Here I am at my Favorite Coffee Shop in San Luis Obispo, California
Here is what I am reading today:
“Some witnesses identified the gunman as an Army psychiagrist, Maj. Nidal Hasan, an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent who was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan the following month. His trial is set for March. If convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder, he faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole.”
“A recent study showed that certain brain areas expand in people who have greater numbers of friends on Facebook. This was welcome news for online social network addicts, particularly teenagers: “Mom, I’m not just on Facebook; I’m doing my temporal lobe calisthenics.””
“The contents of a person’s dream have been revealed by brain scan for the first time, scientists report in the Nov. 8 Current Biology. By monitoring the brain of a man who has unusual control over his dreaming, the accomplishment brings researchers closer to understanding how the brain spins its nightly yarns. “It’s really exciting that people have done this,” says sleep researcher Edward Pace-Schott at Massachusetts General Hospital in Charlestown and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “And it also brings back lucid dreaming as a very powerful scientific tool.””
11 Comments
annieaitken · November 8, 2011 at 3:45 pm
I article about Facebook friends seems like a topic of growing interest but this article pointed out some of the ethical limitations which might make it difficult to study. In the study with the monkeys, I wonder if the results could be generalized to Facebook, or just socialization. As this article points it, out important to think about this study from a wide perspective. Maybe the way our technology is advancing isn’t changing our brains for the better. In a paper I wrote for my English class I examined the effects of the internet on our relationships. It seems as though, constant connectivity is changing our social values, and not always in a positive way.
mfitzpatrick · November 8, 2011 at 8:51 pm
I never would have guessed that facebook would ever be a focus of study in social interactions and the effects on the body. Even more so, I would never even think it would cause an change in out brain. As stated in the article, the temporal sulcus gets larger if a facebook user has more friends on facebook, thus indicating that the more social you are, the larger your temporal sulcus and the more grey matter you have, which leads to having more social networks within the brain for processing. I know people that have up to 2,000 friends.. So, does that mean because I have only 500 friends that I’m lacking in terms of social interaction and social processing within my brain?
mfitzpatrick · November 8, 2011 at 9:26 pm
I never really thought about what daylight savings time actually does for us. It saves energy! Yay for being efficient! It does save energy: in fall it’s lighter earlier and in spring it’s lighter later. But in terms of how daylight savings time affects us and our sleep, I never really thought about. Additionally, I never realized how there is a part of our brain (the superchiasmatic nucleus) that regulates our circadian rhythm along with zeitgebers (or external cues like light) and with help from the proteins per, tim, and Clock. The protein, Clock, promotes the increase of per and tim throughout the day and when there is bountiful amount of these two proteins, Clock slowly becomes prohibited by per and tim’s abundance. All in all, the many components of how our body keeps rhythms and maintains our health through the effects of light, time, and proteins, and physical structures in our body makes me realize how complex we actually are.
Rssolomo · November 10, 2011 at 9:23 am
I really enjoyed reading the article Your Brain on Facebook: Bigger Social Networks Expand the Size of Neural Networks. The article shows me how much I have learned this quarter because as I read about certain structures in the brain, I now know their placement and function rather than being blind sighted. I am taking Biological Anthropology this quarter as well so the information about primates in this article was also applicable to what I have learned. Lastly, it is nice to know that all the time I spend on Facebook, and social networking in general, may have some benefit to my brain activity because online communication is becoming a distinction of the current generation. All in all, I would be interested to find out more about the exact impact Facebook has on its users.
Rssolomo · November 10, 2011 at 9:30 am
Dreams truly fascinate me. The brain’s ability to conjure such wild images every night is amazing. I found the article on dreams interesting however, I found the title a bit misleading. I was hoping to see the actual image of what a dream looks like. Nonetheless, hopefully this initial research will lead to more on such an unknown aspect of our lives that serves so many functions. Personally, learning about dreams and sleep in class has been my favorite unit so far and has caused me to reflect on some of my past dreams. Interestingly, I remember a few recurrent dreams from my childhood and they all deal with my unconscious fears. Sleep and wakefulness is definitely an area I would like to learn more about.
annieaitken · November 10, 2011 at 11:46 am
The article about dream localization in the brain seems like it’s still in its infancy. I would be interested to know the difference between imaging of brains during lucid dreams versus regular dreams. It seems like lucid dreams would be more correlated with regions of our brain that are responsible for higher cognitive control. Since they only were able to do their study on one participant, I feel like it might be difficult to get a wide range of participants. I wonder if it is possible to locate different parts of the brain which are activated in nightmares compared to positive dreams. Maybe dreams that reflect actual parts of our day would activate more hippocampus regions compared to other dreams which appear to just be random.
giulianna.riso · November 10, 2011 at 12:09 pm
The article about the first brain image being done during a dream was really exciting to read. Dreams are very mysterious so it will be extremely interesting to see where this technology goes so that psychologists can have a greater understanding for dreams!
anajafia · November 12, 2011 at 7:52 pm
I wonder why daylight savings time is still done every year. Up until the biopsych class I didn’t know the origins of the system, and now that I do it adds more to the confusion of why it is still intact with our yearly changes. Maye the government jsut doesn’t see it as a large problem, even thought our current views on energy is SAVE SAVE SAVE! So maybe we’ll see some legislation pass soon.
With the study done by Coren in Canada the results are dramatic and even more evidence for the removal. Although I’m not complaining because I love getting an extra hour of sleep. I was quite effected by the phase delay because there was a large difference with the quality of my sleep last week, due to waking up uncommonly quite refreshed. Still the number of prevented car accidents in the spring outweighs my joy, and pretty much everybody else’s, of getting that extra hour of sleep.
Also although I wasn’t aware of this information before I never felt irritable during the phase advance in spring. That just might have to do with me sleeping in anyways. Thanks for keeping me comfortable suprachiasmatic nucleus. I don’t know what I would do without you. Oh yeah not live.
kai zajac · November 13, 2011 at 7:45 pm
I found the article about daylight savings time very interesting. Since the daylight savings time deals with phase delay it reminded me of my travel experiences. My grandparents live in Germany, so I have traveled there a number of times to visit them. On all these trips I would have horrible jetlag upon arriving to Germany. I would fall asleep at about 7 at night, and wake up around 3 am. However, on the trips back to California the jetlag wasn’t nearly as bad. I never understood why this is, but now after learning about sleep, I know that it is the suprachiasmatic nucleus that controls are state of wakefulness, and that the reason I had such bad jetlag going to Germany is because the SCN had a much harder time adjusting in a phase advance. So no wonder there there are more car accidents during the spring time change!
Agordo09 · November 15, 2011 at 2:16 pm
“Your Brain on Facebook”
Many people argue that social networking sites, texting, tweeting and all the other recent advances in social connectivity are teaching kids poor writing habits. I believe that in some cases this is true. However, having unlimited access to technology that allows for communication with the world around you through writing is a great new tool that actually helps teens and young adults form more full and stronger ideas in their writing. Sure they’re spelling and grammar may be poor but the quality of ideas that are shared increases when we are able to practice writing. Especially when we care about what we say to our friends and family.
-Andrew Gordon
mbise · November 18, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Hoorah! More defense of Facebook usage!
This article piqued my interest because of Thursday’s mention of how Facebook can help prevent some of the bad effects of stress by maintaining social relations. The title of the article makes it out to be a bit more conclusive than the actual body does, but I do think that the findings are significant in their ability to draw attention for future research. I do believe, however, that any such findings should be considered carefully and not used as an excuse to waste time.
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