VORB video & reading

Mouse Party

It surprised me to see a bunch of mice injected with all sorts of drugs to keep them high (hence mouse party, haha.) I selected the mouse with cocaine in it and put it in a centrifuge machine thing. The machine shows the dopamine inside the mouse's brain. Dopamine is responsible for movement, emotion, and attention. With cocaine inside the mouse's body, it blocks the dopamine transporters from receiving dopamine to the neuron. Lacking of dopamine, a person can get Parkinson's disease this way. The mouse's brain is also similar to a human's brain, so if a person consumes cocaine they will not get enough dopamine inside the brain to their body. Also, a person with cocaine cannot control their movements, so they will not stay still.

Heroine mouse: Body's natural opiate blocks the inhibitory receptor so that dopamine can get out freely. This acts as a natural mood-enhancer like sudden overwhelm of happiness or natural painkiller. Heroin users can feel "good" when the heroin mimics natural opiates, making dopamine to flow out and makes a person feel better when in their down times or has an injury. Although frequent use of heroin will lead to depression if not enough dopamines can get out anymore without the heroin's aid.

Meth mouse: Meth mimics dopamine, can get in the neurons. Meth will force dopamines to get out of their vesicles. Excess dopamine are trapped in the synapses. Therefore, those dopamines will overstimulate the cell, making the person feel intense pleasure.

Your iBrain: How Technology Changes the Way We Think

The brain is adapted to change within the environment. An older person might think of newspaper and jazz or R&B music, while a hip and younger person might think of techno, rap and computer. Therefore, the brain only processes what the person has been exposed to the most (mere exposure can work here too.) Also, younger generations have better experience with computers than older generations because they grow up exposed to these sorts of information that older people don't have back then. For example, taking notes can never be easier with advanced electronic notepads. Whereas taking notes the old fashion way on paper might deem useful decades ago, but not anymore. However, a lady with an old, ragged notebook might have a better chance of keeping it longer than a man with his Blackberry phone which one day he will eventually drop and ruin it. Also, the brain has this plasticity that allows it to change information at will to adapt to different environments. For example, a boy who lives on a farm will eventually adapt to the city life, but it takes time.

Videos & Outside readings

http://www.blogger.com/www.learner.org/resources/series150.html The Mind

What I found: The brain's natural Morphine, or pain reliever, is Endorphins. Those soldiers during the Vietnam War used heroin because they were under a lot of stress during battle. This relieved them of emotional pain as well as physical pain when they got injuries and there were no hospitals near by. Sometimes when you get cuts and bruises you don't notice them instantly because endorphins is also released out at the same time to ease the pain. A while later you will notice the pain after the endorphins calm down. I also get cuts and bruises that I don't notice until later a sharp pain kicks in. One example of this is when I cut my knee on a glass table I didn't feel the pain. A moment later I noticed the blood trickling down, that's when I began to cry/scream/bawl (I was 9.) Maybe the image of blood made me think of pain or the pain itself, I'm not sure. Morphine can replace endorphins and vice versa. Therefore, people who use heroin will stop their process of making endorphins in the brain, so if they stop using heroin they will feel pain.

Understanding the Brain Through Epilepsy

The boy's brain neurons switch on and off uncontrollably, resulting in seizures, or spasms of muscles. Patients with seizures often forget what they recently did when asked. I saw the doctors performing a brain surgery (which is pretty gross...). They can remove a part of the brain that causes Ashley's seizures, cool :).

Brain to Muscle Link in the Monkey http://www.blogger.com/scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2008/10/brain_to_muscle_link_in_the_mo.php

Even without access to the wrist, the monkey still responds to the game that involves his wrist by using brain neurons. One neuron can connect to other specific parts and muscles of the monkey's body to make them work. Therefore, the monkey can use that one neuron to move his wrist without actually using his wrist. Other neurons overtime can copy that action and move his wrist also, not just that one neuron. This could be useful for making synthetic limbs when one person damages a neuron, the doctor can replace that neuron with another neuron that does the same job.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-mirror-neuron-revolut (idk how to hyperlink)

The Mirror Neuron Revolution: Explaining What Makes Humans Social

Mirror neurons are located in the premotor cortex and inferior parietal cortex in the brain. They both activate when an action takes place. Mirror neurons can mimic action of another person or recognizing our own. For example, someone smiles at you, you smile back. People with autism process other people's emotions much slower. Therefore, they have a hard time to be sociable. Social people are the ones who respond to another's feelings and emotions (otherwise they're antisocial.) Mirror neurons are also important in language because we mimic our mother's sound and voice and try to repeat back the words we hear. This is why children need to stay in school so that they can learn positive things from their elders. Also, Lehrer shows that we can mimic other people's actions through movies and music, so bad movies and bad music can influence gang activities and violence in youth.

