November 2011 Archives

Does Violent Video Games Lead to Aggression?

One emphasis in this course has been to introduce different approaches to experimental design, such as the discussion on the pros and cons of cross-sectional and longitudinal design in chapter 10, and teaching us to evaluate them critically.  All of the articles used for discussion last week had problems in their experimental designs and in the conclusions drawn from them,  but in particular the two discussing the connection  that playing violent video games causes aggressive behavior both short and long term, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201003/the-broad-view-research-video-games-and-aggression and   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110525151059.htm ,were seriously flawed.

The first article discusses the use of Meta-Analysis to show us that video games cause aggression in players.  They discussed both correlational studies and longitudinal studies concluding that people who play violent video games become more aggressive.  While Meta-Analysis may be an improvement on other statistical approaches used to present an overview of the literature, the best criticism I found of it was "garbage in ... garbage out" www.stat-help.com/meta.pdf .  Combining badly controlled studies with poorly defined variables  only amplifies their inaccurate conclusions.  For instance, what defines a violent video game?  Does it need to contain blood; gore, killing etc. or does it just need to contain harm to a subject.  Does it need to involve realistic human characters or do fanciful abstract characters qualify.  Also, the definition of aggression is varied and vague while what constitutes an appropriate control need to be reevaluated.  Possibly a more appropriate control for "violent" video games would be any other competitive sport such as hockey, football etc. instead of the often used non-violent video game.  The topic of whether violent video games are beneficial or harmful is difficult to obtain a conclusive answer to when many of the studies are small with such varied set ups and read outs.

                  The variety of video games is larger than people may realize.  Depending on what you define as violent, you could say a lot of video games or very few are violent.  For example, games like Halo, F.E.A.R., Left4Dead are all very violent games in anyone's eyes, but they all contain characters that aren't real (ex. aliens and zombies) that most people are able to tell the difference from humans.  However, games like Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, and the Getaway are very violent games that contain blood and gore and involve realistic looking human people, while some games contain mild violence, such as World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Tekken.  Depending on how you define violence, it may be difficult to decide what games should be in the research designs discussed in the article.   Yet, often they are lumped together in a study as if World of Warcraft is comparable to Grand Theft Auto; trust me they're not.  Another thing to keep in mind is that people choose video games based on their personality, people who are aggressive may tend to play violent video games.  Therefore, recruiting the people for these experiments needs to be very carefully controlled for.

                The second article is a good example of the care that needs to be taken in what your read out is for a study, what you are measuring.  The researchers make the observation that people are desensitized to photos of violence as a result of video game playing and try to extrapolate this meaningless finding to a response to real life violent situation.  This gives people very little credit for being able to distinguish fantasy from reality.  People who love to watch horror movies hardly ever turn into psychotic killers as a result viewing them.  Much more thought should be put into the design of these experiments and they should be weighed carefully against the numerous benefits video games have to offer as both entertainment and education.   Quite frankly killing off Bambi's mother is probably more traumatizing to children than most video games.    

     Dating is not as romantic as it sounds, from what we have learned in the past few weeks. It can actually be manufactured, that is, it can be altered by some research results and scientific methods.  There are several useful terms that can be used before attending or arranging a date. Proximity means people are more easily to be attracted by those who are sharing the same physical traits, for example, living in the same country or state. Similarity is people who might be more attracted to each other if they share the same religion, education, social class or behavior style. Reciprocity means that during the date, if one side is receiving some type of positive messages, they might need to show the same thing back in order to get this relationship continuing smoothly.
     

     I actually find this topic interesting so after the discussion session I have searched for related information. I have found a funny article named "Valentine's Day dating tips from lovestruck scientists". There are seven doable tips for people who are going to date. "Wear red" is one of them. According to the article, "red is hypothesised to serve as an aphrodisiac for men because it carries the meaning of sex and romance" while "women also preferred men wearing red clothes, or in front of red backgrounds." Although I may never know what would be the exact underlying reason, it could be worth trying the trick for the next date.

