Recently in assignment #3 Category

1. Get Active - Research has shown that people who work out- especially light working out like walking - have better memory than people who are inactive. A recent study found that exercise counteracts the brain from shrinking due to age. The older subjects who exercised gained two percent of their brain volume while the non-exercisers lost brain tissue.

2. Eat your Fruits and Veggies - Fruits and Veggies contain loads of healthy vitamins for us but they also contain a lot of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Since oxidative stress and inflammation are thought to be involved in dementia, these food groups can help with controlling memory loss. 
3. Reduce your Risk Factors for Heart Disease - By exercising and controlling your diet you decrease your risk for heart disease which has been linked to dementia.

4. Got Culture? - Being open to new ideas and being curious leads to a stronger mental activity. Those who participate in cultural activities and reading have been shown to have a delay in dementia. 

5. Brush your Teeth -Going to the dentist actually does pay off! Twin studies have found that the twin with more tooth loss have a higher increase of having dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

6. Got a Difficult Job? Perfect!- Having a stressful job dealing with people boosts your mental activity which helps prevent memory loss. Jobs that deal with persuasion, mentoring, instruction, and supervision have been shown to protect memory. 

 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.

I have been in a serious relationship with a man for two and half years. The thing that brings us closest is sharing our faith, and one way we do this is by remaining abstinent before marriage. It seems that people today mistake love for sex. A sexual attraction or infatuation with a man or woman is not love, although, this may be where it all begins.  I think Dr. John R. Bori puts it well by saying, "They may say, "I love you," but what they really mean is, "I love the passion I experience with you."  Their experience of love is really more about them than it is about you."

This passion or "the sex" is so easy to mistake as love because sex is one form of expressing love.  Yet, this expression is a lot more than just our psychological thoughts. Love can actually be pinpointed back to a chemical release in the brain. Bio-chemically speaking, what happens is that when we engage in new experiences(sex), the pleasure circuits in the brain are activated and large amounts of neurotransmitter chemicals --- for example, dopamine , norepinephrine, endorphins --- are released into the nervous system.  So every time you experience something new with someone you create this bond, and you call this bond love. Think about your best friend, there must have been something that you experienced together to create this "love " for one another.

Findings like these can be hard to take in, when you begin to realize that our dreamy Love from the fairytales is really just a psychological "trick" and a chemical reaction. This doesn't mean that love isn't real, because I can vouch that it is. The only point I bring up is that we all need to be careful that we aren't restricting love to just sex.

 >Buri, John R. "Mistaking Passion For Love | Psychology Today." Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness Find a Therapist. 03 Nov. 2009. Web. 09 Oct. 2011. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/love-bytes/200911/mistaking-passion-love>.

BBC Horizon's video "The Secret You" was a very interesting and informative video.  I found the section where they talked about when humans become self aware to be very interesting.  Becoming self aware is when an individual can differentiate between other people, animals and the environment and itself.  This takes place during early childhood.  Psychologists are saying on average children become self aware between the ages of 18 and 24 months.  However, it is still unclear of how this transformation happens.

Most of the evidence given in support to children becoming self aware is from the Mirror-Self Recognition Test.  In this test a child will be placed in front of a mirror and is given some time to look at the figure in the mirror.  After awhile the child's mother will place a dot on the child's face without them knowing.  The child will then go back to the mirror and look at the figure.  If the child sees the dot on its face and takes it off then they have shown self awareness.

This video made me think back to my childhood and think of when I became self aware.  Of course I could not think of it but I am sure that I looked into plenty of mirrors thinking there was someone on the other side of the wall.  I also think its interesting that it still is a mystery of how the self awareness transformation happens.  The only question I have is if all animals have a time when they become self aware like we do.

I found this video of a narcoleptic dog, maybe you guys have seen it before, it is quite popular.  This week in discussion we were discussing stages of consciousness, we didn't get to talk about different sleep disorders, but it is within the chapter.  This video briefly describes a case of narcolepsy, in this case, with a dog.
 
Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder in which people experience sudden episodes of sleep.  Narcolepsy is especially unique because usually it takes an hour or longer after we fall asleep to enter REM sleep (or dream sleep), but those with narcolepsy fall into this sleep automatically during their episodes.  No matter how hard they try to stay awake they can't.

 What caught my eye about this video is that the narcoleptic dog is a medical mystery to it's family and the doctors that he has been to.  But from reading our psychology book it explains that narcolepsy can be caused by a couple of reasons. One of those reasons includes genetic abnormalities. The other is sometimes from brain damage caused by an accident.  It also explains that the hormone orexin plays an important role in triggering attacks of sleepiness. Those with narcolepsy have few brain cells that produce this hormone.

  It made me wonder, if dogs are capable of narcolepsy just like humans, then why is it such a medical marvel in this case?  If it is very similar symptoms between humans and dogs with narcolepsy, and human treatments improve those symptoms, why don't they work with dogs or why haven't they made one for dogs?

Here is the link to the video: watch[1]     (Hold ctrl and click)
URL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0h2nleWTwI

As I was preparing for our first exam this past week, I began to think about how the course material related to my life.  While watching television it hit me: Advertisements.  It is very intriguing to me how creative firms create advertisements and the ways in which consumers are engaged.  I have personally noticed that the more successful advertisements are those that work off the principle of Occam's razor.  "The simplest explanation is usually the correct one."  This line of reasoning is best known as Occam's razor and is one of the six principles of scientific thinking.

In the article Occam's Razor Solves Marketing Misinformation, the author Jerry Bader explains how Occam's razor can and should be applied to advertising today.  He describes ways in which companies overdue their advertisements, when really they should be simplifying them.

"To paraphrase Ockham, features or options must not be multiplied beyond what it takes to get an order."

Bader goes in-depth talking about how companies should focus on the emotional benefits of their product instead of new features and options offered.  Using emotional benefits as the primary focus for advertising is such a simple approach to selling a product because everyone can relate to emotions, as we are all human beings. 

In the article, Bader specifically mentions how Old Spice used this ideology to their advantage with their successful advertisements featuring Isaiah Mustafa.  "... the one thing that actually drove its success was the emotional value proposition - Old Spice will make you more attractive to women, and sex is one of Maslow's basic needs."  Connecting to people on the emotional level maybe simply overlooked a majority of the time, but in this case, it worked extremely well without adding any flashy new features or options.

The next time you have the impulse to buy a new product after seeing an advertisement, ask yourself if the advertisement tried to engage you at an emotional level to increase your interest (and in turn, possibly increasing their profit).

Article Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/09/16/occams-razor-solves-marketing-misinformation/

  In chapter 4, Sensation &perception, there were a lot of different concepts about how our senses and brain are related and how they processed. Among them, 'the visual system (visual perception) of our body' is the most interesting part for me which arouse my attention. Our eyes seem to function a lot as we live, and they really do. However, it is really easy to deceive our eyes more than we thought. For the basic example, we do not distinct colors easily when we suddenly see the bright lights after get out in the dark. It's because of rods and cones of our eyes which allow us to distinguish low levels of lights and also the colors. Other than this example, there are numerous ways to deceive our eyes only using by editing lines or visual effects. In addition, our eyes do not recognize not only the visual pictures on the plane paper, but also the motions in three-dimensional in our lives. In discussion class, we concluded that the most optical illusions are the result of influence of background patterns on the overall design, adjustment of our perception at the boundaries of areas, our inability to interpret the spatial structure of an object from the context, and so on. Through these concepts, I recognized that there might be a lot of things that I do not see exactly what's there in the world. Everyone might think that they see the things right, but they actually don't, which is the funniest part of this section. And lastly, the picture at the top is one example about deceive visual perception that I took in trick art museum, and rest of the examples at the bottom is other examples from other websites.

  You can go from corner A to corner B by climbing the stairs or by going around a level plane.       The squares labeled A and B are the same shade of gray.

