You may write with your right hand, but do you think with your right brain? Most people know that our brains are split into two sections, the left and right hemisphere; however, what most people do not know is that people tend to have a more dominant side of their brain. So, although you don’t technically “think” with one side of your brain, you do have one side of your brain that is stronger, per say. Although the two halves of the brain are similar, they are responsible for different functions. The left hemisphere carries out mathematical, analytical, and logical process. Conversely, the right hemisphere is responsible for face recognition, space recognition, sense perception, and emotional and artistic functions. This disparity between the two hemispheres is referred to as brain lateralization. Studies of the connection of handedness and brain lateralization began in the late 17th century. French neurosurgeon Paul Broca suggested that, in general terms, a person’s handedness correlates to the specialization of the opposite side of the brain. So, individuals who are right-handed would typically have a more dominant left hemisphere. It is important to note that “handedness” is not a strictly defined term scientifically. Traditionally most people would define it as the hand with which a person writes. Others view handedness as the hand that performs more accurately on manual tasks. The theory that one’s handedness is opposite to the dominant side of one’s brain is widely accepted; still, some studies have refuted this idea in regards to the lateralization of language. The National Center for Scientific Research in France performed a study in which their subjects performed language tests while being assessed by an MRI scan. The results yielded the conclusion that a person’s handedness does not determine their dominant hemisphere for language. Additionally, a study done in Brain, A Journal of Neurology concluded that “left-handedness is neither a precondition nor a necessary consequence of right-hemisphere language dominance.” Still, the study did show that left-handedness increases the chance of a language dominant right hemisphere. To test this theory for myself, I performed small, informal study in which I asked six individuals if they considered themselves more artistic or logical. Of the six participants, two were left-handed and four were right-handed. The results concluded supported the theory that handedness has an opposite relationship with the dominant brain hemisphere. Five of the six individuals believed that they exemplified the qualities of the hemisphere opposite to their handedness. Of course, human error should be accounted for. As this was an informal study, it depends upon the assumption that the participants accurately assessed themselves as either more logical or artistic. Furthermore, the sample pool was not sufficiently small and should be increased to increase the soundness of this finding. Overall, it seems that handedness (at the very least) increases the likelihood of the dominance of the opposite hemisphere.
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Coming soon to Cerebellas: A Quizlet Diagram on the Anatomy of the Brain. Here are a series of photos of our beautiful diagram: Welcome. Since you clicked on this blog post, I am assuming that you are interested in the limbic system. So what is the limbic system? Are you confused? Well we got the right information about all about the limbic system just for you.
Works of art have an incredible power to influence human emotion. Both paintings and musical compositions can bring a smile to someone’s face or even move them to tears. This is because artists often use their art as an outlet for the intense emotions they may not otherwise be able express. Two works of art in particular were created in manner quite similar to this. One a musical composition and one a painting, these mediums of art essentially depicted the inner workings of their artist’s deteriorating mind.
In the podcast “Unraveling Bolero,” we the circumstances of these two individuals who both created forms of art that reflected their mental state. In the early 20th century, Maurice Ravel created a revolutionary musical composition. Decades later, a Vancouver biologist heard this piece for the first time. Obsessed with Ravel’s composition, Anne Adams took up the arduous task of creating, essentially the physical manifestation of this piece. Her painting was as unconventional and as chaotically repetitive as Ravel’s piece. Unbeknownst to Adams, her painting, like Ravel’s composition, was the artistic portrayal of her mind’s state of deterioration. Everyone loves dogs. I know I do. They are mankind's best friend. We love to play fetch with them and keep them company. However, which emotions do dogs actually experience compared to the emotions in humans? Before I explain my purpose, let’s trace back to the discovery of the brain difference with animals. The discovery of the brain differences started with the theory that humans were “big-brained