Alles und Nichts

Psychology related things.

[tobeagenius]

Pyschological Life Hacks. More like this on To Be A Genius and Pysch2Go

[thesingingcanary]

Narcissism (2014)

1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself.

2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.

3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one’s own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.

4. The attribute of the human psyche charactized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits.

www.dojo.electrickettle.fr

[medicalschool]

Astrocytoma

An astrocytoma is a primary tumor of the central nervous system that develops from the large, star-shaped glial cells known as astrocytes. Most frequently astrocytomas occur in the brain, especially in the frontal and temporal lobes of the cerebrum, but occasionally they appear along the spinal cord. No one knows what causes the tumors, which may affect anyone of any age but occur most often in middle-aged men.

[ohpsychology]

How Do Biological Theorists Explain Abnormal Behavior?

Biological theorists view abnormal behavior as an illness brought about by malfunctioning parts of the organism. They typically point to problems in brain anatomy or brain chemistry as the cause of the problem. - Brain Anatomy and Abnormal Behavior -  The brain is made up of approximately 100 billion nerve cells, called neurons, and thousands of billions of support cells, called glia. Within the brain, large groups of neurons form distinct brain areas, one of which is known as the cerebrum. The cerebrum includes the cortex, corpus callosum, basal ganglia, hippocampus, and amygdala. Each of these brain regions control important functions: • The cortex is the outer layer of the brain. • The corpus callosum connects the brain’s two cerebral hemispheres. • The basal ganglia plays a crucial role in planning and producing movement. • The hippocampus helps regulate emotions and memory. • The amygdala plays a key role in emotional memory.  Researchers have found links between certain psychological disorders and problems in specific areas of the brain. One disorder is Huntington’s disease, which is a disorder marked by violent emotional outbursts, memory loss, suicidal thinking, involuntary body movements, and absurd beliefs. It has been traced to a loss of cells in the basal ganglia and cortex. 

- Brain Chemistry and Abnormal Behavior -  Psychological disorders can also be related to problems in the transmission of messages from neuron to neuron. Information is communicated throughout the brain in the form of electrical impulses that travel from one neuron to one or more others. An impulse is received by a neuron’s dendrites, which then travels down the neuron’s axon, until it is finally transmitted through the nerve ending at the end of the axon to the dendrites of other neurons.  • Dendrites are antenna-like extensions located at one end of the neuron. • The axon is a long fiber extending from the neuron’s body. 

Since the neuron’s don’t actually touch each other, you may wonder how the messages get from the nerve ending of one neuron to the dendrites of another. A tiny space called the synapse is what separates one neuron from the next. When an electrical impulse reaches a neuron’s ending, the nerve ending is stimulated to release a chemical known as a neurotransmitter, which travels across the synaptic space to receptors on the dendrites of the neighboring neurons. After binding to the receiving neuron’s receptors, the neurotransmitters can either have an excitatory or inhibitory response. Some neurotransmitters give a message to the neurons to “fire” or trigger their own electrical impulse, while others tell receiving neurons to stop all firing.  Studies have shown that abnormal activity by some neurotransmitters can lead to certain mental disorders. For example, depression is linked to low activity of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine. Abnormal chemical activity in the endocrine system has also been shown to be related to mental disorders. Endocrine glands, located throughout the body, work with neurons to control vital activities such as growth, reproduction, sexual activity, heart rate, body temperature, energy, and stress response. The glands release chemicals known as hormones into the bloodstream that propel body organs into action. During times of stress, for example, the adrenal glands, located on top of the kidneys, secrete the hormone cortisol to help the body deal with the stress. Abnormal secretion of this chemical has been linked to anxiety and mood disorders. 

(Comer, R. J. (2004). Abnormal psychology (8th ed.). New York: Worth.)

[ohpsychology]

Question:

Should I start posting things on here again? Are people actually interested? Because if you are then I'm definitely willing to put in more time to add things!