 

In the BBC video, "The Secret You," Oxford Mathematician Marcus de Sautoy poses the question "At what point do we understand that we are ourselves?" Researchers use the Mirror Self-Recognition test to discover when children begin to recognize themselves in a mirror. In this test, a small dot is surreptitiously placed on the child's face.  If the child immediately recognizes the dot is on his or her face and touches a finger to it, then the child "passes" the test and is considered to be able to recognize himself/herself.  Professor Gordon Gallup, who developed the test, also tried it on animals. No animals except chimpanzees and orangutans were able to pass the test.  However, does this really mean that other species have no self-awareness?  I wanted to find out how the test is done on animals that do not have fingers to touch a dot with.

    I found that, in an experiment conducted by researchers Diana Reiss and Lori Marino focused on dolphins, they either marked, pretended to mark, or did not touch the subject.  The marks were made with non-toxic black ink on parts of the dolphin's body that it could not see without the use of a reflective surface.  The dolphin's behavior was then examined to see if it positioned itself to see the marked areas in a mirror placed in the pool. As many dolphins did exhibit this type of behavior, these researchers believe that the results of their experiment provide convincing evidence that the bottlenose dolphin is, in fact, capable of mirror self-recognition.

More information on these experiments and a video of one of the trials can be found be below:

Mirror Self Recognition in the Bottlenose Dolphin

Video of dolphin subject exhibiting mark directed behavior

Video Source: The Secret You

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8Biv_8xjj8E?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I found the BBC documentary fascinating to watch. In particular I enjoyed the section on consciousness. Here they discussed at what age people develop their sense of self. Watching the babies take the Mirror Self Recognition Test was particularly interesting . This test attempted to identify at what age people start to recognize themselves in the mirror. I do  not recall a time when I could not recognize myself in the mirror so watching some of the babies fail this test was astonishing. This test showed that 22-month-old child could recognize themselves while the 18-month-old could not. So somewhere in the gap between 18 and 22 months is when people most likely become aware of themselves, or so this test would have us think. 

When the narrator showed that only animals most similar to humans could identify themselves the idea that this concept of self-recognition seemed to resonate with me. I do believe that we are unique as humans because we are the only species able to shape our environments to fit our needs and I thought this was an interesting point to make.

If you look at how we are constantly increasing our carry capacity on this earth it shows that humans more than any other animal can change their surroundings. However I think I need a little more clarification as to how be able to recognize yourself leads to this phenomena.

After reading the text in Chapter 5 and doing some research, the most interesting concept to me was sleepwalking and why people do it. Sleepwalking is basically where a person walks while they are fully asleep and may involve some activity. There have been stories reported of people driving a car and even killing others while sleepwalking. While most sleepwalking isn't this intense, it is still an interesting sleep disorder to be aware of. The question that always comes to my mind is: What causes a person to sleepwalk?

 

Sleepwalking usually occurs during non-REM, stages 3 or 4 of sleep and many people link it to physiological factors. Some other factors that I found in research were very surprising to me. They were genetic and environmental. This brings us back to the nature/nurture debate in a different form. Genetically, sleepwalking actually occurs more frequently in identical twins, and is ten times more likely to occur if a first degree relative has a history of sleepwalking. As for environmental factors the most common are sleep deprivation, chaotic sleep schedules, stress, and alcohol intoxication to name a few. I also found that the chemical messenger in the brain, GABA, has a role in a person sleepwalking. It has been speculated that a lack of this, or an underdeveloped system which inhibits the activity of the brain, could be a cause.

 

While all or one of these factors may play a role in a person sleepwalking, it is very hard to pinpoint why a person sleepwalks as it can happen to an individual on any given night. You can't predict the night before whether or not you will sleepwalk, so really there is no definite answer to my question of what causes a person to sleepwalk. The one thing I think we have to keep in mind is whether sleepwalking is caused by something specific (sleep deprivation, alcohol, GABA, etc.) or whether it's our genes or environment that plays a role.

 

Sleepwalking happens most often in children and this video I found shows a good example of a young child sleepwalking.

