My Group Experience

I found my group experience to be particularly enjoyable. We were all familiar with each of the three movies, so we were able to split them up without too much difficulty. My group clicked pretty well, and we had similar ideas on how to arrange our presentation.

The only problems that came up were some technical difficulties. We had a hard time figuring out how to insert a video into our presentation so that we could have a smooth transition without having to jump between different windows. The problem was exacerbated when we had trouble converting back and forth between Mac and PC.


But that aside, I found my group experience to be overall very pleasant and friendly.

Neuroscience Talk: Sense Lab

For this semester's neuroscience lecture, I went to a panel featuring Brian Massumi, Erin Manning, and Ralph Savarese of the Neurohumanities Research Group. Their talk was focused on their lab - called the Sense Lab - which is a lab composed of artists, academics, researchers, dancers, and writers all working together to explore the active passage between research and creation.

The Sense Lab focused on the relationship between the physical senses and the manner in which we "make sense" of the world. They hypothesized that there is an implicit connection between the creation of art on the sensing body and philosophy,

I was particularly interested in the Sense Lab's laboratory of philosophy of radical empiricism. They focused on bringing people together not through what they produced but through the beginning levels of processing. They explored how knowledge is produced, as well as how to articulate with people in different areas of thought. I was surprised at how many people were interested in the project when they first began in 2004, whether they were academics or beginning artists. Additionally, the are not supported by any university. Their funds come through their processes, and not their products.

DNS Experiment

I took part in an fMRI study by the Duke Neurogenetics Study. They were studying the relationship among genes, brains, and behavior. Specifically, they were looking for how brain pathways shape how we react to our environments.

Prior to the experiment, I was required to fill out a form so they could determine my eligibility to participate in the study. I had to answer no for a bunch of questions such as if I had a pacemaker, if I had any metal fragments in my body, etc. The experiment itself was very boring. They made me go tasks with a lot of repetitions. I can understand why people can feel claustrophobic in the machine. There isn't much space and it is extremely loud. There are also plenty of noises in the background like fans blowing.

Afterwards, I agreed to give them a blood and saliva sample. They told me that they will analyze my DNA sample later and that it will be shared with other researchers.

Overall, I wouldn't say it was the best experience I've ever had... but I did get paid. So not too bad.

Little Toto

I remember meeting my friend’s dog Toto. She was a tiny terrier. She barked at me pretty furiously when we first met, so I assumed she either didn’t like strangers, or she didn’t like me in particular.

After staying at my friend’s house for some time, Toto gradually grew accustomed to me. Instead she would circle me and sniff around my legs. Sometimes she would approach me cautiously. Soon, she let me scratch behind her ears, which she thoroughly enjoyed. Toto would even jump onto my lap and snuggle there while I scratched her.

As I spent more time with Toto, I noticed certain habits she had. Whenever the doorbell rings, she would jump up and start to bark in the direction of the front door. However, this seemed to be a conditioned response. The source of the doorbell sound was nowhere near the location of the front door. Toto must have learned that the door usually opens when the doorbell sounds.

I also noticed that she tended to bark at anything that startles her, such as a cuckoo clock. She isn’t scared of the sounds, which suggests that her owners are protective of her. She is very sheltered living in a house, so the natural fight or flight response she has probably decayed over time. There’s less of a need for survival instinct because everything is handed to her.

My Favorite Philosopher

Confucius is hands down, my favorite philosopher. I admire the way he revolutionized Chinese politics, education, and attitudes. He was so influential that the emperor himself decided to implement Confucius' teachings as national policy. Confucius was so wise that his teachings had even spread to Western culture.

I learned about Confucius through my parents repeatedly showing me historical videos of his influence in China. His teachings of piety, loyalty, and etiquette were well respected to the extent that even the emperor would abide to them. He affirmed the need of a virtuous leader with moral integrity who will shift the country towards good.

"If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself."

My Favorite Game

The economic game that I find most interesting is the trust game. I find it fascinating how easily people's trust can be swayed based on subtle information. It also shows how quickly people can judge others when all they know about them is a tiny bit of information about them. It can also reveal innate discrimination within individuals, whether it's racial, gender, or others, especially when paired with an fMRI.

I also think it's amusing that you can throw in a punishment aspect to the game. It's interesting to see how a participant's decisions can change when given such a power to punish others. I think it can partially reveal the innate natures of people, whether they are naturally generous or greedy people. Also, also enjoy the trust game because it is so easily manipulated. With larger sums of money, are people more or less ready to invest in someone else given a certain level of trust?

Personal Bubble Issues?

Yesterday, I decided to violate someone’s personal bubble. I approached one of my friends and struck up a conversation. However, instead of standing a few feet away, like a normal person, I stood right next to him so that my face was a few inches away from his.

His instantaneous reaction was to back away. He pretended that it was just some sort of accident and tried his best to continue the conversation as if nothing happened. However, I followed him as he stepped backwards, so I was still in his face. Then he got annoyed and asked me what I thought I was doing. I answered him saying, “I’m just having a chat with you.” He asked me, “but why are you so close to me?”

“Well what’s wrong with me being close to you?”

“It’s uncomfortable”

“Why is it uncomfortable?”

“It just is!”