[medicalschool]

Cerebral angiography is a procedure that uses a special dye (contrast material) and x-rays to see how blood flows through the brain. For a cerebral arteriogram, arterial access is usually obtained in the femoral artery in the groin. Once the catheter is inserted, the contrast dye is injected, and a series of X-ray pictures is made. These X-ray images show the arterial, venous, and capillary blood vessel structures and blood flow in the brain.

A cerebral arteriogram may be performed to detect abnormalities of the blood vessels within or leading to the brain. Such abnormalities include aneurysms, stenosis, arteriovenous malformation (a condition in which there is an abnormal connection between the arteries and veins), thrombosis (a blood clot within a blood vessel), vasospasm (a spasm of the blood vessel causing an irregular narrowing of the vessel), or occlusion (complete obstruction of a blood vessel). Other conditions that cause a displacement of the brain’s blood vessels may be detected by a cerebral arteriogram. These conditions include tumors, edema (swelling), herniation (dislocation of the brain tissue, caused by pressure within the brain due to swelling, bleeding, or other reasons), increased intracranial pressure (ICP, or increased pressure within the brain), and hydrocephalus (fluid in the brain).

[ohpsychology]

Human Beings Are Information Processors

Schema theory defines cognitive schemas as mental representations of knowledge. Mental representations are stories in categories in memory. These schemas provide guidelines for interpretation of incoming information when people try to make sense of the world. Schemas influence cognitions in that schemas create expectations about what will happen in specific situations. Schema theory can, to a large extent, explain reconstructive memory and stereotyping.

Darley and Gross (1983) performed an experiment in which they showed participants videos of a girl playing in a poor environment, then in a wealthy environment. Then they saw a video of the girl in what could be an intelligence test. When the participants were asked to judge the future of the girl they all said that the "poor" girl would do worse than the "wealthy" girl. The study demonstrated how human beings actively process information based on a few salient details to form an overall impression that may not necessarily be correct. 

[ohpsychology]

Digital Textbooks vs Traditional Textbooks

In our high school, we’ve been given the option of whether we would like to have a physical or a digital copy of the class textbook. Despite the advantages of digital textbooks, I made the decision of receiving traditional textbooks instead for various reasons. For my particular school, the online option consists of being given a lengthy numerical and alphabetical passcode that needs to be entered in order to access the textbook. Despite the obvious problem of losing or failing to commit the passkey to memory, there also exists the problem of Internet access. Digital textbooks pose a great disadvantage for the students who lack decent or any Internet access. For example, I did choose to have the digital textbook for one of my classes and found that the system would often crash if my Internet access weren’t at full speed to load the desired pages. In addition, the traditional textbooks offer you the constructive option of posting an abundance of post-it notes upon the pages. Yet there still exists the problem of students losing or damaging their textbooks, which is a reason why I believe that the digitalization of textbooks will become both more beneficial and environmentally friendly in the future. However, I believe that the software should be altered to allow the books to be in a pdf format to avoid the necessity of Internet access and allow access to all students.

[ohpsychology]

Ancient Views and Treatments - Trephination

People in prehistoric societies apparently believed that all events around and within them resulted from the actions of magical, sometimes sinister, beings who controlled the world. In particular, they viewed the human body and mind as a battleground between external forces of good and evil. Abnormal behavior was typically interpreted as a victory by evil spirits, and the cute for such behavior was to force the demons from a victim’s body.

This supernatural view of abnormality may have begun as far back as the Stone Age. Some skulls from that period recovered in Europe and South America show evidence of an operation called trephination, in which a stone instrument, or trephine, was used to cut away a circular section of the skull. Some historians have concluded that this early operation was performed as a treatment for severe abnormal behavior – either hallucinations or melancholia. The purpose of opening the skull was to release the evil spirits that were supposedly causing the problem.  

