bite sized psych

Daily-ish fun-sized pieces of psychological phenomena, principles, facts, theories, research, quotes and more for the everyman. note: I am not a professional or official psychologist. As such, the following may be misleading or untrue. Message me with any corrections or for a chat. Submissions/suggestions welcome Biology, physiology & the brain Syndromes, disorders & conditions Society, culture & relationships Cognition, personality & emotion All others Recommended Pages Archive Mobile version Designed by Bill Israel

[artandsciencejournal]

Eunoia

In Lisa Park’s art performance, Eunoia, the artist uses electroencephalography (EEG) headsets and various softwares to manipulate water with her mind. In her performance, Park silently sits in the middle of five water dishes situated on top of individual speakers. The five dishes represent five emotions: sadness, anger, hatred, happiness and desire. By thinking about certain people whom she associated with the five emotions, Park’s emotions are translated into hollow sounds. The sound waves then cause the water to dance and quiver. Park hoped to end her performance with absolute tranquility and silence but she discovered the feat to be impossible. To transform her thoughts into sound, Lisa Park measures her brainwave patterns and eye movements with NeuroSky EEG headset and collects the data with Processing. The data can then be viewed in graphs, numbers, or charts. Park links Processing with Max/MSP and Reaktor to turn her brainwaves into sound waves. Although transforming brain activity into sound is not a new, ground breaking technology, Lisa Park’s Eunoia is still a hauntingly beautiful demonstration of human emotion.

Read more about Park’s project here.

-Janine Truong

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

[infinity-imagined]

Neurons growing in a cell culture

These time lapse animations use phase contrast microscopy to show neural stem cells in a nutrient medium for 4 hours.  They reveal the dynamic growth and recycling of dendrites and synapses as neurons establish relationships with each other.  The social behavior of these cells creates the incredible properties of the mind and brain.

Credit: University of Victoria Medical Sciences

[the-science-llama]

Your brain is doing this RIGHT NOW. Re-wiring as you remember something or learn something, constantly changing.

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

...the bodies are perceived as with qualities that in reality do not belong to them, qualities which are in fact purely the offspring of the mind. Thus nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent; the nightingale for his song; and the sun for his radiance. The poet are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self-congratulations on the excellency of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly.

A.N. Whitehead, 1926

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

as demonstrated by research on Halloween. An adult would instruct trick-or-treaters to take only a single treat, then leave. Children were most likely to transgress when they had not provided their name and were in a group, both reducing self-awareness. The study proposes that self-awareness encourages moral behaviour.

[nickpozek]

The Von Restorff effect, also called the isolation effect, predicts that an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” (called distinctive encoding) is more likely to be remembered than other items. A bias in favour of remembering the unusual.

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

is the experience in which the first impression seen after a single movement of the eyes, or a saccade, appears to be extended backwards in time. This is believed to be caused by the brain 'filling in' experience backwards after a saccade and accounts for the Stopped Clock illusion, in which the second hand seems to be frozen on first looking at a clock.

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

is the occurrence of support from an invisible person or spirit during stressful or traumatic events. Climbers, solo sailors and shipwreck survivors are reported to experience the Third Man factor the most.

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

Brain activity showing the reaction of a zebrafish to food. Found out more here.

[medicaldaily]

Chilling Brain Scans Show the Impact of a Mother’s Love on a Child’s Brain Size

A shocking comparison of brain scans from two three-year-old children reveals new evidence of the remarkable impact a mother’s love has on a child’s brain development.

The chilling images reveal that the left brain, which belongs to a normal 3-year-old, is significantly larger and contains fewer spots and dark “fuzzy” areas than the right brain, which belongs to that of a 3-year-old who has suffered extreme neglect.

Read more

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

This article has come under fire on the original site for its less-than-rigorous science, so take the comparison with a pinch of salt. One commenter points out that a comparison between two singular samples is not evidence at all, and another that the brain on the right belongs to a smaller head, either from microcephaly or simply age.

I would appreciate a link or reference to the original paper.

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

refers to a study in which healthy individuals were admitted to psychiatric hospitals while claiming to have briefly experienced auditory hallucinations. All but one were diagnosed with schizophrenia in remission, were forced to admit to having a mental illness and to take antipsychotic drugs. In a follow-up study, an offended hospital challenged Rosenhan to repeat the experiment to allow them the opportunity to detect the pseudopatients - of 41 patients accused, none were Rosenhan's confederates as no pseudopatients were admitted to the hospital.

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

refers to the misdiagnosis by a mental health clinician of a patient due to the misinterpretation of real events as delusional. It refers to Martha Mitchell, the wife of John Mitchell, Attorney-General in the Nixon administration. Her claims of White House officials engaging in illicit activities were attributed to mental illness but were given some, if not complete, credence by the Watergate scandal.

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

also called tone-deafness, is musical order in processing pitch and can be either born (congenital) or acquired. Approximately 4% of people have congenital amusia. Acquired amusia can take different selective forms of impairment of any combination of rhythm, melody and emotional processing impairment in music.

[psydoctor8]

Aside from functional differences in the brain during magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) experiments, where subjects are shown images of  ”cars, houses, holiday scenes, and images meant to arouse pedophiles”, there is also a “string of neuropsychological characteristics” says psychologist, Jorge Ponseti. 

“For example, their intelligence quotient is about 8 percentage points lower than the average. 

It’s also interesting that the age of the victim is related to the IQ of the abuser,” he added. “So the dumber the criminal, the younger the child. [via]

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

can influence perceived aggression in sports. In hockey, teams received more penalties while wearing black than while wearing colour at home games. Teams wearing colour also receive more penalties while wearing colour than while wearing white. Teams wearing black were rated as more malevolent than those wearing nonblack uniforms by participants unfamiliar with the National Hockey League.

[bitesizedpsych-blog]

is a neurological and physiological disorder which occurs below 150 metres/500 feet. Symptoms include tremors, jerking,strong drowsiness, muscle-twitching, visual disturbance, nausea, dizziness and reduced mental performance.

[bitesizedpsych-blog]