The Human Brain Essay

Cognitive neuroscience is the study of how the brain is able to process and function through the stimulation of neurons. The broad nature of this field allows much involvement in the scientific community including not only psychologists working to further understand the functions of the human brain, but also physicists, mathematicians, and other science related areas of study by bringing knowledge and simulations from the outside world and relating them to the processes of our own minds. In addition to researching the basis of normal cognitive functions in an average brain, cognitive neuroscience studies development of the brain, as well as damage to the brain including how the damage will affect normal operations of that brain in the future. The study of cognitive neuroscience began as a result of a movement to, rather than focus studies on behavioral actions, study the operational characteristics of the brain and how they related to knowledge, memory, understanding, and other processes.

Suppose another experiment had participants say the word “now” as soon as they detected the green circle, and that the response times were between 100 and 200 milliseconds. What would you conclude about the cognitive tasks involved in these two versions of simple detection?

When it comes to the topic of having a growth mindset, most of us will readily agree that students who are praised are motivated to learn. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of how they are praised. Whereas some are convinced that praising students for their intelligence will motivate them to learn, others maintain that encouraging them for their efforts has a better impact on their motivation.

Biological psychology, of biopsychology, is the application of the principles of biology to the study of mental processes in terms of bodily mechanisms. The view that psychological processes have biological (or physiological) correlates, is the basic assumption of the whole field of biological psychology. Biological psychology is a hopeful domain, one that has much to offer in terms of improving the quality of life of the healthy as well as those suffering from disorders. It also contributed important therapeutic data on a variety of conditions, including: Parkinson 's Disease, Alzheimer 's Disease, Clinical depression, Schizophrenia and a lot others. Humans have very complex nervous system, they use neurons and neurotransmitters to make the highest active communication network throughout the body. “most of the body’s neurons are found in the central nervous system(CNS), which consists of the brain and spinal cord” (psychology 5th edition). “Neuroscience emphasizes that the brain and nervous system are central to understanding behavior, thought, and emotion. (Van Horn, 2014; Zhao & others, 2014). Therefore, for biological psychologist all that is psychological is first physiological. All thoughts, feeling & behavior ultimately have a biological cause.” We are benefited from biological approach for diagnosing and treating human brains Ex. Schizophrenia. Scientists are also able to create medications for different types of illnesses. Besides having psychologists

Moreover, Cheryl's case study greatly illustrates how exterior (Distal) environment can be greatly impacted by interior (Proximal) environment malfunctions. Cheryl suffers from traumatic brain injury or TBI as a result of direct head contact with an explosive device (p.80). After this traumatic event, Cheryl's social and cognitive abilities have been affected. For example, Cheryl experiences difficulties remembering recent events from which can be deducted that her temporal lobe was affected.

The strengths of the study rested in the recruitment of the control subjects and the fact that the researchers collected pre-injury health and mental health data. The control subjects were retained by advertisement and paired with the mTBI subjects by correlated gender, age (plus or minus 2 years), and level of educational achievement. All subjects participated in telephone screening which eliminated subjects with previous head trauma or diseases, and a MRI to exclude subjects with unknown brain lesions. The results showed significant differences between the control subjects and the mTBI subjects in cognitive functioning, with episodic memory being the most significant followed by working memory and attention (Konrad et al 2010). All subjects took the following battery neuropsychological and psychiatric tests. 1. German Version of the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT; Rey, 1964; Helmstaedter et al. 1996 as cited by Konrad et al 2010). 2. German Version of Tests for Attentional Performance (TAP; Zimmermann & Fimm, 1992 as cited by Konrad et al 2010). 3. Trail Making Test Parts A and B (TMT-A and TMT-B; Reitan, 1958; Spreen & Strauss, 1998 as cited by Konrad et al 2010). 4. A

Powell (1986) conducted a study in which individuals viewed a photo or slide. Individuals were required to scan images and decide on an image for the entire display (Powell, 1986). Objects were pointed to, and subjects were asked to identify its location (Powell, 1986). The subject was asked to close his or her eyes and were shown another image. The subjects were to decide if the object was in the correct position (Powell, 1986). The subjects would hear one of the objects and was required to focus on the object while keeping the entire image in his or her mind (Powell, 1986). When the next object was identified, the subjects were to move from the first object to the second watching a black dot moving in a straight line (Powell, 1986).

