person sees a different color for a certain key, does that mean that they don't have synesthesia?

Try this! Can you hear anything while watching this clip?

-April Dawn T. Valete

So far in Psychology I've learned a lot and retained a little! But one of the things that stuck with me were the lessons on Perception. Discussing the 5 senses, one in particular vision. During class we've went over various situations involving pictures and motion pictures, testing our eyes (vision). Working on Perception and Sensation. And what I've come to find out is that our eyes and brain are very closely related in terms of putting an image together. What we perceive to true physically and mentally. For example if a piece of a pattern was to be missing, and we glanced away from the center of the pattern, our brain would fill in the void with the pattern. It's this false perception our brain gives us to believe the entire pattern is present. When all the time if we were to be looking head onto the picture we would clearly see the void in the pattern. This is because physically head on were looking at the pattern as a whole and can see there is a void present. Mentally now, once we've glanced away our brain establishes the pattern as a whole. It is a visual cue our brain produces. Kind of a blind spot if you will.
http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ig/Optical-Illusions/Hermann-Grid-Illusion.htm

This Illusion doesn't have a missing portion of the puzzle. But still gives off the false perception, this filling in the brain does. It's because the brain takes in this pattern and from what it can make up of it when it looks at it from a different angle fills it in from what the surroundings look like.

I recently read an intriguing article on twin studies comparing monozygotic twins to dizygotic twins to opposite sex dizygotic twins. The study was interested in finding whether the monozygotic twins who shared 100% of their genes shared more similar traits than the dizygotic twin sets that had nearly half that amount of shared genes. Obviously, this is a twin study to test whether genetics are influential in characteristics, such as extraversion or intelligence, or whether environmental experiences are more influential. If the monozygotic (MZ) twins illustrate stronger correlation in characteristic similarity than the dizygotic (DZ) twins, it can be assumed genetics are influencing characteristics.
This was a controlled experiment, but did contain a third variable, "equal environments". The researchers found that similarity of treatment for each twin during childhood was a possible contributing factor in development. For instance, the MZ twins resembled one another more than the DZ twins and therefore were treated as one compared to DZ twins being treated different. They provided three possible explanations to their findings. Explanation A, "there are no direct effects whatsoever of treatment similarity on resemblance in behavior or vice versa". Explanation B, "there are direct effects, but they run from the more similar behavior of MZ twins to their more similar environments, implying that the more similar environment of MZ twins is a child effect". Lastly, explanation C, "there are direct effects of the more similar treatment of MZ twins on their more similar behavior." (BorkenauLast, Riemann, Angleitner & Spinath, 2001)
The results indicated a stronger correlation of similar traits between MZ twins than same sex DZ twins and even more so than DZ opposite sex. The third type of twins adds to my belief that "equal environments" are a contributing factor. Sociology has proven that girls and boys are put into gender roles growing up and are majority of the time treated differently. Since the DZ opposite sex twins had the lowest correlation of similar traits, this could support the environment developing who we are. However, I must also consider males and females as generally having differing traits.
Results concerning the MZ twins and their stronger positive correlation of trait similarity are supportive to genetics developing who we are. However, the MZ twins also spent more time together, resembled each other more, were mistaken for the other twin more, shared more similar experiences and were generally dressed alike more than DZ twins. These are factors one must consider when observing data because they are environmental influences that could be contributing to the MZ twin's similar genetics. With all these factors and statistical evidence that supports both sides of the nature vs. nurture debate, it's difficult to give a point blank answer.

http://www.grajfoner.com/Spinath%20childhood%20personality%20experience%20and%20twins.pdf

Earlier this year, testimonials began surfacing about the effectiveness of treating burns with flour, as opposed to using traditional first aid on the wound. According to the emails and websites, completely covering or immersing the area afflicted with the burn not only eliminated pain, but also effectively healed the burned skin. Some proponents of this idea even went as far as to claim that flour still retained these miracle properties on severe burns, and could even extinguish and eliminate burns from someone who was on fire.
While it would be convenient if flour truly was a miracle treatment for burns, scientific skepticism must be utilized when evaluating this claim. Because this assertion is so extraordinary, equally extraordinary evidence must be presented in order to support it. However, the evidence provided was largely anecdotal. In addition, these results have not been replicated with an experimental design, and have not been supported by physicians since the early to mid 1800s, which was before the medical field gained more credibility. This leads me to conclude that the evidence and reasoning supporting this claim is not sufficient based on the six principals of scientific thinking, and therefore is more pseudoscience than science.
The idea that flour can treat burns was originally adopted by some in the 19th century. However, as medicine evolved, it was largely discredited, and even viewed as harmful, since it was to be used instead of other first aid treatments that have now been proven to be more effective. The reemergence of this claim may be a result of this home remedy being passed down by a family and readopted as a treatment. The placebo effect could have also played a role in this myth. While this effect likely would not produce the miracle healing results, it could have produced a psychological belief that it was working, which could have been distorted and exaggerated over time as this claim spread across the internet.