     Dating is a large portion in human's life because that is the foundation of building a family. If getting married is the final, then every date is the test. Therefore, the purpose of the scientific method is to help people to get a higher score on the test. Check  it out, maybe that is how the romance starts. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/feb/14/valentines-day-dating-tips-scientists

Impact of violent video games or violent imagery on children

While we were discussing about the development of human behavior, the topic was especially about whether violent video games or violent imagery on TV shows or movies causes aggressive behavior of children. I totally agree that violent imageries give huge impact on children's aggressive behavior. Everyone might realize that young children learn something by watching and following what others do. Also, as young age children, violent things motivate them more that peaceful and friendly things, because they might think it's cool to be a super hero. Children learn things more quickly than old age people, so I think it's going to be very dangerous to expose too much violent shows to the children.

I actually read a lot of news and articles about shocking facts related with violence. For example, there was a teenager boy who addicted to play violent video games. He plays game more than 10hours a day. The game was about shooting and killing the enemies with guns and knives. And one day, his mother told him to stop game and when the boy refuses to stop, she took away the video game from him by force. Then, the teenage boy killed his family using the knife when they were in bed. There are several more articles about similar issues. Parents should realize how much impact the video games have on childeren. Even shy children can change violently through seeing them in short time. So, I would like to conclude that violent imageries never going to be helpful to educate children, and parents shold be more careful to let them watch the show or anything like that.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110119120550.htm

     Some children experience separation anxiety when a parent leaves them in the care of another.  This phenomenon begins after the child masters the idea of object permanence; that something exists even when he/she cannot see it.  Once the child understands that Mom is gone from view, and I miss her and want her back, the crying begins. 

     I have two children, dissimilar in many ways.  The second is a boy, easy-going, happy, and has never cried when left in the care of someone else.  He is thrilled with every new situation he encounters, and has virtually no anxiety.  My eldest child is a girl, tightly-wound, uneasy in strange situations, and happy but anxious at times.  I have extensive experience with the onset of separation anxiety, because from the age of 15 months until age 3, she cried every time I left her.  Whether I went to the gym, out with friends, or even to the grocery store, the receiving caregiver had a tough job ahead.  My husband was in the military, which meant that he was gone a lot.  We lived far from family, so there were no weekly visits with Grandma to keep her from being afraid to let me leave.  The two of us were together 24 hours per day, and she didn't have to worry about being away from me.  However, once I did start leaving her again, she had developed a sense of where I was (or wasn't!), and she definitely had something to say about it.

     I used to loathe leaving her, because I could hear her crying, and felt guilty.  However, according to "The Strange Situation" (Ainsworth, et al., 1978) outlined on page 386 of our textbook, it seems that her behavior upon my departure was somewhat normal.  Whenever I returned, she was elated and showered me with affection.  She was the classic example of secure attachment, which makes this mother feel relieved.  My son's reaction might be more worrysome according to Attachment Theory, that he wasn't sad to let me leave.  However, he was just so happy and flexible, that he too was well-adjusted, but doesn't fit into the 4 attachment categories in our text.  He was thrilled upon my return as well; he just fared better in my absence than did his sister.  Kids can be so different from each other, even when they have the same two parents.  Many things factor into the differences (gender, birth order, parenting styles, personalities), and an outcome of the differences that is easy to see is the difference in manifestations of separation anxiety.

            There has always been the myth that people of different backgrounds are attracted to different physical traits when searching for mates. This seems to make sense because of the differences of physical preferences within and across cultures. According to the Lilienfeld text, African American men tend to find women with a large body size more physically attractive than men of European cultures. However, this is only partially true because many studies have shown that people tend to agree at significantly higher than chance levels about who is, and isn't, physically attractive. The way that researchers prove that physical attractiveness is programmed into our brains upon birth, is by studying the behaviors of infants. Studies have shown that babies less than one week old will stare longer at adults who are considered attractive by other adults. These babies have not developed manners or experienced cultural influences, so they are incredibly hedonistic and will stare at what they find to be the most appealing. This is proof that standards of physical appearance are innate, meaning they exist since birth.

            A better understanding of the innate nature of physical attractiveness standards will help us understand social influences on interpersonal attraction between people of different cultural backgrounds. It teaches us that friendship, dating, and mate choices aren't random, but rather rely on attraction levels between people. By understanding that these standards are innate, we can comprehend and predict interpersonal interactions.

