I thought this was cool

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L Dopa

I was doing some research on L Dopa last night and was kind of surprised to see that you can just buy it in stores. I thought for sure it would be something you would have to be prescribed. Many people with Parkinson's disease are given it to help their muscles, which I noticed there seems to be some debate about. Some people were arguing that the side effects are too much, while others argued that the benefits outweigh the side effects. One of the side effects of too much L dopa was dyskinesia. I found it interesting that some people would risk dyskinesia by taking L dopa when they are using it to try and help Parkinson's. Just some things on my mind.

The Brain and Epilepsy

Class today made me wonder where glutamate and gamma aminobutyric acid was produced in the brain. I found that gamma aminobutyric acid is also used in the suppression of epilepsy. I further looked to find that usually after a grand map seizure, a patient may not have another seizure. This reminded my of my past experience with epilepsy as a child and wondering where in the brain it most affected.

How I Feel Sometimes

Memory and Money

I am currently living at home with my mother, which has been a big change from being away at college for four years. Usually it's me who has time to go to the grocery store to buy the groceries, and my mother and I have agreed that she will reimburse me for the groceries. Even though we made this agreement together, it is always me that remembers that she owes me money for groceries. My memory of this agreement is much more immediate than hers, as she remembers when I remind her, but otherwise wouldn't independently remember to put money in my account. In thinking about it, I'm sure that if the roles were reversed, I would probably forget to give her money but she would remember I owed her. I don't believe we have learned any specific theories as to why this memory discrepancy between my mother and I had occurred. My hypothesis is that while the event is a LTM to the both of us, it is a positive memory for me (I get money back) whereas it is a negative memory for my mother (she gives me money). In this way, I have much more to gain by remembering the deal and am more likely to remind myself about it than my mother.

I saw this a few days ago

Edu Major Related Operant Conditioning

http://www.ehow.com/how_7725807_apply-operant-conditioning-preschool-classroom.html

Found this funny

Hi!

Hi guys!

I hope your week end is going on well.

Here something I just found on the internet.
What do you think Pavlov, Skinner, Tolman and Bandura would had answered? And how would YOU answer?

Noticing Conditioning in my Everyday Life

I work at a restaurant/bar and every time the chef rings the bell that means the food is ready and we have to serve it to the customers immediately. During training, our head chef stressed the importance of how when we hear the bell we need to stop what we're doing and go serve the food. So every time I hear the bell ring I'm conditioned to look to the kitchen to see if anyone else is grabbing the food or if I need to do it myself.

This weekend I was out to eat with some friends and I kept hearing a bell ringing from their kitchen. Every time someone rang the bell I immediately looked toward the kitchen. It happened three or four times before I kept reminding myself that I wasn't at work.

Bad Effects of Observational Learning

We learned in class that observational learning can sometimes be ineffective because people aren't discouraged from doing an action they've observed when the person is punished for said action. I have a real life example of this situation:

While driving to San Francisco you have to pass a toll booth to get onto the bridge. The lines usually get pretty long and the traffic is heavy long story short people hate to wait. To the right of the lines is a bus lane that is usually relatively empty but it's illegal to drive there if you aren't driving a bus. Every once and awhile while you're waiting in line you will see a car speed down the bus lane in hopes of not getting caught, but every once in awhile a cop will pull one of these cars over. Yet this doesn't stop people from continuing to drive in the bus lane. They observe the illegal behavior, then do it themselves even if it's risky.

Operant Conditioning

Simple thoughts

I took a psyc class in high school, and now four years later it's really cool to know that I remember a lot of terms and psychologists. I thought the videos that we watched the other day in class were really interesting. The one about the kids in the classroom was really cool to see take place. It would definitely be something that I would do in my class.  

I'm really looking forward to getting into more depth about the this subject. Like I said, it has been a while since I took a psyc class but I am beyond excited ! 

The Wave

During class the other day, I was thinking back to my senior year history class. I had a crazy teacher- he was really cool, but he was obsessed with psychology, so the day before finals he showed us this 1981 movie called The Wave. Here's a link to the IMDb site, so you can read more about it: The Wave. It was a very interesting movie.

That's about it, I was just reminded of this movie from a few years ago during class and thought about how it relates to the classic conditioning that we discussed.

-Victoria

Testing psychology theories on friends

After watching the video in class of the teacher performing an experiment of Pavlov's theory, and after going through the exercise in class of formulating an example of Pavlov's experiment, I thought I would elaborate on the example Allie (sorry I'm not sure how to spell your name!) and I gave and then consider what made this experiment ethical or non-ethical. 

I was on a long road trip with my rowing coach and five teammates. We were going to the national championship and everyone was under a lot of stress and experiencing lots of anxiety (one person in the car had a full on panic attack). The coach and one of the rowers (rower a) decided to do an experiment on a different rower (rower b). The coach pressed a button on his phone that made a dinging sound. A moment after, rower a reached forward and flicked rower b on the ear. The goal was to see if rower b would anticipate the flick after hearing the ding. The other, non-scientific goal was to have fun in the car. It's quite funny to see someone get annoyed after being flicked on the ear about 15 times.

By the end of the day, however, rower b was so agitated with the flicks that rower a had to stop flicking her. While funny to the rest of us, could have led to a conflict that was detrimental to our team's performance. We told her about the Pavlov experiment, and when she realized why she had been flicked, she found if funny. 

This casual experiment leads me to question when it's ok to be a "weekend psychologist." Even if it's not physically or even emotionally harmful to experiment on people, are there other factors that make it acceptable or unethical to do a casual psychological experiment? For example, when people (like rower b) are part of an experiment without their consent, it can introduce potentially harmful dynamics of superiority in an otherwise professional or friendly relationship. Experiments, even when the authors of the experiment are very careful, can make people seem like animals or can reveal unexpected things about them. Throughout this class I'll keep considering how actively experimenting on people, no matter how casual and harmless the experiment may seem, could actually be harmful to the participants.

-Maggie