http://www.thefreepressonline.co.uk/news/5/2221.htm

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/medical/a/Flour-For-Burns-Home-Remedy.htm

http://www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/flourburns.asp

Even the people who know quite literally nothing about psychology know about Sigmund Freud- the cigar smoking, cocaine advocating, father of Psychoanalysis.

Quickly, what is psychoanalysis?

There are three basic concepts:

     1.      The unconscious 

               ·         This is the central concept

               ·         Feelings, thoughts, and memories that are outside of the conscious awareness

               ·         Influences behavior and experience without any awareness of its influence

      2.      Resistance

              ·   An active force keeping unconscious elements from the conscious awareness

      3.      Transference

                ·  "unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another"

The Id, ego, and superego 

                 ·         Id

o   Instinctual elements

o   Demands pleasure and satisfaction

·         Ego

o   Deals with the demands of the Id

·         Superego

o   Ethics

o   The conscience 

Problem with psychoanalysis:

Falsifiability

This is perhaps the greatest principle of scientific thinking that psychoanalysis lacks. In providing "evidence" for Freud's theories he utilized self-analysis and case studies. And as the wise textbook (Scott Lilienfeld, 2nd ed. Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding.) states, "the plural of anecdote isn't fact". But these case studies are much more legitimate than his self-analysis which provides no falsifiability. How can a third party come in and attempt to disprove a self-analysis?

           No Freud, actually you weren't in love with your mother.

 Karl Popper states that the claims of psychoanalysis are not testable and that alone should be reason enough for it to be deemed a pseudo science

Ruling out rival hypotheses

         There isn't much evidence of Freud doing this. Yes, the development of psychoanalysis is partly due to him ruling out the effective use of hypnosis. However he never really searched for other possible reasons why psychoanalysis was successful.

            Since the time of Freud though, numerous studies have occurred. They conclude that psychoanalysis therapy's efficiency is due to the school rather than the theory of psychoanalysis itself (Psychotherapy: Theory, research, practice, training). While a French study in 2004 states that psychoanalysis therapy is "far less effective than other psychotherapies".

The main issue at hand though is, if psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience rather than a legitimate psychological theory, why is it taught in psychology classes as a theory? This fact in itself must speak to some positive aspects of psychoanalysis.

In my own experience, psychoanalysis was okay because of Freud's theories on catharsis. Though these were mostly developed by his daughter, these ideas and theories are more accepted in the world of psychology. However, they are also less well known in the general public. Freudian Slips, Oedipus Complex- things of this nature are practically legendary and yet are the most criticized aspects of Freud's work. Perhaps this is due to the negative attention. Bringing up the question, should so much energy  be put into falsifying things? Because perhaps doing so will have the adverse affect.  

While through chapter 2 in our textbook, I came across the article about ethical guidelines in research. It shocked me to find out about the Tuskegee study and how long it was allowed to continue. At that point in time, scientists only relied on other scientists to determine if they could conduct an experiment or not.
Today we allow a institutional review board to decide these issues for us. The review board is made up of faculty members from the specified university and one or more outside members. While this would rule out many unethical experiments, the use of only one outside member could cause some intimidation factors from the other faculty members. If it is one member up against many others, that members opinion could be discarded and the experiment would carry on.
Another issue I would like to find out is how that outside member is elected. Without proper election the opinion of that member would not properly represent their community. This means if faculty appointed a alumni from that university with a scientific background, their ideas on how experiments would be carried out may be flawed. The best way to fix this is to have multiple board members who are not associated with the university and that have a strong mixture of community background.