Growing up in a high school of diverse cultural backgrounds, I have seen many intercultural relationships first hand. Anecdotal evidence provided by these experiences usually supports the findings stated in the article. My friends and I would almost always agree on the attractiveness of girls, regardless of their cultural backgrounds. However, I do not believe that attractiveness completely relies on physical characteristics. Social behavior must play a role in attractiveness, leaving me wonder if the different behaviors of people of different cultures could change the interest level of mates. If this were true, it could be claimed that overall attractiveness is in the opinion of the beholder because culturally different norms and behaviors could also define attractiveness.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200804/all-stereotypes-are-true-except-ii-beauty-is-in-the-eye-th

In 1995 Judy Rich Harris published a paper in the Psychology Review that sparked enormous controversy. She claimed that most environmental transmission is "horizontal" - from peers, not "vertical" - from parents. In other words children are most influenced by their peers. This contradicts much of early psychological work that has been based on the theory that children develop much of their personality and behavior from their parents. It also brings up the debate over nature and nurture. Do social interactions play a greater role in forming psychological characteristics than genetics?

The first thing that popped into my mind when I read about this topic was, what about children who aren't raised by their parents, or are raised by neglectful parents. My hypothesis is that children are influenced by both their parents and their peers, as well as nature and nurture. Children are raised in countless environments, but they will always learn from their surroundings, it's the only way to get by. That could include their parents, foster parents, other kids, or any other significant figure in their life. 

Also, we cannot avoid our genes. There are definitely some characteristics that are passed down from parents to children that effect our personalities. Just as genes for looks are passed down. Although peer influence is increasing with the ease of communication from internet and cell phones, I can't see a world that doesn't look up to parents or a world without parents like MADD that will try to influence their children in a positive way. 

In 1993, an article in the journal Nature reported a fascinating discovery: if college students listened to a Mozart piano sonata for ten minutes, instead of a relaxation tape or no sound at all, they performed significantly better on a spatial reasoning task. From this seemingly unremarkable beginning, the Mozart Effect--the supposition that listening to classical music makes your children smarter--was born.

Appealing as this remarkable finding might sound to parents desperate to help their children get ahead in this competitive world, it has serious drawbacks when we consider the principles of critical thinking. First off, the study was conducted on college students, not babies or children; for the findings of the original study to apply to boosting babies' intelligence without testing any babies, researchers would have to find extraordinary evidence to support such an extraordinary claim. Replicability was also an issue: later researchers found the results of the original Mozart Effect study almost impossible to replicate, and those who could replicate it found that listening to Mozart barely increased IQ scores and lasted virtually no time at all. Finally, studies conducted in years following the Mozart Effect study found a simpler explanation for the study's findings. Listening to Mozart had the same effect on a later study's participants as listening to a scary story: it increased mental alertness, and improved their spatial reasoning ability, but not for long, and not in such a way that it improved their overall IQ.

In the case of the Mozart Effect, the principles of critical thinking have revealed that the extraordinary claims it makes do not have extraordinary supporting evidence, that the findings have been almost impossible to replicate, and that Occam's Razor has revealed a simpler explanation: that being alert helps spatial reasoning. However, this hasn't stopped The Mozart Effect from spawning a huge baby-genius-creating industry, nor has it stopped humorists from wondering about what would happen if the Mozart Effect applied to other composers.

Lilienfeld, Scott. Pyschology - From Inquiry to Understanding. Custom Edition for the University of Minnesota. Boston, MA: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2010. Print.

Even after our discussion on violent media I was still a bit unconvinced as to the scope of impact it has. The article I found to be most convincing was found in Psychology Today and was titled "The broad view of research on video games and aggression."  This article is written by a blogger named Art Markman and in my opinion he does the best job of presenting a holistic view of the issue of all the articles we were supposed to read. Markman begins his discussion of the issue by summarizing how psychological studies work and some of the biases that may be a part of the results. I was intrigued to hear that one of the biggest biases comes from using the meta-analysis technique. Meta-analysis scours published literature looking for well designed studies addressing a common question. These studies are then analyzed to present a broader understanding of the question. Where the bias comes in is that of the published data, the studies that show a correlation are more likely to get published than those that show no connections. Thus of the published data, most of it leans towards correlations even when there may be other studies which contradict this.

                Markman then focused on a March 2010 study by Craig Anderson, Brad Bushman, and others which was a meta-analysis study focusing on 380 studies that involved over 130,000 participants. The general conclusion of the analysis showed that violent video games increase aggressive behaviors both in the short and long term. It also indicated that aggressiveness was triggered in both men and women. And looking at different cultures, Americans as opposed to Japanese were more affected in the long term.