Throughout history, many societies across the world have tended to banish people with mental disorders from the mainstream. Even today individuals with psychopathologies experience additional social handicaps and distress as a result of prejudice. Yet, according to statistics, one out of four adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

Each person with this condition is known for being heavily reliant on the one side of space that is not impaired, while tending to perform physical tasks that accommodate to that side. The space that is consciously available for experience it is contingent upon the location of brain damage between the two hemispheres of the brain. Someone with brain damage in the right hemisphere of their brain will experience neglect for the left side of their space and vice versa. Comparing these two studies allows one to draw connections to fundamental concepts of attention, while also highlighting the knowledge damaged brains provide for better understanding the cognitive mechanisms of unimpaired individuals.

Due to his acquired brain injury, with damage to his frontal and left temporal lobe, it has been identified that Tom is currently experiencing difficulties with working memory. Difficulties with working memory are often seen as an inability to stay on task and following multi-stepped instructions as it becomes challenging to manipulate information in the brain. In addition to this, Tom is also displaying further memory difficulties with the damage to his left temporal lobe being the most probable cause. The left temporal lobe is believed to play an import role in long-term memory as well as the location of the Wernicke’s area that holds the storage of the semantics of language. This area may have received damage to as Tom is showing difficulty with understanding language, yet another difficulty that will need to be considered throughout his rehabilitation. Specifically the medial temporal lobe, and hippocampal region are known to play a role in the formation of new semantic knowledge. Therefore if Tom received severe damage to

The PBS special "The Secret Life of the Brain" took us through all different aspects of the brain and its formation through life. These five movies taught us that the brain is plastic and is always changing, cutting unused neurons and filling with different ideas and thoughts that you learn from your environment. The five videos go through the five stages of life; baby, child, teenager, adult and finally the aging brain.

How does memory work? Is it possible to improve your memory? In order to answer these questions, one must look at the different types of memory and how memory is stored in a person's brain.Memory is the mental process of retaining and recalling information or experiences. (1) It is the process of taking events, or facts and storing them in the brain for later use. There are three types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

     Humphreys and Kumada’s research results were that people with frontal lobe damage showed difficulty in selecting task-relevant information while ignoring task-irrelevant (Humphreys & Kumada, 2002). Sometimes these people tend to get confused on what is important and what are not, as most people occasionally do. Some frontal lobe damage people struggle more with relevant information than others do. “Frontal lobe lesions only appear to affect the ability to gate or inhibit irrelevant stimulus information” (Gershberg, Jurica, Mangels, & Shimamura, 1995, p145). Research is usually just a bunch of theories, or experiments that have not been proven wrong yet. The tendency for frontal damage is that a part of the brain has been damaged or removed that helps with these functions.

Researchers Coffman, Trumbo, Flores, Garcia, Merwe, Wasserman, and Clark (2012) looked at how tDCS affects performance when placed over the right inferior frontal cortex, and at different current strengths. Differential effects in responses to stimuli were looked at which included varying by repetition and target presence, differences related to expectancy, and individual differences in skin stimulation and mood. Participants received training for 1 hour in a complex virtual environment with the task of detecting hidden objects. Anodal tDCS was applied over the right inferior frontal cortex at either 0.1 mA or 2.0 mA for the first 30 minutes of training, and participants were tested before, immediately after, and 1 hour after training. It was found that participants who received the higher current of tDCS had increased performance for all of the test stimuli, but performance was greatest for repeated test stimuli with the presence of hidden targets. This study was replicated with a second set of participants and the findings showed that the enhancement performance with tDCS is

Similarly, both theories are supported by research. Lawson and Humphreys (1996), for example, showed that recognition is affected more by tilt of major axis (foreshortening) than any other rotation, which endorses Marr’s and Nishihara prediction that establishing a central axis is crucial to the process of recognition. Warrington and Taylor (1978) reported that brain damaged patients could recognize objects presented in a typical view only. These patients found difficult to say if two photographs presented simultaneously were the same object when one image was a typical view and the other an unusual view. Although this could be explained as the patient’s inability to transform a 2D version of the atypical view into a 3D model, it could also be due to difficulty in establishing the central axis or due to some features of the object being hidden. In a later study, Humphreys and Riddoch (1984) used images where either the axis had been foreshortened through rotation or a critical feature was hidden. They found that patients had more problems recognizing the images with a foreshortened axis than the ones where a critical feature was hidden. Their