[ohpsychology]

Electroencephalogram (EEG)

The electroencephalogram (EEG) is based on electrical recordings taken from the scalp. It was first used by Hans Berger over 65 years ago. Electrodes placed on the scalp pick up very small changes in electrical activity within the brain. These changes are shown on a computer screen and can also be printed out. The pattern of changes is sometimes referred to as "brain waves".

The EEG has proved useful in many ways. For example, it has been found that there are five stages of sleep, varying in terms of the depth of sleep and the presence or absence of dream activity. These stages differ in terms of the EEG record, and EEG research was crucial in identifying these stages. It has also proved useful in the detection of epilepsy, damaged brain tissue, and the location of tumors by abnormal changes in brain wave patterns. 

The EEG has further been of value in identifying the functions of the two hemispheres of the brain. There is more activity in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere when someone is carrying out a language-based task. However, the opposite is the case during the performance of a spatial task. 

However, there are also various limitations to the use of the EEG, such as the fact that it measures electrical activity in several areas of the brain at once, and so it is hard to work out which parts of the brain are more active, and which are less active. It is also an indirect measure of brain activity because the recording electrodes are on the scalp. The EEG has been compared to trying to hear what people are saying in the next room by putting your ear to the wall. 

[ohpsychology]

Effects of Neurotransmission on Human Behavior

Neurotransmitters are the chemical substances that receive information from other neurons through their dendrites and transmit it by electrical impulse across the cell body and along the axon to the terminal buttons at the end. The communication between the two neurons occurs in the synapse between two neurons. They are the building blocks of behavior.

The neurons send electrochemical messages to the brain so people can respond to stimuli from either the environment or internal changes in the body.

Neurotransmitters have a range of different effects on human behavior. They trigger behaviors such as mood, memory, sexual arousal, and mental illness. Two examples are the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin effects sleep, emotion, and arousal levels while dopamine effects learning, voluntary movement and feelings of pleasure. There are certain drugs that can help reduce or increase the transmission of certain neurons.

Neurons are specific in which neurotransmitters they can release and often, neurons working with certain neurotransmitters can be found in greater or lesser concentration. This means that at times, the amount of neurons that get sent around the body can be too much or too little; therefore, drugs are used to be able to regulate the amount of neurotransmission that should be happening within a person’s body. For example, a drug called Prozac prevents the re-uptake of serotonin in the brain, which allows for more successful regulation of mood. People who suffer from depression use this drug to help improve their moods. 

[ohpsychology]

Cyclothymia

Cyclothymia is a mild form of bipolar disorder. It is characterized by mood fluctuations that shift between depressive and hypomanic phases. Cyclothymics do not experience the extremes of major depression or manic episodes.

The depressive or hypomania symptoms of cyclothymia may last for a few days to several weeks at a time, with brief intervals of normal mood in between. Personality changes are often evident to family and friends. Individuals who have a stable mood for longer than two months at a time are not likely cyclothymic. Symptoms may be mimicked by substance abuse, borderline personality disorder, or other mood disorder. A family history of depressive or bipolar disorders increases the risk.

Symptoms of Cyclothymia

Hypomanic Phase

Excessive confidence and self-esteem

Reduced ability to concentrate, easily distracted

Sleep difficulties, excessive energy

Heightened irritability

Reduced inhibitions, may make foolish decisions

Hypomania lasts between several days and several weeks

Depressive Phase

Feelings of inadequacy, low self-confidence

Difficulty falling asleep, unrestful sleep

Fatigue, lack of energy

Negative thinking, feelings of guilt and sadness

Loss of interest in formerly enjoyable activities

Depression lasting between several days and several weeks

The cycling between phases must be present for at least two years for a diagnosis (one year for teenagers). Work and family life are often negatively affected by the shifting moods.

Differences by Gender and Age

Cyclothymia, like the related bipolar disorder, affects men and women in roughly equal numbers. The disorder typically begins in the teenage or young adult years. Onset later in life is rare, and may be brought on by substance abuse or certain medications. Cyclothymia may progress to bipolar, though treatment may prevent this.

