Chapter 4 reflections

By reading chapter 4, I realized that I really underestimated the power of genetics. For example, I learned is the fact that when children are adopted, their personalities resemble those of the biological parents. This is even true if the children never met their biological parents. I thought this was interesting because I always thought that personality was formed by nurture. However, the religious beliefs and manners resemble those of the adoptive parents. Another thought it was interesting learning about the theory of evolutionary psychology. I'm not sure if I agree with it or no, but it was strange thinking that our behaviors could be a direct effect of survival-of-the-fittest. Finally, I think that the idea of gender development was baffling. I always thought of men and women as almost two different species because of how we act. However, we are actually more similar than different.

REM sleep

After studying the sleep section and now that I'm doing the sleep and dream study, I started thinking a lot about sleep and dreams. More specifically, the effects of the REM sleep on our bodies. I haven't remembered one of my dreams in a long time. In fact, the last time that I can recall was when I was in third grade. I also am an EXTRMEMLY deep sleeper. It's almost unhealthy. Even when I was a baby I slept really deep. I stopped peeing in my diaper when I was 6 weeks old. My mom said that it was almost as if my bladder shut down at night. I also am really hard to wake up in the mornings. Once, I slept through a smoke detector!!! I absolutly CAN'T wake up on my own. I've tried so many times, and even with an alarm that sounds like a siren, I can't wake up on my own. My mom has to physically remove me from my bed. It's going to make college life really hard. I also am never completely refreshed. I act awake when things are going on, but the second I'm a bit bored, I nod off. I get a lot of sleep at night most of the time too. I normally sleep 9 hours a night. I was wondering if you extremely intelligent people think it's possible to sleep completely through the night with a very little amount of actual REM sleep. I sleep so deeply and REM sleep happens when we are extremely close to consciousness, and that would explain why I always feel unrefreshed when I wake up and why I show symptoms of severe sleep deprivation.

Implicit Association Test

I took the Implicit Association Test concerning race. In my opinion, this test was rigged in a way. Whether they were rigged “consciously” or “unconsciously,” I do not know. I would have felt much better about it, however, had it been they asked the personal questions after we had already received the results, mainly the questions on race, whether we were right or left-handed, and how we thought the results would turn out. For instance, I am a white female. I don’t necessarily consider myself prejudice or as favoring any specific race, but I figure it could be possible. I mean, I haven’t been in any situations where it was put to the test in the real world, but I can’t imagine that I would be prejudice. I go to a school where there is only one African-American family, and other than their three kids, the only Blacks I know are under the age of 7 and adopted. My first round of the test, I had to push the “I” button with my right hand (my dominant hand) if a European-American person appeared on the screen and the “E” button with my left when an African-American appeared. After that, I had to push the button with my right hand if a positive or good word appeared and left for a negative or bad word appeared. Then, the two tests were combined. I used my right hand for any European-Americans or good words and left for any African-Americans or bad words. It was super easy since I was supposed to be using the same hands as both previous tests and was simply a combination of the two but, other than that, there were no other variables. Then they were switched. I was to use my right hand for European-Americans and bad words and left hand for African-Americans and good words. It was easy to decipher the pictures because it was the same as before, but trying to sort the words was difficult because it was completely switched from both of the previous tests. Of course I was going to be a little slower at it. My results came back as moderately favoring whites over blacks. With that said, I don’t think that they tell much about the unconscious mind and even though my test turned out as it did, it hasn’t changed my mind on my prejudices.

I don’t think that the test showed it, but society probably does have an effect on our prejudices and unconscious mind. I could possibly favor whites, having been barely exposed to African-Americans, even though I know consciously that they are no different. A lot of the times in movies, the drug dealers and robbers are big Black guys and TV is my main exposure to Blacks. I don’t think that we know exactly what goes on in our brains because it is so complex. That means that we aren’t aware of our own attitudes and how they affect our actions. I mean, I have heard some people I really consider negative say that they hate it when people are negative. Another example is when someone who refers to Blacks as scary says that they aren’t prejudice.

Because I don't agree with the test, my views haven't really changed.

