feel free to check out my two new textbooks on my MAIN website laurafreberg.com
Here’s what we are reading today:
“Our sense of belonging to the male or female gender is an inherent component of the human identity perception. As a general rule, gender identity and physical sex coincide. If this is not the case, one refers to trans-identity or transsexuality. In a current study, brain researcher Georg S. Kanz of the University Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the MedUni Vienna was able to demonstrate that the very personal gender identity of every human being is reflected and verifiable in the cross-links between brain regions.”
“”The majority did cave, and follow the experimenter’s orders,” says Hollander, whose findings were published online today by the British Journal of Social Psychology. “But a good number of people resisted, and I’ve found particular ways they did that, including ways of resisting that they share with the people who ultimately complied.”
Hollander’s unprecedentedly deep conversational analysis of audio recordings of the experiments yielded six practices employed against the repeated insistence of Milgram’s authority figure.”
““Dopamine plays a critical role in orchestrating responses to cognitive demands or challenges, and levels of this neurotransmitter are known to decline with age,” said Dr. Kristen Kennedy, the study’s primary investigator and an assistant professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Older participants in the study tended to activate additional brain regions beyond those used by younger participants during simple judgments, suggesting they either need more brain activity to maintain and access word and language knowledge, or a less-efficient processing, Kennedy said.”
“”Originally, we all had brown eyes,” said Professor Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a “switch,” which literally “turned off” the ability to produce brown eyes.””
“Dr. John Gabrieli of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and his colleagues describe the predictive power of brain imaging across a variety of different future behaviors, including infants’ later performance in reading, students’ later performance in math, criminals’ likelihood of becoming repeat offenders, adolescents’ future drug and alcohol use, and addicts’ likelihood of relapse.”
“Begun in July 2000, MESA followed participants for 11 years, collecting data every 18 months to two years. Hernandez, who is an affiliated investigator on MESA, is leading a team in conducting prospective analyses on the associations found between optimism and heart health.
“We now have available data to examine optimism at baseline and cardiovascular health a decade later,” said Hernandez, who expects to have an abstract completed in 2015.”
Something that might have an interest for those wishing to go on to grad school in psychology
5 Comments
melissaenunez · January 16, 2015 at 11:09 pm
“Networks of the brain and gender identity” and “Predicting future behavior” sound like very interesting reads!
kmmcnult · January 24, 2015 at 9:13 pm
I liked the readings, but I really enjoyed the YouTube video. I have heard of Milgram’s study multiple times, but every time people surprise me. I always wonder what I would have done in the experiment. I cannot believe that over half of the participants went up to 450 volts; how scary. I’m glad more people are hearing of this experiment and realizing how they need to think on their own and not just follow orders.
jwatso02 · February 7, 2015 at 4:21 pm
The optimism and healthy hearts study is fascinating because I am very interested in positive psychology and how it relates to health. Studies have shown that individuals who view stress as negative have shorter lifespans than those who view stress as a helpful and natural biological function, and their body’s ways of preparing them for success. Anticipating doom and going in to fight or flight mode was a terrific response for an early human to outrun a wild animal. Such an intense response isn’t so great for a business man about to give a presentation. It seems that constantly being in this fight or flight mode is exhausting for our cardiovascular system to endure for long periods of time. However, I don’t think we are all doomed for heart problems if we aren’t currently optimistic- I believe we can retrain our thinking and reappraise stressful situations. Our biological responses to stress and excitement are very similar- increase heart rate, “butterflies”, etc. What if we considered the possibility that our body is preparing us for success? You’d never see a good sports team worried and trying to calm down before a game. Michael Jordan would never say “I’m really nervous we’re going to lose so I’m just going to sit and calm down for a minute”, and yet this is how most of us respond to stress. Then we become stressed that we are stressed, and it becomes a cycle based on a fear of failure rather than an optimistic anticipation of a challenge and success.
najavier · February 22, 2015 at 4:22 pm
The article I read was based on predicting future behavior. Dr. John Gabrieli and his team are working with brain imaging and finding patterns that can predict people’s behavior. Their work aims to aid the masses. If they could detect these possible problems or vulnerabilities early on and provide help to decrease that outcome, then that would benefit everyone. However, I can see how their work can be controversial. Having records state how well people can learn to their chances of doing criminal acts could jeopardize employment opportunities, health benefits, how they are treated or perceived in society, etc. I’m torn on this discovery because while it’s great to support and tackle issues early on, would the benefit outweigh possible costs (e.g. discrimination)? Also, there’s this tendency within our society to think in categories and in extremes. Some people might interpret these patterns to be a part of the picture because other elements, like one’s environment, plays a role in one’s growth and development. Others might find these patterns to be definitive and believe they cannot change their results. Others may struggle between believing their results do not define them and do define them. Overall, the article is interesting because while the functions of our body still has some mysterious aspects to it, researchers and all those contributing to this field have come so far. Also, I do think that changes should be made in how society thinks about problems. It’s more like a problem needs to go away versus talking about the problem and working towards improving the matter. Maybe striving to change attitudes on diverging from the norm and how that can be ok could aid in Dr. John Gabrieli’s goal to help others.
elliehirahara · March 2, 2015 at 8:36 pm
I thought that the most interesting article was the study that was done on the correlation of optimism and a healthier heart. It is no surprise that having an overall optimistic outlook on life and attitude can have positive effects on your health. In this study, they concluded that optimistic people have better blood and cholesterol levels; this was very fascinating to me because it is amazing to think that just by having an optimistic mind set, it can effect even one’s blood and cholesterol levels which many people suffer from.