[ohpsychology]

Normopathy

Psychiatric theorist Christopher Bollas invented the idea of normopathy to describe people who are so focused on blending in and conforming to social norms that it becomes a kind of mania. A person who is normotic is often unhealthily fixated on having no personality at all, and only doing exactly what is expected by society. Extreme normopathy is punctuated by breaks from the norm, where normotic person cracks under the pressure of conforming and becomes violent or does something very dangerous. Many people experience mild normopathy at different times in their lives, especially when trying to fit into a new social situation, or when trying to hide behaviors they believe other people would condemn.

[ohpsychology]

[ohpsychology]

Positive Effects of Depression

Sadness, apathy, preoccupation. These traits come to mind when people think about depression, the world’s most frequently diagnosed mental disorder. Yet, forthcoming research in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology provides evidence that depression has a positive side-effect. According to a new study, depressed individuals perform better than their non-depressed peers in sequential decision tasks. In their study, participants — who were healthy, clinically depressed, or recovering from depression — played a computer game in which they could earn money by hiring an applicant in a simulated job search. The game assigned each applicant a monetary value and presented applicants one-at-a-time in random order. Experiment participants faced the challenge of determining when to halt search and select the current applicant. In addition to resembling everyday decision problems, such as house shopping and dating, the task has a known optimal strategy. As reported, depressed patients approximated this optimal strategy more closely than non-depressed participants did. While healthy participants searched through relatively few candidates before selecting an applicant, depressed participants searched more thoroughly and made choices that resulted in higher payoffs. This discovery provides the first evidence that clinical depression may carry some benefits. For decades, psychologists have debated whether depression has positive side-effects. While researchers have recognized that most symptoms of depression impede cognitive functioning, scholars such as Paul Andrews of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics and Andy Thomson of the University of Virginia have proposed that depression may promote analytical reasoning and persistence — that is, qualities useful in complex tasks.

[ohpsychology]

Psychopath vs. The Average Criminal

There are important distinctions between the psychopath and the average criminal: 1. The psychopath very seldom takes much advantage of what he gains and almost never works consistently toward a goal in crime or anything else, seemingly lacking purpose. 2. Criminal ends, though condemned, can usually be understood by the average man. It is not hard to understand why a criminal steals money. However, the psychopath, if he steals or defrauds, appears to do so for an obscure purpose, sometimes incomprehensibly throwing away much of value for short-term gains. 3. The criminal usually spares harm to himself as much as he can and harms others. The psychopath, although he causes sorrow and trouble for others, usually puts himself in a shameful position. His most serious damage to others is often through their concern for him and their futile efforts to help him. 4. The typical psychopath usually avoids murder or other offenses that lead to lengthy prison sentences. The larger part of the psychopath’s antisocial behavior can be interpreted as purposely designed to harm himself. Most of the people who commit violent and serious crimes fail to show the chief characteristics of a psychopath.

[psydoctor8]

[ohpsychology]

“MIT researchers turn on a memory”

Researchers chose to test a simple kind of memory — a fear memory. In one experiment, mice were put in a chamber, allowed to explore, and given a foot shock. The next time the mice were put in the same dangerous chamber, they remembered the unpleasant electric shock and froze, taking on a defensive stance. Researchers had, however, inserted a gene that codes for a light-sensitive protein into the cells involved in making a memory. They then tested what happened when they turned on a light to activate those cells, without putting the mice in the same chamber. They saw the freezing behavior, as if the mice were reliving the memory.

“This is the most dramatic way to show that high cognitive phenomenon, like memory recall, can be generated, can be artificially generated by poking cells in the brain,” Tonegawa said in an interview.

He said there were about 20,000 neurons, or brain cells, involved in this particular kind of memory.  [via]