After seeing that he was getting angry, I backed off and told him that it was something I was supposed to do for this class. We both laughed it off afterwards. I thought it was interesting how my friend was unable to explain why he felt so uncomfortable when I was so close to him. Why do we have a personal bubble? Speaking from an evolutionary perspective, it could be for safety reasons, so it gives you time to react should anything suddenly attack you. 

Raging Hormones

I remember playing basketball with some friends in junior high, and one friend was getting extremely angry as we were playing. He was normally fairly calm and a pretty decent basketball player. But during the game, the person defending him was clearly better than him, and he was getting extremely frustrated. Every time he missed a shot, he would swear and slam the ball on the ground. 

As the game progressed, he started getting more and more physical in his playing style, pushing and shoving more and more. He also became more and more competitive until after one last blocked shot, he finally snapped. He screamed that it was a foul and asked the person defending him if he was looking for a fight. My friends and I were able to break the two of them up and finish the game without things getting worse.

I think this was a case in which hormones were influencing my friend. It is likely that testosterone had a role in his behaviors because he was expressing a dominance reaction during the competitive interactions during basketball. There also may have been some cortisol affecting him because of his stress from being shut down during such a competitive sport like basketball. I thought it was amusing to see how greatly a person's composure can change given a certain context or situation.

 

What is emotion?

I believe emotions are a set of physiological responses that occur when we are presented with certain stimuli so that our brain can learn to react a certain way when presented with the same stimuli again. So, while a child may not feel sad at a funeral, they will see all the other grown-ups around him or her, thus learning to be sad the next time that child is at a funeral.

Of course, I do think there are some stimuli that carry emotions that don't have to be learned. If someone is having fun, they will most likely smile and laugh. I think that may be a biological trait that is passed down genetically.

Emotion defines a lot of our personality. Some people have low emotional affectivity whereas others are high. Some are more pessimistic while others are naturally more optimistic. I think part of the development of our emotions comes from our personality constructs on how we view the world.

An fMRI Study

An interesting experiment I heard about using fMRI was a study investigating the brain responses to social exclusion. While it may not have been a unique experiment in itself, I find that the topic was very fascinating.

The experimenters hypothesized that social pains are similar to physical pains. They focused on the anterior cingulate cortex and found that when people are distressed after being excluded from an activity, the ACC activates. It shows that social injuries have the same effect as physical injuries and steps need to be taken to restore equilibrium. It explains how we "hurt" when we lose a loved one.

Freedom of the Mind

If I could create any device that affects the brain, I would want to create something that frees people from social pressures. I would assume that the device would affect the amygdala, since it is involved with emotional learning and possibly social context learning. While the machine frees people from social pressures, it would NOT cause individuals to forget moral and ethical rights. They will still retain the knowledge of society's constraints. The only change is how their behavior is subjected to society.

With this machine, I would hope to reveal people's true natures. I am curious to see how much of an individual's personality can be revealed in the complete absence of any social pressure. In essence, they can truly be themselves. This machine will also be useful in getting rid of any sort of social fears like stage fright, public speaking, etc.

A Brain Injury

I remember watching a video in my high school psychology class about a woman who had seizures, so the last resort solution was to cut her corpus callosum, which joined the two hemispheres of the brain. The video then continued to show the ramifications of the surgery through the various experiments performed on her.

While there were clearly negative effects from the surgery, such as the inability for the right side of the body to react to the left visual field, there were also some effects that, to me, seemed pretty useful.

There seemed to be a splitting of the consciousness, which may sound a bit frightening. But I also thought that if it could be controlled well, could it be possible to have the left and right side of your body doing separate but meaningful tasks at once? I have heard of people who are able to write different sentences with both their left and write hands at the same time. It seems like such training to perform such tasks involve the corpus callosum?

I couldn't find the original video, but this seems close! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv4K5aStdU

How to Math Well???

In high school, I loved my math classes. I enjoyed utilizing formulas and equations to reveal an answer matched up with the correct answer in the back of the book.

But when it comes to reading about math in college, I quickly lost all the original pleasure I found in math. Rather than solving my own problems and finding solutions on my own, I had to read about how others did it. I'm personally more of a hands-on learner rather than someone who learns by reading in-depth into statistical methods, so it is harder for me to understand methodologies by reading about them instead of just doing them. But an additional problem is that much of the data collected in experiments is just plugged into a computer or calculator, which does all the work for you. Am I just suppose to accept the fact that what comes out as the computerized end product is what gives the research paper significance? I'd much rather see the mathematical steps and reasoning behind each step.

Of course, this is just how I learn best. I understand that there are many people out there who can easily understand empirical journal articles by skimming through them. I think that by going through the experimental and mathematical processes slowly, I could understand everything better, thus allowing me to gradually get a faster pace in reading empirical journals. After all... slow and steady wins the race... right?

Why am I here?

Why did I choose this class over all the other psychology and neuroscience classes offered at Duke?

Well, part of the reason is because this class was one of the few that could fit into my schedule. There's no lying about that. But another reason this class piqued my interest was because it integrates various fields of psychology and neuroscience and their methodologies. I've taken quite a few psych and neuro classes. Although some of the material I learned overlap, there's also substantial new information offered in every class. While cognitive psychology and biological basis of behavior both discuss the usage of fMRI and other brain imaging techniques, the latter focused more on the neurological aspects of it, while cognitive psychology examined the effects on human perception.

With this class, I now have a chance to learn how everything ties together!