Good day!  If you happen to be one of my graduate or undergraduate students, don't freak out.  I know you weren't expecting this, and there is no homework based on this.  It's simply a treat, compliments of Emma Tayor of Accredited Online Colleges.  It's enrichment to augment your knowledge in Cognitive Psychology.  So simply enjoy this, take it in, and use it in your daily life.  Be be warned: It could make your life a whole lot easier and it could make you a whole lot more productive.  Feel free to comment, but you're not required to do so.

This blog post is primarily geared towards graduate students in my NEUROPSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING class, but other students, and other blog visitors, are welcome to join in the conversation.   Other movie psychoANALYSIS blogs are ones in which I provided very specific directions concerning the types of responses I was seeking.  On this one, I'm going to leave more room for creative discussion.  If you were in attendance on March 3, 2010, please simply discuss this movie as it pertains to concepts of the Neuropsychology of Learning that most interest you.  If you are among those who haven't yet seen the movie, please rent the movie, or read the book upon which it is based, Flowers for Algernon.  We'll see you on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 5:30 pm to further discuss the movie. 

Students: Here is the skit we're playing to record on Wednesday, March 16.  If you have any questions, email me at:
drblt@drblt.net

Match the Melody to the Malady

 

Dr. Amy Gdala: Good afternoon, welcome to another weekly Case Conferencing session at  Head Rest Psychotherapy Center for the Neurologically Impaired, I’m your new clinical director, Dr. Amy Gdala. 

 

Dr. Constance Flict.  Hi, Amy, and welcome.  We hope you’re less of a micro-manager than our last director.  I’ve got a case of a patient named A. Volition.  Although he’s not psychotic, he suffers from something that many schizophrenic patients suffer from---avolition.   As such, he cannot initiate behavior.  He’s stuck, emotionally, and thus, behaviorally paralyzed. 

 

Dr. D. Stract: Hey, that happens to me all the time.  It almost kept me from attending this meeting.

 

Dr.  C. Reuss: This is no laughing matter, Dr. Stract.  Let’s stay on track.

 

Dr. Basal Ganglia:  Asking that of Dr. Stract is like asking a person with a hypothalamic lesion to relax. 

 

Dr. Lateral I. Zation:  We’re glad to have you on board.  Dr. Flict’s case doesn’t sound like a life or death matter.  It sounds pretty mild if you ask me.  So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to bring up my case with you, and the beloved group first. Ferlin Gitfell, my Alchiemer’s patient has really been giving me some challenges of late. 

 

In terms of his visual functioning, he’s losing his ability to identify complex geometric patterns, like the wrinkled, but kindly face of his wife.  He came in with his wife.  He really loves her, and that seems to be helping.  They met as dance partners, back in the 40s, but now he’s losing his ability to initiate complex voluntary movements, so dancing is out of the question.

 

Dr. Ep E. Lepsy: Excuse me, Dr. Zation, mind if I call you Lat?

I think my case is more pressing because it’s about somebody having a brain attack. 

This guy is both a schizophrenic and an epileptic.  I’m sure he’d be the ideal candidate for one of Sperry’s experiments on hemispheric specialization.  I can’t overstress the urgency of this case. 

 

Dr. Calm: Calm Down, Dr. Lepsy, you look like the one about to go psychotic or to go into an epileptic seizure.

 

Dr. Lepsy: It seems to me that you’re the one getting hysterical.

 

Dr. Corpus:  Please!  The two of you act like a brain that’s been split at the corpus collosum. 

 

Dr. Calm: Now, as I was saying before being so rudely interrupted, I wanted to convey the phenomenological experience of my patient, with the help of these students from Dr. BLT’s class, who will act as an amalgamation of his auditory hallucinations and the electrical storm in the brain. 

This is what he has to contend with while I speak with him in our sessions. 

(let the background voices begin and continue to the end of the paragraph below).

Stormy McBrian is his name.  “Stormy, what you are suffering from is a confluence of two conditions, one being Schizophrenia, Paranoid type and Epilepsy.  There are reasons why you hear voices and think they are real people, saying real things.  There are reasons why you are confused and can’t seem to separate reality from non-reality.  There are reasons you think people are plotting against you.  There are reasons why you feel like there is an electrical storm in your brain…

 

 Dr. Amy Gdala: Well, we’re almost out of time, and believe it or not, each of you has already presented your case.  This is a brief therapy center, and maybe your old director was into prolix presentations, but not me.  And now that you’ve all heard each other’s cases, let’s play a game.

 

Dr. Sarah Bellum:  Wait, I have a patient whose brain was accidentally severed by, Dr. Perry, a neurosurgeon who thought she was epileptic.  Now she has a hard time being torn between what her head is telling her and what her heart is telling her.  She in a state of ambivalence and avolition.  She can’t mobilize her will to initiate action of any kind.

 

Dr Amy Gdala: Like I was saying, let's play a game.  It’s called Match the Melody to the Mental Health Malady.  Let’s listen to these three songs, penned by Dr BLT.  The first one, I get Forgetful, is performed by Dr BLT and former student, Patricia Mikel. 

 

This second song is My Heart has a Mind of Its Own. Is performed by Dr BLT, his former student Patricia Mikel and present student, Conrad Gill.