A study found in the Lilienfeld text that I found extremely interesting was the case of Clever Hans the horse. This was so interesting to me because the idea of a horse being able to do math problems is so radical in itself that I found it very hard to believe. As i was reading though, the explanation of how this horse was able to do math problems made me believe that it was true because I could not think of a logical reason as to how this could be fake. A panel of 13 psychologists tested Clever Hans and even they could not find any reason to prove that this was simply a trick.
Eventually a psychologist named Oscar Pfungst got to the bottom of this extreme case and revealed that the horse Clever Hans was indeed being helped unconsciously by the people who were asking the questions. The person who asked the question would tense up their muscles before Clever Hans got to the right answer and to the horse this was a signal that the answer was correct.
This case was the first case that demonstrated the experimenter expectancy effect. I think that is is a very important concept to understand because it is truly an unintentional bias. As humans we do not like to be wrong, so when we make a hypothesis it is our natural instinct to want it to be correct. Even though good psychologists know that they are not always going to be correct, I find it astonishing that we still unconsciously do things to prove we are right even if we honestly didn't intend to.
In the case of Clever Hans, the experimenter expectancy effect was present and it was an extraordinary claim that was overlooked by many psychologists. This proves that unusual cases need to be throughly examined in order to be proved true or false.

Adoption studies are one of the fundamental studies in the nature vs. nurture debate. When a child is adopted at infancy there is a huge dilemma as to who the child will become. Will his/her genetics be the deciding factor (nature) or will their new family's environment (nurture) make all the difference. From the textbook, it is commonly agreed that both play an important role. However, it is important to do research to determine if one has a greater affect than the other.

It is difficult to do research on adoption studies for several reasons. One, the recruitment pool is small. First one must find willing participants and most of which are adopted children who are going through mental issues. Also, every person is different. It would be an extraordinary claim to say that only nature or only nurture makes a difference in the child's personality. In past years, American families have had troubles adopting Russian children. They claimed that they have many psychological issues and aggressive and angry children.

In my own life, I know several people who have been adopted. From my experiences interacting with them, their personality is mostly determined by nurture. For example, a good friend of mine was adopted from a poor African American family who lived in the South side of Chicago. She was adopted into a Caucasian family who lives in a small town in Wisconsin. Today, she occasionally visits her biological family and has shared with me that she is nothing like them. The difficulties and lifestyles that they live are nothing like hers. She is a long boarder and dresses from the latest styles from Ragstock.

It is obvious that biological siblings have things in common, specifically their genes. However, do adopted siblings? Does the relationship between a biological child and an adopted child change make a difference in the outcome of the adopted child? My friend who lives in Bloomington, Minnesota is the younger child of two children. His older brother is an African American adopted child and he is Caucasian. He shared with me that they have nothing in common. They are "brothers" but they are completely different people. My friend is interested in books and video games while his brother is into sports and cars. Therefore, one can contest that nurture does not completely make a person's personality.

The question now is, if neither nature or nurture determines an adopted child's outcome, then what does and how so?

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=adopted+family&hl=en&biw=1279&bih=631&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=zTDpnMT5B9_miM:&imgrefurl=http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/810850/adoption-a-step-by-step-guide&docid=adccdUI8_XPL7M&w=600&h=399&ei=dq6ITv_RGM3HsQKH6o3KDw&, r:1, s:0&tx=85&ty=52

I am a big sports fan and my major is Sports Management; So I tried to connect Sports and Psychology together. My three past weeks in Psychology has been confusing, but one interesting concept I picked up was Nature vs Nurture. How is athletic success determined? That is the question I was curious about, ever since I started playing basketball at the age of ten. Is it nature which are the effect of genes or is it nurture (environmental factors).

When I grew up playing basketball, I got into my middle school team and noticed that everyone was somewhat athletically similar. I was about 5,9" and my teammate Jonah Travis who now plays basketball for Harvard University was about a inch taller then me; and our muscle density was about the same. We averaged about the same, he had 12 ppg and I had 10 ppg. I wondered how this middle school kid turned into a really muscular basketball player that averaged 21 points in his senior year and I averaged only 6 points. In high school he was 6,4" and I grew a inch, which made me wonder if nature (genes) was going to effect my performance on the court? Because we went through the same program and did practiced about the same amount throughout our life, so Nurture really doesn't have any effect to this cause. I ask myself, is it because he's half white and black, and I'm Asian? A typical stereotype for African-Americans and I believe is a critical thinking principle of Falsifiability, which is a claim that must be capable of being disproved.

The article "Nature v Nurture in Athletics" talks about how you need both nature and nurture in order for athletes to become successful. "The athletic capacity of any person is influenced not just by nurture or environmental factors but also by nature or inherited genetic characteristics." After reviewing this article I can say that my claim about me being Asian isn't necessarily why I didn't become athletically successful like Jonah, but now the answer from this evidence is that nature and nurture both support this claim.

