Week Eight: Breaking a Social Norm

Today, I set out on the daunting task of breaking a social norm... Being not quite as courageous as some of my peers who did things like stealing food of the plate of a stranger, I decided to give out awkwardly long hugs.

Basically, whenever I ran into a friend today, I gave them an overly-extended hug. At first, they thought it was pretty funny, but when I refused to let go, they got a little antsy - which is to be expected, I guess. Neither my friends nor I were particularly offended because, I mean, we're friends; the people most weirded out would definitely the people watching the interaction. I got lots of stares in ABP or out on the plaza when I gave my aggressively long hugs.

In our society (I guess depending on where you hail from), hugs are pretty normal, but usually last about 2-4 seconds long. In other countries, it's the norm to exchange kisses on the cheek of others as a greeting. In others, not even eye contact is appropriate. Social norms are so very unique, and with that, I leave you with my favorite awkward hug that definitely broke some Death Eater social norms.

Week Seven: Hormones

This is a pretty easy topic to talk about it - it's so prevalent in everybody's life! I mean two things that immediately come to mind are: PMS and studying for exams.

PMS mood effects are, I think, caused by a imbalance between estrogen and progesterone, and this disruption causes mood swings and food cravings etc. I, for one, know for sure that I get cranky and hungry (for chocolate especially).

Second situation, is when we study for tests (this week of midterms has been hellacious). I can feel the stress hormone, cortisol, rushing through me during my long sessions at Perkins... I suddenly feel extremely hungry for those delicious cookies downstairs, I'm snappy if someone disturbs me, and I definitely feel like I might have gotten sick this week (perhaps due to a weakened immune system this week?).

Both of these examples are pretty negative, but I know they're really important! For example, the steroid, testosterone, can help some of my favorite basketball players (like Kevin Durant or Andre Dawkins) get more aggressive and play better!

Week Six: Emotions

Hmm, I've never been asked to define something like "emotions." I mean, we obviously all know what they are; we all feel them (hopefully). But to concretely define them is something much more difficult. I guess I'd say emotions are mindstates that one is in, in response to their environment/some stimulus (interactions with others, events happening in their environment, mood).

Like Ekman said, there are five basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear/surprise. but there are so many varying levels of each of the basic emotions. Take happiness for example - I'd categorize things ranging from pride to feeling in love to avenged to that general contentment after having a great meal to the umbrella emotion, happiness, but they each are there own separate entity. And that's why it's hard to standardize emotions - each is personal and unique.

P.S. Emoting in text is very difficult (especially when sarcasm is involved), so I suggest everyone use emojii (see above picture). It's got a huge selection of emoticons that mean the same thing to everyone! It's pretty cool how something that is really just a variation of yellow circle denotes a certain emotion, and can completely change the tone of someone's text.

"You're so cool " vs. "You're so cool "

Week Five: Most Outrageous fMRI Study

In 2007, in anticipation of the 2008 presidential, the New York Times ran an article called, "This is Your Brain on Politics." This article discussed the results of an fMRI study that correlated brain activity of a group of swing voters when looking at pictures and videos related to politics to how one felt about the upcoming elections.

This study came to several faulty and preposterous conclusions such as that "voters sense both peril and promise in party brands," because when shown the words, "Democrat," "Republican" and "Independent," their amygdala (which deals with anxiety and disgust) and brain regions associated with the reward system (which is related to desire and the feeling connected) lit up. This is extrapolating a lot from brain regions that are part of very complex systems and have several different functions.

Another strange conclusion was that "Mitt Romney shows potential." They supported this with the observation that when subjects were shown Romney's picture, their amygdala showed a high level of activity, but then when shown the video of him, their amygdala activity went down, indicating that their anxiety towards him died down, perhaps meaning voters will become more comfortable with Romney as they see more of him. This could really just be that the subjects haven't seen much of Romney (remember, this is before the 2008 election, when John McCain was the more prominent Republican candidate), and therefore their brain reacted stronger to the unfamiliar face of Romney, but then had then become habituated by the time they saw the video.