Chapt 18

What I can do with this chapter is that I can show altruism through donating quarters for leukemia and not expecting anything in return (maybe a cure.) I can use aggression when needed to confront a conflict. I can also use cognitive disonance to decide which college is right for me, like tuition cost and location by that I have to conform my ideas in order to reach a right decision. I can also see prejudice in today's presidential election where they would prefer a Caucasian man over an African American man, or vice versa that the people prefer Obama just because he's black, not looking into both people's talents. America's superiority (just-world phenomenon) declines once they turn to other countries to help for economic crisis.

Aggression, Attraction, Conflict, Altruism

Agression: Sometimes when I did something I was told to do and people said I didn't do it so I put up an argument against them. For example, when I took out the laundry from the dryer, my mom thought it was still down the basement so I got angry and showed here that I already took the laundry out. Also, I can't stand loud people talking over my shoulders when I'm waiting in a line (like at Seabreeze). I wanted to turn around and say "shut up" but that would make all other people stare at me and I'm usually a nice person. This led to my frustration-agression principle, since I couldn't walk away nor yell things back at people. Also, ingroup bias is present in this case, because those loud people wouldn't let other people in their conversation but they just talk among themselves.

Conflict: I usually have conflicts with my older sister. Sometimes she wants me to take AP classes either to torture me or to help me going to a good college... Whenever I'm watching a TV show I like, she comes up and changes the channel. This is called a social trap since she wants to watch something against my liking for her own benefit. My sister complains when I spent like 10$ on a shirt while she spends 300$ on a new lap top and that's ok since it's for school work and hw :D. This just-world phenomenon leads to me believing that there's only some justice in the world.

New drawings I made

Just thought I'd share with people on here.

http://tropicorn.deviantart.com/art/Mermaid-Seashell-100010226

Violating Social Norm

Ok so I tried sitting with a group of students whom I don't know and started eating lunch. They said hi and I said hi back. Pretty much they all talk to each other about things they all know and I dont :p. Although we didn't talk much, it was somewhat fun trying to blend in. After that, I may never see them again.

Video, Outside Readings, Experiments

I did the face-making experiment and found out that most of the faces have some similarities among them. Therefore, when filing a police report, people can't describe the faces clearly and often leads to misinformation. Also, people are like 99.8% the same so there's no point for prejudicing our own species/races if we all are the same in some ways.

Video games link to violence? Gameplays are social activities for boys while girls socialize in real life. Although girls play less video games than boys on a weekly basis, a girl is more prone to physical fights than boys when exposed to M-rated games. This leads to anger and aggression in youth. Limit play time to 1-2 hrs a day.

Cults are groups that recruit weak-minded, depressed, or traumatized people to do strange actions for them. There are political cults, therapy cults, and business cults. Cults tend to realize things that are not real, and convince people to do so. Also, cults want people to get rid of their normal thinking. Example is the book 1984 by George Orwell whereas the leader took control over the citizens and make them think that they have freedom but they don't, and 2+2 =5. Therefore, we have to be careful when exposing to a cult and one asks us to join.

Cognitive Control: The ability to create subjective realities for oneself, or as directed by a leader.

Pygmalion Effect: Positive change of a person's performance or perception of a situation, based on expectation and encouragement by others.

Thought-Stopping: A behavior modification technique in which independent thinking is discouraged or disallowed

Stanford Prison

b. What are the effects of living in an environment with no clocks, no view of the outside world, and minimal sensory stimulation?

People would go crazy or isolated. They would have mindshock, and feel that 1 day is as long as 1 year. They would stare and sit at one spot all the time.

d. At first push-ups were not a very aversive form of punishment, but they became more so as the study wore on. Why the change?

At first, the body is kinda used to do push up, but as time goes on the body's muscles become weaker in prison so push ups will be harder to do. The guards or other prisoners step on the prisoner's back while he's doing push up. Also, the push up count is increased to several hours later on. Push up is also used in Nazi camps as punishment.