The link to the article http://www.brighthub.com/science/genetics/articles/88780.aspx

The URL for the site that I am using is as follows: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/lat-geraldo_ek9z5ggw20100108141627,0,186201.photo

Almost everybody has heard of Al Capone. He's a notarious "American Gangster" back during the 1920s. He was rumored to be involved in a lot of different schemes including illegal smuggling, prostitution and bribery of government figures. Due to this, he was often regarded as someone who had a lot of money, and with it he had power.

In 1986, Geraldo Rivera promised America that he would reveil Capone's vault and everything inside it for all the world to see. As you can image, this would turn out to be a historic moment in United States history. Before opening, Rivera even had medical personel on hand in case any bodies were found in the vault. An IRS agent was also present in the case of money being found. An estimated 30 million viewers tuned in to witness this event. After a two hour long ordeal, on live television the vault was finally blown open. All that anyone saw was debri, showing that there truly was nothing in the vault and proving that it was all a hoax.

I wanted to look at this in terms of the six principles of scientific thinking. Clearly i think the principle that comes into focus is that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. For revealing such a big event, what proof did Rivera's viewer's have that Capone's vault really had been found? 30 million people chimed in and essentially wasted two hours of their life just do to the words of a well-known figure. This just goes to show us that we really should take a second look at media these days to really understand what we are getting ourselves into.

Some scientific studies have shown that people who are right handed generally live longer than people who are left handed. The amount varies from study to study-some say righties will live a few months more and some say righties live up to nine years more. Although the amount of time longer a righty lives is not clear, the truthfulness of the claim seems pretty clear.

To put the claim in terms of two aspects of critical thinking-Correlation vs. Causation and Occam's razor: The world is geared toward people who are right handed since the majority of the population (85-92%) is right handed. Since the world is geared toward righties, that would make tasks a little more difficult on lefties. Most machines are usually built with a bias towards righties and even if someone who is lefty has the same motor skill level as his counterpart, it would still be a little harder for him to use the machine. An experiment in the 1980's found that 15% of 20 year old people were left handed, but only 1% of 80 year old people were left handed. The conclusion of that study was that righties live longer than lefties and later experiments continued to find that there was a difference in the life expectancy between right and left handed people (Replicability). One way that lefties are at a disadvantage is with automobiles, it was found that left handed drivers were twice as likely to have a crash and 4x as likely to die from injuries sustained in the crash than right handed drivers.

One important thing to consider from this is should the world be more lefty friendly? Although it would be unrealistic and even unnecessary to change everything, it is important to change aspects of the world that have a lot of impact on people-such as the automobile industry. Perhaps if we geared automobiles to be more lefty friendly, there would be fewer accidents and that would be a benefit to all. Nothing against lefties, but this is one of those times I like to be in the majority.

The graying of America: an encyclopedia of aging, health, mind, and behavior By Donald H. Kausler, Barry C. Kausler

http://books.google.com/books?id=CV6-ctzUXysC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=right+handers+live+longer+than+left+handers&source=web&ots=Qpzm_H7_fo&sig=xvT9mLg3eizmMMQj6DWrVMSJcDU#v=onepage&q&f=false

According to Dr. Madan Kataria in India, laughing is the best medicine. He believed this so much that he is the founder of Laughing Club with over 600 establishments throughout India. People gather together to laugh for 15 to 20 minutes and the benefits seem endless. Watch this video to see what they think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N60nBD-_Mc
These people in India aren't the only people that believe this; it's a worldwide phenomenon. It's a common phrase that most people have heard before and it seems both true and fictional at the same time. Of course laughter can't fix a bad appendix or remove cancer, but it does have its benefits. According to the website http://www.helpguide.org/life/humor_laughter_health.htm there are many different benefits. For instance, this website quotes laughter to have physical, health, and social benefits ranging from increased immunity, decreased stress and pain levels, strengthened relationships, and the prevention of heart disease while bringing more zest and happiness into one's life. Perhaps the best part of laughter is that it is free, fun, and always available. To all of you who are not swayed by this argument, laughter promotes better overall health and not to specific parts of the body. Most people love having a good laughter because it brings them closer to their loved ones and also brings quality to their lives. So although laughter will never be credited for solving the most different of medical mysteries, it can be credited for getting you through your day which contributes to your overall health.

In this article from The New York Times titled, "You Love Your iPhone. Literally." the author, a branding consultant, describes how he has used functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI) tests to determine the neurological response to popular brands. In one example, he explains how he conducted an fMRI experiment to determine if iPhones are truly addictive. In the experiment, he used 16 subjects, 8 women and 8 men between the ages of 16 to 25. They were shown separate clips of the audio of a ringing iPhone and a video clip of a ringing and vibrating iPhone. In both tests, the audio and visual cortices of the subjects' brains showed fMRI activity. Additionally, the insular cortex, a region of the brain associated with feelings of love and compassion were activated.