apes” by Charles Darwin. This meant that we had the same structure and “basic uniformity” as the apes and mammals. However, it was not until the 1990s that neuroscientists found minuscule differences based on a microscope. Two neuroscientists, Preuss and Coleman, discovered through a microscope that though we may have a similar look of the brain with apes or other types of mammals, the human brain has a more intricate structure. It is described as a complex mesh like pattern which can create deep, complex topics from the brain. It is fascinating to know that over 80 to 100 neurons are stored in our brain for just vertical parallel processing. The downside to this is that our complex pattern of the human brain can cause complications such as Autism, Alzheimer’s, or schizophrenia. Some examples of how we are different to an animal’s brain is through many abstract thoughts. The number one that separate the brain of the human compared to the brain of the animals is our self-awareness or consciousness. Based on our pre-frontal cortex, we have the knowledge that humans take for granted that we have the awareness to think and to make decisions. This is known as metacognition. Other examples would be the sophistication to human language and how we can remember very complex concepts and terms. Also, appreciation of beauty from a range of the nature in the park to a deeper meaning of a painting in the museum. Now we know the discovery of our brain’s differences and some examples of how we are different to them, we are going to be a little specific about only one animal and their basic brain functions: dogs. Did you know dogs have the same emotions as a human two-year old? Crazy right? I read this article online from Psychology Today, that dogs have all of the same brain structures that produce emotions in humans such as the same hormones and same chemical changes. One example would be both humans and dogs have the same hormone oxytocin, which is feeling love and affection for others. The contrasting topic between dogs and humans is their brain development. Dogs go through their stages of development more quickly, and “have all of the emotional range that they will ever achieve by the time they are four to six months of age.” The problem is that dogs will not ever go through emotions that are complex such as guilt, pride, or shame because they would not even understand it too. Unlike humans, even though the stages of development for emotions takes longer, we have an expanded choice of emotions. One trend on the webs that provides evidence to dogs not feeling complex emotions is called dog shaming. Dog shaming is an internet meme of an image of a dog with a sign that describes some bad things the dog did wrong. Some of these posts are pretty funny, I must say (like the one example I added to this blog). Since dogs do not understand what that the human owners did to them, they do not feel a sense of guilt whenever this happens. Overall, it is interesting to see the many similarities and differences between the emotion of dogs and humans. At the end of the day, dogs are still super cute and the best friends with all humans everywhere. Phineas Gage was a railroad construction foreman in Cavendish, Vermont. The tamping iron he was using to pack explosive powder detonated. The tamping iron penetrated Gage’s left cheek, ripped into his brain and exited through his skull, landing several dozen feet away. Surprisingly, Gage survived this severe ordeal. He was conscious and started walking within minutes. However, neurologists and psychologists were more interested in his personality change. According to psychologist Malcolm Macmillan, there were changes in Gage’s behavior after the injury. He could not stick to plans and showed little tolerance. As his friends said, Gage was not Gage anymore. By then, Gage was the most famous patient in the field of neuroscience and psychology. His injury and his personality changes taught researches that the complex functions such as decision making and social cognition were largely dependent upon the frontal lobes. The frontal lobes were also responsible for the highest faculties relating to the essence of our humanity such as reasoning abilities. However, experts figured out that personality changes did not last longer than about two to three years. Only few years after his injury, he went back to work as a long distance coach driver and as a worker in a livery stable. Phineas Gage’s incident sparked the interest of many experts, and studies and researches relating to his injury is still being referenced. Current neuroscientists and psychologists refer back to Gage’s incident to relate their work in the present to look for connections. A Mnemonic is a way to help a person improve their ability to remember something. Whether it's a phrase or a short song, mnemonics help the brain encode and recall important information that would otherwise be harder to remember. This technique may include an image, a sentence, or a word to associate with the information we want to remember.