Their are several other just as ridiculous interpretations that this article talks about, I highly encourage you to take a look and laugh, here. I can't believe that such a highly respected newspaper would publish something like this!

Participation in a Psych/Neuro Study - Neurogenetics, Hariri Lab

I participated in the Hariri Lab neurogenetics study (made popular by the flyers around campus bearing the slogan, "DO YOU HAVE A BRAIN?". It was one of the more interesting, comprehensive studies I've participated in, and am excited to hear about discoveries they make.

The first day, Dr. Hariri interviewed me on a wide range of topics to assess personal experience and personality traits - everything from my lifestyle choices to events from my past. I feel like what he learned about me makes him about as knowledgeable about me as one of my closest friends. I just hope that my information is safe!

Look, it's my sagittal slices of my brain!

The second day, Dr. Hariri tested me in a variety of mental tasks including working memory tasks (a particularly frustrating one for me was listening to a stream of numbers and adding the last two numbers I heard - so easy to get confused!), tests of mental math and vocabulary, and even assessment of my pattern recognition skills. I walked out of there feeling pretty dumb, but I didn't get any calls about having a learning disability, so hopefully I'm alright...

The third day, I went in for an MRI scan, where I performed simple number recognition tasks and matching tasks. This lasted for about an hour, and I'm not sure I'd want to do it again - I had to stay extremely still, the MRI machine made lots of loud noise, and I started feeling pretty claustrophobic.

Then before I left, I spit into a sequencing kit for 23andme. So out of all of this, I got a cash payment, an MRI scan of my brain, and a free 23andme account. Overall very worthwhile.

You should consider participating as well! Studies like this need a large database of subjects to come to concrete conclusions to link genetics and behavior/brain characteristics (which are never truly concrete because of things like epigenetics that are contributed by our environment - the nurture side of development). Click here if "you have a brain."

Week Four: Ideal Mind-Reading Machine

Inspired by the TV show Chuck, in which Chuck Bartowski (seen here to the left) has the CIA supercomputer, aka the Intersect, inserted into his brain.

You said it didn't necessarily have to be particularly realistic, right? What I think would be an awesome invention would be some kind of chip that could be inserted into our brains that would work like a smartphone. We could then use our mind to send texts, call people (that'd basically be like immediate mind-reading between two or more people), take notes in class, play games (maybe counterproductive to the previous task...), take photos (instant photographic memory), a library/encyclopedia sort thing where all the knowledge you encounter could be stored and recalled, a diary where all your memories could be stored and recalled, etc. Basically we'd become super-human. As crazy sci-fi as this may seem, I'd like to think that maybe one day in the faraway future, this kind of technology could happen! All I hope is that we wouldn't end up something like this... 

 

Week Three: Experience with someone suffering from a brain disorder

In high school, I used to volunteer at Camp Summit, a camp for children and adults with all kinds of disabilities. This camp provides a "barrier-free outdoors experience" for those who might otherwise not get the chance. The first weekend that I went to volunteer was a retreat for developmentally delayed adults. I'm not going to lie, I was really nervous, because I had never come in contact with someone who was mentally delayed, and was uncomfortable with the thought of interacting with them. But once I got there, it came pretty naturally because I realized just how "normal" most of them were. Easiest way to put it: most of them were physically adult but still mentally children.

This is me with Mickey! She was one of my favorite campers, she actually still FB messages me sometimes to catch up. She's such a sweetheart and is convinced she's going to marry Elvis Presley.

It was definitely surreal having to feed a 60 year old, or make sure that a 40 year old brushed his teeth at night, or talk to a 50 year old about her crush on Elvis Presley... But it helped me overcome an uneasiness that I had with the mentally disabled. At the end of the day, volunteering at this camp changed me for the better - I came out a person so much more grateful for the blessings in my life and empathetic for those not as lucky.

And hey, if you believe in Camp Summit's mission, feel free to find out more here.