Learned Habits

These past few weeks have been interesting to read about and listen to lectures in class because all the stuff we are learning about is relevant to our lives outside of school. This week, I learned about how habits and unconditioned responses are formed. The generic overview about being used to something at first, but then a new stimulus comes into the picture and the original idea you had about something will change, and you now have new feelings towards that "object or situation." A certain example for me would be smelling gases or exhaust fumes. Before I would never really worry about smelling gas, but then when I did smell it once and became sick I really didn't want to smell it anymore. So now when I walk past a car and smell its fumes, especially in winter, I scrunch my nose and hold my breath until I'm in the car, or away from the fumes. Just a little habit I have.

Blog Post #2

This week we had an in-class discussion about subliminal messages. These messages are signs or messages that are in our presence but not consciously recognized by us. It's weird not-knowing that something is in plain sight but yet you can't see it because it blends in with the surroundings. This subject, subliminal messages, reminded me of the Disney movies and their sexual subliminal messages. For the longest time I didn't know that they would throw those purvirted scenes in there, and now that people have pointed them out to me and then I look back and watch the movie, those things are right in plain sight. It seems when I think or watch those movies, I only think about those parts because it is so weird, but yet now so obvious to me.

Favorite Video

My favorite video was the video done by Mariah, Katie, and Patrick because it made me feel like I was actually watching a news or public service announcement broadcast. It was very informative, and the places they were talking about for the different stages of development they actually went to, and reported on the spot. I loved it, and thought it was very interesting to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0qoY_5ymOo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXGchM91NNU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I1L6LT_0NE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MI5J3FX-0E

Cognitive Development

In today's class discussion, we learned about how our mind and body develop over the course of our lifetime especially when we are very young. There are four stages of growth according to Jean Piaget: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations. The first stage is when you are born until you are two years old, then from two to six years old, then from six to 12 years old, and from then on to adulthood is the last stage. When you are a child you develop schemas and assimilate things with other relatively similar things that are not completely the same. For example, when a child sees a horse with four legs, he may call another animal he sees with four legs a horse as well. This clearly isn't correct, but it is how children classify things when they are very young. When I was little, I used to think that anything that spun around was a fan. I did this because the first word I learned was "fan" and when I saw it, it was obviously spinning around and around. I assumed that merry-go-rounds, and helicopters were fans because they did or had something that spun around. Later, I grew out of that phase and clearly realized that not everything that spun around was a fan. I moved on into the next phase, then eventually grew out of that phase, and so on until present day.

Plasticity

Doctors can reinvent how a person sees, not with our eyes, but with our tongue. They realized that to do this they had to have the feeling of touch go through the nerves of your tongue, then up the spinal cord, up the medulla, past the pons, and then link up with the thalamus by a process of synapse. Then these sensations would not go to the parietal lobe, but would go to the occipital lobe where a person normally experiences vision. I'm not sure what this would look like to a person, it sounds almost like science fiction. But if our body basically allows this to happen, plasticity comes in to play so we get used to "seeing" things this way through our tongue. Our body is amazing for doing this, and it must be awesome to know this can happen if a person is blind, they could now possibly have the opportunity to see again!

Neurotransmitter Assignment

Cocaine:


Cocaine is an antagonist because it blocks three important neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. These transmitters affect either our mood, arousal, attention, emotion, etc., so with them blocked, our body won't react normally with these feelings. This can lead into a state of depression unless cocaine is in the body fulfilling the craving for the "rush" feeling from euphoria. Long-term use of cocaine can cause lethargy, psychosis, depression, and it is fatal if a person overdosed. If a person is having an overdose try to calm them down by bringing them into a quiet room, and don't respond to their delusions. If nothing is working you need to call a doctor and bring them in.

Reactions

I loved doing the videos, I thought it was a neat way to learn about these psychologists. A lot of them were really funny and interesting to watch. I would definetely recommend that we do something like this again in the future and maybe do it for a bigger grade. I did learn a lot about my specific psychologist while we were researching about him, however, I didn't really understand a lot about the other scientists in the videos because I was either laughing or just not comprehending it. So overall it I like it but, I'm not so sure I learned a lot about the other scientists.