Mnemonics are effective for a number of reasons. They make the material more meaningful by adding associations and creating patterns. Furthermore they help organize the information in different parts of your memory so that you can more easily retrieve it later. Sometimes Mnemonics can involve images to make facts more vivid, which is especially helpful for visual learners. There are several types of mnemonic devices. The Method of Loci involves places with which you are familiar and associating words with your locations. This is similar to the method of imagery to associate certain visualizations with information. An acronym is a word formed by the first letters or groups of letters in a name or phrase. Rhymes are easy to remember because of the acoustic encoding in our brains. When in doubt, mnemonic it out! I absolutely LOVE Ken Burns. His eleven hour documentary on the Civil War is one of the most amazing historical records of all time. Part of what makes Burns so powerful is ability to bring historical events to life using original photography, interviews with eye-witnesses, dramatic reading by notable voices, sound effects, and music. Calling to mind the soft violin of the original score in The Civil War can still bring my blood pressure down at a moment's notice. However, the vividness of his production could be cause for concern for his newest project: The Vietnam War. The veterans of this conflict were subjected to unthinkable horrors while serving and treated with resentment and shame when they returned. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a common problem among Vietnam Vets and triggers can bring back a traumatic experience and cause anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares, and depression. PBS and The Veterans Administration are partnering to raise awareness about PTSD and encourage those with symptoms to seek counseling. It is the hope of these medical professionals that if a vet is ready to experience this documentary, that the experience can be therapeutic rather than traumatic. Source material: http://www.npr.org/2017/09/18/551726505/va-cautions-ken-burns-vietnam-documentary-could-triggger-ptsd Have you ever accidentally switched words, or spoke aloud without thinking? You may have experienced what psychologists call a Freudian Slip, or as we non-professionals jokingly nicknamed it, "a slip of the tongue". This slip of the tongue could be a hint into the unconscious—the part of the conscious brain that is almost imperceptible except for occasional behaviors that give a glimpse into a person's inner emotions, memories and desires. The founder of Psychoanalytic Theory, Sigmund Freud, was the first to establish the idea of an unconscious level and a research metrology that relied heavily on case studies. Though Freud seemed to believe that the unconscious level was mainly negative, psychologists today have found that the brain can develop positive reactions, mostly through establishing steady communication with the unconscious level, such as through therapy. WHAT IS THE CONSCIOUS MIND? There are three levels of the conscious mind: Conscious: the thoughts that a person is actively aware of in the present moment, such as walking across the street, or talking with a friend about a concert. Preconscious: anything and everything that could potentially enter your consciousness, such as yesterday's test or an upcoming bill. Unconscious: all your emotions, memories and desires. Freud believed that the unconscious level contained hidden fears that caused psychological issues in people. According to Scientific American, the unconscious level can effect perception, such as detecting inconsistencies. In one experiment, university students in Israel performed a masking technique in which bright colors were flashed into one eye as they made a picture slowly appear in the other. When the picture was of something logical, such as a woman putting a pie in an oven, the brain noticed the image in 2.64 seconds. However, when presented with an image of something illogical, such as a woman putting a chessboard in the oven, the brain noticed the image in 2.50. This shows that the unconscious level can detect things that are illogical, and effect perception. A mass of emotions, memories and desires, the unconscious level may affect an individual more that what is realized. Therefore, it is prudent for one to be in tune with their unconsciousness in order to maintain a healthy mental lifestyle. Sources: https://www.verywell.com/what-is-the-conscious-mind-2794984 https://www.verywell.com/what-is-a-freudian-slip-2795851 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3767904/ http://www.nlpacademy.co.uk/articles/view/understanding_your_mind_conscious_and_unconscious_processing/ Picture: http://islandsofthemind.tumblr.com/post/60167645776/desert-island-vs-the-conscious-unconscious-mind (To see the tumblr link where this picture came from, click here) Psychologists are continually concerned about the ethics of researches and experiments. Researches in psychology may cause some stress, harm, or inconvenience for the people who participate. The most direct ethical concern of the scientist is to prevent harm to the research participants. There is an infamous research by Stanley Milgram that portrays ethical problems. Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. This experiment required participants to be paired with another person, and each one would either be the ‘learner’ or the ‘teacher’. This draw was always fixed so that the participant would always be the teacher, and the learner would always be one of Milgram’s assistants. The learner was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his or her arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts. Surprisingly, 65% of the participants continued to the highest level. This experiment started a controversial discussion since it contained several ethical issues. Participants experienced extremely stressful situations, and they were under circumstances of psychological harm. Also, in an experiment called the Stanford Prison, the participants began to suffer through humiliations and punishments, and many started to show signs of mental and emotional distress. Now, these studies are prohibited due to potential psychological harm to the participants. Moreover, psychologists are stressing the idea of free choice in ethical standards. Free choice refers to the idea that the participant is always free to participate in the research or leave the experiment if he or she wishes to. This was also violated in Milgram’s experiment because many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment, but they were not allowed to withdraw. The most widespread ethical concern to the participants in behavior research is the extent to which researchers employ deception. There are two types of deception: active and passive. An active deception is when the researcher tells the participants that he or she is studying learning when in fact the experiment really concerns obedience to authority. Passive is when participants are not told about the hypothesis being studied or the potential use of the data being collected. Deception can be seen in Milgram's experiment, since participants believed that they were actually shocking the person and were unaware that it was all planned out. Furthermore, privacy must always be protected. To protect privacy, psychologists usually come up with unique methods. One technique is to assign a code or a number to identify the person. This was a little introduction to the basic concerns of conducting ethical experiments, and new regulations will be added in the future. |
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