  

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX6U4yXQt6M

 

Research:  http://www.emedicinehealth.com/sleepwalking/page2_em.htm

http://www.howitworksdaily.com/science/%EF%BB%BFwhy-do-we-sleepwalk/

                In The Onion, A Hoax News Source, a recent article claimed that a correlation between ocular and brain cancer from reading text on a computer screen has been found .  The article states that the main culprit is, "reading a headline followed by three to four sentences" and "while it is treatable, if one encounters the sort of icon marking the end of an article, it is incurable."

                While the Onion is not a reliable source of news, it prides itself on providing articles that could be misinterpreted as real news if an individually didn't use critical thinking skills to examine what was actually being said. While many critical thinking skills could be used to bring into question the validity of this study and its findings, we will examine the two that will be the most helpful in this scenario.

                The first critical thinking skill that this article does not satisfy is extraordinary claims, which states that amazing claims need a large amount of evidence supporting them to be taken seriously. Computers are a critical necessity for the average undergraduate student in the modern world, so if computer text was actually causing a form of cancer, it could be extremely detrimental to our youth's health. There is, however, virtually no evidence into how this correlation has been found. The article provides no details on the actual research performed, and does not provide a link to examine the study. This leaves a gap in supportive information to the article's claim of computer text causing various cancers.

                The second critical thinking skill that is not satisfied is correlation vs. causation, which states that a relation between two occurrences doesn't necessarily mean one causes the other.  In this instance a third variable, such as the overall usage of all electronic screens including computers, cell phones, and mp3 players could be tied to the cause of the diseases.

                While this article is blatantly fabricated and untrue, certain electronics have been found to give off small dosages of x-ray radiation (U.S. EPA). The effects of radiation from digital items such as computers could be explored further.

For those not familiar with website stumbleupon.com, it is a sort of search engine in which the user selects from a wide variety of personal interests, and the engine takes the user to various web pages based on those interests. It is a great way to pass the time and even learn more about subjects you are passionate in. Stumbling through my 'psychology' interests, I came across a very interesting article about a man who was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, chronic depression and chronic anxiety.

John Sterns, the author and subject of the article, talks about his many difficulties he faces in life. Schizoaffective disorder, according to John, is a co-diagnosis of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. In my high school psychology class and even a little bit in this semester's course, we've talked about disorders, hallucinations, and other disorders related to the brain. What's really refreshing about this article, is the fact that it is written through the eyes of one of these patients and how his disorders impact his life. It's a breath of fresh air seeing the more "human" side to psychology.

Since John was four years old (he is now in his forties), he's heard voices (auditory hallucinations) in his head that tell him to do rather disturbing and hateful demands. Most of the voices tell him to kill himself or attempt to influence him that he shouldn't be alive. He mainly talks about one particular stay in a mental hospital and his difficulties finding any meaning or purpose in an art therapy class. Although he never really personally cared for any of his work, it was the hope and determination to return to his wife and son that really pushed him. Despite his still frequent hallucinations and thoughts of suicide, he "passed" his class and was moved to an open ward so that he may see his family.

I found some comfort, as well as distress in this article. Coming from a rather large skeptic of the scientific community, again, I found this article incredibly refreshing. As helpful as medication and therapy can be to those with serious mental illnesses, it can only do so much. It was Sterns' inspiring inner strive to be with his family again that got him through his stay in the hospital. If you read on to the comments section below the article, you can see just how inspiring this man is to those with other mental illnesses and disorders. A lot of these other readers say how they no longer felt alone after reading the article and praised Sterns for his brevity.

Here is a link to the original article if you are interested: http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/being-crazy-noisy

When you get sick, it is a natural instinct to search the medicine cabinet for some sort of remedy that will make you feel better. I would normally reach for a dose of Tylenol or Nyquil, depending on how bad I feel at the moment. I am definitely not a biology or health sciences major or anything so sometimes I'm curious as to what exactly is in the medicine that makes me feel better? Is it actually the medication that's helping my massive headache? Or could it just be a way of making me THINK that the medication is making things better? This state of mind is called the placebo effect.