From these observations, the author makes that claim that the subjects did not show the signs of addiction, but instead were experiencing feelings of love for their iPhones. If we examine this claim with the scientific thinking principle of correlation vs. causation, it is evident that the author's claims are sensationalized. Rather than examining alternative explanations for the fMRI results, the author immediately assumes that since the region of the brain associated with love showed activity, the subjects love their iPhones. It could be equally likely that it is not the iPhone for which the subjects are experiencing the feeling of love, but rather the association they have with the iPhone and their loved ones. Perhaps the sound of an iPhone ringing reminded them of a significant person in their life that might be calling.

This article provides a clear example of how the media tend to exaggerate claims to catch the readers' interest. A clear warning sign for this article is the title which makes an extraordinary claim. While articles like this are entertaining, the claims they make should not be accepted without some skepticism and scientific thinking.

Lindstrom, M. (2011, September 30) You Love Your iPhone. Literally. The New York Times. Retrieved September 30, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/opinion/you-love-your-iphone-literally.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

One of the things I've always thought was very interesting was the Placebo effect. It amazes me that people can be cured just by thinking that they're being medicated. I found an article online that talked thoroughly of the war waging between scientists on whether or not placebos actually help people. It gives good evidence for either side of the argument, showing multiple studies where placebos have and haven't worked.

The conclusion that I've come to is that placebos do work, though perhaps only with certain people. I think you really have to convince your patient that you are giving them a real medication to get the placebo to work, because if they don't believe that they're being medicated, or if they have doubts, then the placebo most likely won't work. The reason why the placebo's effect depends on the person is because the placebo relies on the individual mental confidence of the patient that the placebo is being given to. Basically, a placebo is a way to get people to heal themselves, to get their bodies thinking that they have some extra help, so that their bodies will give the healing an extra boost and effectually heal itself.

As yet another boost to my personal belief in placebos, I have an example from my own life experience that perhaps will convince you, or simply give you more evidence to be convinced with. About six years ago, I was diagnosed with asthma, so, as most asthma patients do, I got an inhaler from my doctor. For a few years, the inhaler worked most of the time, and I relied upon it especially to play sports. Then during the winter of my sophomore year of high school, my mom took me to an actual throat doctor instead of my regular doctor. They ran some tests on me and came to the conclusion that I did not, in fact, have asthma, but VCD ( Vocal Chord Dysfunction). The two illnesses are relatively similar, the one big difference is that there is no medicine for VCD, not even inhalers. So all that time, thinking that I had asthma and that inhalers would work, I was actually using inhalers as a placebo for my VCD. Unfortunately, as soon as I learned that inhalers didn't work (the placebo was revealed), they didn't work for me anymore and didn't help my VCD in the least. So largely because of that, I now believe in placebos, though, just with any other medical treatment, they don't work all the time, and sometimes they only work with certain people.

Is placebo important? Does it have disadvantages?
I saw an interesting research finding in the text book. It is a medication research, people in a control group, they didn't receive anything and people in the experimental group received some sugar pills as placebo. They were "blind" to the condition. The result was that the placebo did work.I think this research finding is very important to the clinic treatment and our daily life.
Before I explain why it is important, I have to say there are several requirements for this method. First, the researcher should keep the patients blind. It is hard to keep secret all the time. Once the patients find out the truth, it will be harder for them to trust the doctor. Also, I think the pharmacologist and the doctor should avoid abusing this method to prevent the crisis of confidence.
If we can use the method in a right way, I really support this treatment. I have an interesting experience in my childhood. Once I got a cold and I kept coughing the whole night. I could not fall asleep. My mom gave me a cup of potion and she said after I drink up that potion I will stop coughing. When I drank that medicine I found that it was taste bad. My mom explained that the worse it tasted, the better the curative effect will be. So I extremely trusted that this medicine would curl me. After that, I felt so much better, and I fell asleep. Next morning, I asked my mom what's the name of that amazing medicine. My mom just gave a soda and some salt. I think I was cured just because I had high confidence on my placebo. In this case, I think placebo is really useful in some cases just like mine. But the patients have different characters; some of them may won't be affected by the placebo. We should not always rely on the placebo even sometimes it has good curative effect. But if there are not any treatments that work on the patients, the doctor can try the placebo to see if it works or not.
http://www.foodandhealing.com/articles/article-placeboeffect.htm