                Based on this study I would say that "Yes" violent video games to trigger more aggression because this finding isn't based on just on study but on multiple. I do have some concern about the method the data was collected and it would put me at ease if another meta-analytical study was done to incorporate the un-published studies.  Also, I would like to have seen a more comparison of the yes and no studies to see why they decided there was a correlation even though there is contradictory evidence out there.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201003/the-broad-view-research-video-games-and-aggression

The study of my grandmother could probably entertain a psychological case study and a half.  Prior to my partner and I moving in with her, all I knew was that she had a tendency for elaborate exaggeration; she was unhappily married to my grandfather who's death was seemingly more liberating than mournful; and, she conducted with cold indifference around her children and grandchildren.

In an effort to revitalize her own life, my partner quit her unfulfilling receptionist work to pursue a career as a medical professional.  The time she has spent at home between certifications and classes has bonded her quite closely with my grandmother.  Very slowly, my grandmother began to build an emotional confidence with my partner -- the new-found trust and self-esteem my grandmother developed has offered amazing benefit to her attitude on life.  Now grammie avoids exaggeration nearly altogether and surprisingly has spurred interest in other family members.  Her extra-family interactions are still limited, but she has developed a wonderful sense of humor, which is something I've never known my grandmother to have.

Aside from the unprecedented change in my grandmother's perception, my partner and I have also noticed a growing anxiety on her part with the notion of dying.  In the past, with her diagnosis and fight against breast cancer, her anxiety resembled a more bestial fight-for-survival.  This new anxiety is much more emotional and certainly more verbal.    

In Melissa W. Pinson's dissertation, "Effect of Loneliness on Older Adult's Death Anxiety", Pinson defines a few constructs that are helpful in understanding my grandmother's behavior.  Specifically, Pinson notes two types of loneliness: emotional and social loneliness.

Social relationships are the most prevalent.  These interactions form our social network and serve to "acquire information....[and] reassurance of worth..." (Pinson, 2010).  Symptoms of social loneliness may be expressed as "feelings of marginality, feelings of being unacceptable to others, and isolation" (Pinson, 2010).  Emotional relationships most often take the form of the "pair-bond relationship", as Pinson terms it, and this interaction provides a sense of emotional security.  The lack of emotional interaction leaves individuals with feelings of vulnerability and emptiness. 

My supposition is that my grandmother suffered from both social and emotional loneliness.  Pinson also descibes two theories of death anxiety related to social and emotional interactions: Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) and Terror Management Theory (TMT). 

According to SST, elderly individuals acknowledging the impending inevitability of their own death by exposure to death and the realization of their own mortality, will pursue more emotional relationships as opposed to social ones.  This finding matches my own anecdotal experience with my grandmother, whose interest in developing social connections is still very limited. 

TMT suggest that the very awareness of our death is the source for many, if not all, fears and resorting to "cultural worldviews" often alleviates this anxiety by providing order and meaningfulness (Pinson, 2010).  Pinson's research suggests that enhanced self-esteem, acquired either by alignment with a culture worldview or an emotionally securing relationship, etc., is positively correlated with heightened death anxiety.  And, although Pinson acknowledges other research that suggests the opposite finding, my experience with my grandmother seems to follow Pinson's result. 

Regardless of the actual nature of the causal link between loneliness and death anxiety, in my experience as my grandmother's emotional security strengthened and her loneliness subsided, she showed an increased anxiety toward death.  It's possible though, that this anxiety was covert, and only through the confidence of an emotional relationship was she able to overtly express her fears.

 Everyone can recall the iconic scene in the movie "Sixth Sense" where Haley Joel Osment whispers to Bruce Willis, "I see dead people." The camera then does a slow close-up of Bruce's face, and everything is all dramatic. While this "sixth sense" is debatable, the other five: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, have been established since the time of Aristotle. However, they are far from the only senses we possess; they are just the most evident. In fact, neurologists today are unsure of just how many sense there are, or even exactly what characterizes a sense. One point on which they do agree, is that there are more than five. Among these, I find one, proprioception, to be the most interesting and most deserving of further examination.

The Lilienfeld text gives it but the briefest mention, and defines it simply as, "a perception of our body's location." Not at all exciting, but try this experiment. Close your eyes, and then touch the tip of your nose with your index finger. How did you do that? Your eyes were closed, so how did you know which finger was your index finger? Did you hear the air rushing past your hand as it moved toward your face? Or maybe, somehow smell your hand as it approached your nose? Unless you are in fact a very lame superhero, probably not. It was your sense of proprioception at work.