Consciousness and the 2-track mind

This chapter talked about a lot of different things, all leading back to the topic of consciousness. It talked about different levels and forms of consciousness, like dual processing , the cocktail party effect, selective attentiveness, inattentional blindness, change and blindness. Hypnotics was discussed. Drugs was another topic that it covered. However, what I found most surprising was the topic of sleep. I knew that there were different stages of sleep. However, I thought that you dreamt the entire night. Boy, was I wrong. You actually only dream about forty minutes a night!!! Also, I thought that you dreamt when you were in the deepest level of sleep but it's actually when you are closest to consciousness.

The concept that I agreed with most in this chapter was probably the idea of selective attention. Even while writing this blog entry, I experienced it. My little sister was trying to get my attention so that I could do her hair for quite a while before I even realized that she was there! She was yelling my name, kicking her feet, and waving her hands in front of my computer screen. It wasn't until she put her hand on my arm to shake it that I realized that she was there. I jolted up and about threw my laptop across the room. Immediately following, I had to run to the bathroom because I was so frightened (ok, not really, but it added to the story).

The idea that I'm still unsure about is dual processing. The idea of the conscious and unconscious thoughts being processed on completely different tracks sounds a bit creepy to me. I mean, it makes it seem as if we have this separate life form with its own thoughts living inside our skull and living off of our circulatory system supplied by our heart's labor. Our brain is what makes us who we are. Our brain is us. Therefore, how can our brains hide information, prejudices, and ideas from itself? It just baffles me.

I really like this chapter, in general, although I found some of the topics strange.

Decisions

While doing the worksheet on the different parts of the brain and how we use them while driving, one area really intrigued me. I found out that the frontal and prefrontal lobes (the areas that are used in decision making and recognizing consequences) aren't fully developed until we are about 25. To me, this means that we shouldn't have to make college and career decisions until we are about that age and know exactly what we want to do and what would be the best for us. I mean, it's a big decision and will haunt us forever. If we make the wrong choice because our brains simply aren't full developed, it's not going to be good. That is why I have decided that I am going to live at my parents house until that time. (ok, so not really, but it's worth a shot) :) Who's with me?

Stress

I just finished reading Missy Avery's blog about stress. She talked about how when we are stresses, it seems that illness always follows. I looked into this a little bit and this is what I have found. I haven't made a final decision on what I think it is, but here is a few suggestions.

In the book, it talked about how when you are stressed, the sympathetic nervous system does things like: increases blood pressure, blood sugar, and heartbeat and slows digestion. Things like this (especially the slowing of digestion and low blood sugar) can cause you to feel sick to your stomach.

It could also be that possibly our immune system becomes weak when we are stressed from these reactions in the sympathetic nervous system and we do actually get a virus.

My third guess is that maybe we get so worked up about things that are going on that we have the symptoms of an illness in our heads. Our brains are powerful things and can do that kind of stuff.

The most simple reason I could think of is that it's just in our heads that we get sick EVERY time we are over stressed. It really only happens a little bit, but we only realize it when it does. (if that makes sense)

The Brain and Behavior

I completed the activities "Seeing More Than Your Eye Does," "Ambiguous Figures," "The Three Doors of Serendip," and "Ant Colonies: Social Organization without a director." I found that I learned the most from the ant one. What it did is set up a colony with 25% of the ants as midden workers, 25% as patrolling workers, and 50% as foraging workers. You could remove workers, follow a specific ant, and a lot of other things in order to find out if there was an order to the ants, if one group of ants were different than the others, etc. What I found the most interesting is after doing all of the experiments, I found that there really wasn't a leader of the ants. I thought that was really cool. I think that in todays society, we give specific people way too much power. I think that the ant colonies are one of the most organized societies. We should try to model them in certain areas of life. For instance, there doesn't always have to be a boss over coworkers or a captain of a team. Also, the ants helped each other out and worked where ever was needed. They didn't stay to their specific job.

One thing that I learned in chapter 2 that I found interesting was the amygdala. One thing that has always bothered me is my temper. Now I learned that the reason for my unreasonable temper was the amygdala. I hope that someday there will be a surgical cure for aggression, but until then, I will just blame it on the amygdala. :)

I also found all of the different transmitters interesting, especially the acetylcholine. My mom has worked with Alzheimer's patients for quite a few years now. It was nice to know a little bit about what is going on with the ACh and how they deteriorate with Alzheimer's. There isn't much information about it, so any little bit that is know is intriguing to me.

Finally, I probably found the split brains and hemispherectomy the most fascinating. It's amazing how intricate and wonderful the brain is and how it can adjust the the most bizarre situations. I never knew that it could do that.