Current Events #3

In this chapter it talks about heritability, and it made me wonder why my brothers and sisters differ so much. There are 5 of us, and we all have some similar and different interests. What I can't figure out is how we all got these differences, the similarities I understand, but whether we inherit things from our parents, or acquire them through our environment, we all have the same parents and grew up in the same environment... So is there another factor here that I am missing?

Current Events #2

This week's chapter talks a lot about sleep and dreaming so I thought I would talk about one of my recent dreams.

About a week ago I was having dreams that I could remember nearly everynight (go figure, once I started my dream journal I couldn't remember any of them). The one that sticks in my mind the most however also kind of scares me.

To start with, you have to know one thing about me. A little over a year ago I tore my left ACL playing summer basketball, and I was out for the next seven months... In my dream I ended up tearing my ACL again, but it was on the opposite leg. I had surgery on it and was once again in the full-leg knee brace, only this time it was on my right leg. The weird part was that all the pain I felt was still in my left knee...

It kind of scared me because I took it literal, to mean that I was going to tear my ACL again. We talked in class how most dreams usually don't mean what they seem to, so that makes me feel a little better, but I still can't figure out why I had the dream in the first place. The only thing I can figure would be that my knee had been bugging me in volleyball practice a couple days before.

Chapter 3 -Consciousness and the Two-Track Mind

In this chapter I learned that dream theorists propose many explinations for dreaming. These reasons are as follows: to sitisfy our own wishes, to file away memories, to develop and preserve neural pathways, to make sense of neural static, and to reflect cognitive development. Reading this made me try to think of where some of my most memorable dreams would fit in and I think many of them are to satisfy my own wishes and to file away memories... But it also made me wonder why we have bad dreams and where they fit in.

Another thing that I learned was that we go through different stages of sleep throughout the night. The only stage I had ever heard of before was REM sleep, so this fact suprised me. However, I did know that we didn't experience REM sleep all night, so I had often wondered what we did the rest of the time. I was glad to finally find out.

I really agree with the sleep deprivation part. As I read the statistics I felt they also applied to me which makes sense, considering the work load I have this semester. The scariest part of this for me is the thought of all the consequences that can come with sleep deprivation. I am not being effected in these ways yet and I'm not part of the 28% of high school students that falls asleep in class once a week, but I'm afraid I may be getting close.

'Are You a Liar?' -Psyblog

In this article they test the statistic 'people lie three times within the first 10 minutes of meeting someone'. They preformed an experiment to see how many times people would lie when talking to someone new for ten minutes. They videotaped these conversations, and then played them back to the person, asking them to count how many lies they told while watching the tape. 40% of people claimed to not have lied at all, the other 60% did however report just under 3 lies in the ten minutes, somewhat proving the statistic correct.

What I don't agree with here is what they considered lies. For instance, if one was asked how they were doing and they responded fine, when really they weren't feeling well, they were to count it. Although it is technically a lie, I don't agree that it necessarily should be counted. It's not like within the first ten minutes of meeting someone you're going to want to share what a crappy day you are having. This point was discussed in the article, and another point was made. If we did tell the exact truth all the time, our social lives would be disturbed. The little lies we tell could possibly just be because we are nice, well-adjusted people.

Chapter 2 - The Biology of Mind

In this chapter I learned a lot about the parts of the human mind and what they are responsible for. I found it interesting how all the many different parts coincide to make things work. You never have only one part of your brain doing something, there is always many parts working together. Sometimes these things are working together and you don't even realize that part of your brain is responsible for the actions, like your heart beating and breathing. Because you don't need to think about these things, you don't always realize that it's your brain responsible for the functions.

In another part of the chapter I learned that scientists are able to stimulate a rat's movement with a remote control. I liked the idea that this technology could be used in search and rescue missions at some point, but I'm not sure how. I mean, rats can't really rescue people, so are they going to use the technology on humans? And if they can use it on humans, what else will that lead to?

Lastly, at the beginning of the chapter it talked about falling in love, and that it is psychological, and doesn't take place in the heart. But this fact upsets the history of falling in love. If it is all in a persons' mind, then we should be able to make ourselves love someone, yet we can't. And if by some chance we can control who we love, then that takes away the saying "you can't help who you're in love with". I personally believe that love isn't in the heart, but in the soul. Although people often associate these two together, is the soul possibly part of our mind instead?

The Brain and Behavior

On the serendip site I played 4 games, like we were supposed to. I played Hofstadter's Road Sign, Seeing More Than Your Eye Does, The Game of Life, and Prisoners' Dilemma. However, the only one I really understood was 'Seeing More Than Your Eye Does'. Maybe this is because the experiment gave me hard evidence that it was right, where as with the others you had to figure out the objective yourself. I also kind of enjoyed playing the 'Prisoners' Dilemma' one, but although I used a strategy while playing it, I didn't get the point and how it related to psychology.

I was suprised to learn that we have quite a large blind spot in our eyes. Drivers Ed teachers teach us about 'checking your blindspot' but that blind spot is different, it is created between your eyes and your mirrors. This blind spot is real, but we never notice it because our minds fill in what we are missing. It really makes me wonder about all the other crazy things our brains do without us knowing.

I don't know how this can be applied to everyday life. Because our minds do fill in what we don't see, we don't really miss anything at all most of the time. And if I have been missing things because of my blindspot, I've been missing them my entire life and I don't think it's a big deal. In the same respect it doesn't change the way I think about the world.

Current Events #1

Currently in my life I have been very stressed out, as have many of my peers, but I have begun to wonder if it is really just an attitude.

What made me start thinking about stress being an attitude was my volleyball coach. He is always telling us that when we play excited, we play well, and when we get frustrated, we take our heads out of the game and don't play as well. So is how we play a psychological thing along with being physical? And if it is, how many other parts of our lives can we control with our attitudes?

Thinking positively doesn't change how much work I have to do, and it doesn't get me to bed any earlier on nights I have a ton of homework. However, it does help me get through the next day when I'm only running on 6 hours of sleep.