But so what? This is all trivial. Consider then, that were it not for this sense you would have to constantly monitor your feet to make sure that they are, in fact, still on the ground. Or perhaps, you would need to watch your torso so you don't start walking off in the wrong direction. Evolutionarily, this would have been a huge deal. When confronted with some giant predator in the woods, imagine that instead of running as fast as humanly possible, you also had to make sure you weren't running toward said tiger/bear/dinosaur. You can see then, how those who had a more developed sense of proprioception had a better chance of survival.

Your five primary senses may allow you to interact with the world around you, but proprioception allows you to function as a coherent unit. The ability to interact with the deceased may be discovered one day, but it certainly won't be the sixth sense.

Reasons why I think it doesn't cause aggressive behavior is because the kid may have grown up in an aggressive environment and plays the games as a way to stay engaged in how they were raised to act. This demonstrates the correlation vs. causation way of thinking because we don't know if their aggressive behavior is caused by nurture or by the violent video games. We can't put a finger on the exact cause. On another note, crime rates have been decreasing in recent years.
            While many people continue to debate about whether or not violent video games cause aggressive behavior, I continue to stay neutral about the whole topic. While I do believe that playing them can have a negative effect on a kid, there just haven't been enough cases where kids have gone out and actually committed terrible acts of violence for me to fully believe it.

Here is a video I found with some data about violent video games and aggression.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH38gqvPUuA

Research: http://articles.cnn.com/2008-11-03/health/healthmag.violent.video.kids_1_violent-video-video-games-game-genres/2?_s=PM:HEALTH

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2010/december/crime_122010/crime_122010

In an ever-changing world, diversity is at the highest point it has ever been.  Attending the University of Minnesota, Twin cities, the diversity rate is similarly through the roof.  With all the diversity it's hard not to notice the unusual markings on some woman's faces. The red dot on a Hindu woman's forehead is nothing more than an indicator of her marital status. This red dot, called a bindi is arguably the most fascinating of all forms of body decoration. Hindus attach great importance to this ornamental mark on the forehead between the two eyebrows. They have believed that the forehead is a major nerve point in the human body since ancient times. The area between the eyebrows, the sixth chakra known as the 'agna' meaning 'command', is the seat of concealed wisdom. It is the center point wherein all experience is gathered in total concentration. It is usually a small or a big eye-catching round mark made on the forehead as adornment. In southern India, girls choose to wear a bindi, while in other parts of India it is a certain privilege for only married woman to wear. A red dot on the forehead is an auspicious sign of marriage and guarantees the social status and sanctity of the institution of marriage.  According to the tantric cult, when during meditation the latent energy rises from the base of the spine towards the head, this is the probable outlet for this potent energy. The red dot between the eyebrows is said to retain energy in the human body and control the various levels of concentration. It is also the central point of the base of the creation itself while symbolizing auspiciousness and good fortune.

While this hoax is not completely wrong it was over simplified (Opposite of Occam's Claim) Viewers need to understand that this little symbol has more than one explanation. While the claim could be replicated (Replicability) and disproven (Falsifiability) depending on the culture, this claim is not 100% mistaken. Being a viewer, make sure to have more than one source backing up your knowledge.

Mikkenson, David P. "Snopes.com: Religion (Religion)." Snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages. Urban Legends. Web. 06 Nov. 2011. <http://www.snopes.com/religion/religion.asp>.

Subhamoy, Das. "Bindi: The Great Indian Forehead Art - All You Need to Know about Bindis." About Hinduism - What You Need to Know About Hinduism. 2011. Web. 06 Nov. 2011. <http://hinduism.about.com/od/bindis/a/bindi.htm>.

Blog Entry 4

Psychological and Emotional Aspects of Divorce

David Cesnik

Source- http://www.mediate.com/articles/psych.cfm#emotional

            This article discusses the consequences of a divorce from both the perspective of the divorcing parents, and the feelings of the children. Much of the article focuses on how certain actions by the divorcing parents affect children of different ages. For example, the article states certain signs for children of different ages that they are being stressed out over the ordeal and need help, like toddlers becoming increasingly clingy, or adolescents feeling in competition with their parents. This article addresses every angle of emotion and feeling from the perspective of a child going through their parent's divorce.

http://marriage101.org/effects-of-divorce-on-children/

Having gone through my parents divorce personally, I can clearly tell that many, if not all, of the claims made in this article are true. For example, it claims that the parent who moves out of the home to start their new family will always feel more distant to the child than the parent living in their childhood home. The article also claims that the noticeable changes in the relationship between the parents that the child observes can affect their perception of one of the parents as well. Whether it is verbal conflicts or physical gestures, the child supposedly picks up on more of these cues that the parents realize. Speaking from experience, when one of my parents would talk poorly of the other, I remember myself thinking less of them for down-talking someone they know I love, so that claim is completely true. A final claim that the article makes is that the "children's psychological reactions to their parents' divorce vary in degree dependent on three factors: (1) the quality of their relationship with each of their parents before the separation, (2) the intensity and duration of the parental conflict, and (3) the parents' ability to focus on the needs of children in their divorce." The first part is true because I no longer live with one of my parents because of a poor relationship before the divorce. The second statement is also true because my particular experience stretched out over a two-year span and greatly impacted those two years of my school and personal life. Finally the third part seems valid, but that never came into matter in my case because both of my parents took the divorce as a means to take an extra effort into furthering their relationship with my siblings and me.

Divorces can be very ugly, grueling, and sometimes they can completely tear a family apart. Not only does it separate a once-loving marriage between two people, it can also tear apart a child both emotionally and psychologically. This article shows that children of different ages handle a divorce in different ways, and also have different responses to how things happen during and afterwards. A divorce is one of the biggest events in a young child's life, and it is very important for parents to understand the possible effects that it may have on a child and be able to address their possible new needs.

The United States was founded on three unalienable rights; the freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While this has governed our way of life for close to three hundred years now, the last of these three is the complete antithesis of what was previously believed. To the ancient Greeks happiness was divine luck, and Christianity defined it as something unattainable in this lifetime, it being a reward in the afterlife. Whatever the case, happiness as something we could work toward achieving is a new concept. In fact, this disjoint in what we pursue and what we are actually searching for is what has led to increased unease and discontent in our modern history. Source

Experiment time: complete the sentence; and they all lived... The idea of attaining happiness is so ubiquitous in our culture we have built an entire genre of stories on it; fairy tales. Yes, we know our lives are not a fairy tale, but that doesn't stop us from working towards happiness as some sort of finish line. It turns out, there is not a finish line at all. Psychologists point out that our brains have a sort of baseline for happiness, a homeostatic point, if you will. Any moment of extreme satisfaction will soon reset back to this baseline, as our brains will start looking forward to the next one. Evolutionarily, this is advantageous in that any setback will not be utterly soul-crushing. It's an evolutionary triumph of the human spirit, in a way. This also means that happiness is not something to be achieved. It's just a temporary state used as a sort of motivational tool.

So now it's established that happiness isn't an end goal to be worked for, how does this actually contribute to more discontent? A study conducted by researchers at Yale university involved participants taking advice from a motivational film, and then trying to improve their mood instead of letting it lift naturally. In the end, they felt cheated that their expectations weren't met, putting them in a worse mood than they had started.

How should on live their life then, if happiness is not something that can be achieved? Just because it is not a state of being, does not mean it does not exist either. Aristotle believed happiness was synonymous with virtuous; being good begets good. There is no panacea for happiness, that much should have been obvious. But if there is one theme throughout all of this, it would be to live a good life, and regardless of what results, call it happiness.  

A possibly huge development in treatment of schizophrenia is being researched with none other then a computer. It is a connection of neural networks mimicking the brain. Researchers from Yale and the University of Texas Austin published their findings recently in May of this year. They developed a neural network that mimics neural activity in a human brain to the point that the network can interpret crime stories importance and even emotion.  Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that occurs in both males and females beginning in the early 20s, late teens. Their theory is that schizophrenia is caused by an inability to differentiate between important information as well as the conscious awareness of their senses and the making of their sensory memory. This is believed to be caused by an overabundance of dopamine in the brain. The researchers were able to test their hypothesis using the simulation. They simulated an increased dose of dopamine in the neural network that caused the computer to respond like that of someone suffering from schizophrenia.  The development of the neural network will also be very helpful in the future to test any other ideas of treating the disorder or anything else that calls for the imitation of brain activity.

The full article is here.

The full study is here.

An interview with a schizophrenic patient can be found here.