 

This third song is called Brain Attack.  It also features Patricia Mikel and Conrad Gill.  

 

Staff, listeners, and blog visitors, after hearing the skit, match the melodies to these maladies!  Are you ready?  Let’s go!

 

Those of you who attend my Neuropsychology of Learning class at Fresno Pacific University in Bakersfield, you have a blogosphere holiday.  As for my Brandman University Cognitive Psychology students, let me ask you this:  Are you ready for the Cognitive Psychology final exam?  Think about yourself as an athlete in a curling event at the 2010 Winter Olympic games.  Tell yourself, "This may be a little slippery, but I rock!" and "Though this ice is cold, I will win the gold!" 



Pick it up, grab the rock and send it down towards the target.

1.  What are the following lyrics, from the song, All Fired Up, by yours truly, referring to?

at rest a neuron's charges
are negative within
and positive outside the cell
that's how it all begins
an AP is an action
potential that will change
when sodium is tossed about
and chemicals exchange...

a.  The Action Potential that proceeds neurotransmission
b.  The secretion of epigentic fluid following a spinal tap
c.  The natural outcome of Sperry's work on epileptic patients
d.  None of the above
e.  All of the above

2.  The movie, Secrets of the Mind, reveals Dr. V.S. Ramachandras discoveries that:

a.  the brain undergoes a massive "re-wiring" when a person loses a limb
b.  the corpus collosum is instrumental in mediating operations between the left and right hemisphere of the brain
c.  the power of the mind in the management of pain, and how to trick the mind into providing pain relief
d.  how seizures can lead to powerful spiritual experiences
e.  all of the above
f.  all of the above except b
g.  all of the above except d

3.  The mind is continuously involved in a 3-stage process involving input, integration and output.  When you learn a word that you had no previous knowledge of, a brand new neuropathway is established in the brain.  The following excercise will demonstrate the input-integration-output process.

Instructions: Find a way to seamlessly integrate the following low-frequency familiarity words, expanding the quote concerning the movie, The Village, (below) as you create a brand new set of sentences.  If these are already familiar ones to you, then seek out words that are not presently familiar to you and find a way to incorporate them into the paragraph.  Either substitute words in the sentences or add to existing sentences (or create new sentences using the new words), but make sure the new sentences blend with the existing sentences so an even flow is generated.   

fictive (FIK-tive) adjective:
ardent, intense, fervent

objurgate (OB-jer-GAYT) verb
denounce, upbraid harshly; revile

bifurcate (BI-fer-KAYT) verb
fork, divide into two branches

legerdermain (LEJ-er-de-MAYN) noun
1. slieght of hand, magic tricks.
2. sophistry; trickery
Related words: legerdemanianist

prescience (PRESH-ens) noun
1.  foreknowledge
2. foresight
Related words: prescient (adjective), presciently (adverb)

sanguine (SANG-gwin) adjective
1.  hopeful, optimistic
2.  confident
Related words: sanguinarily (adverb), sanguineariness (noun)

* Borrowed from Eugene Ehrlich's The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate. 

Here are the sentences (paragraphs) you will rework, through incorporation of the new words:

In the movie, The Village, rather than relying on the neocortex, and the concomitant higher level processing to protect themselves from danger, the elders essentially regress, resorting to the lowest common denominator, fear, the type of fear that stems (no pun intended) from the more primitive areas of the brain, like the limbic system, involving the activation of the amygdala.  Those who venture out of the village are harshly upbraided, but there are two burgeoning outlooks concerning the way that villagers should approach the outside world, and these two views divide the traditional members of the village from the risk-takers, who are generally younger in age. 

The elders resort to slieight of hand in keeping the villagers under control and reinforcing fears they may have about outsiders.  But some have the mental foresight, and are confidently optimistic that the locus for hope for their wellbeing and, ultimately, their survival may actually involve the enviorns surrounding the boundaries of the village.   

4.  Page 118 (Spotlight Attention and Visual Search): Among the input attentional processes, visual attention, a process related to perceptual space, is different than the orienting response in the following way:

a.  In visual attention, movement of the eye and head are more jerky, not as smooth and flowing as they are in the orienting response

b.  in visual attention, there is "no necessary movement of the eyes or head
 
c.  the two types of input attentional processes are the same, so the question is a non sequitur.

d.  all of the above, and yet, in existential terms, oddly none of the above at the same time. 


5.  Page 119 (lower paragraph):

Spotlight attention is:

a.  Something that big stars like Lady Gaga to because it is in their nature as troglodytic cynosures

b.  a phenomenon that first captured the attention around the world when American Idol was in its first season

c.  the mental attention-focusing mechanism that prepares you to encode stimulus information


6.  (page 123) Conscious attention:

a.  is also called "controlled attention"

b.  prepares us to respond in a deliberate way to the environment

c.  is slower that spotlight attention

d.  operates in a more serial fashion than spotlight attention

e.  is especially influenced by conceptually driven processes

f.  none of the above

g.  all of the above, except h

h.  all of the above


7.  T or F quote (page 123):

"Spotlight attention...is a basic, rapid attentional mechanism that seems to operate in parallel across the visual field, in a highly automatic fashion."


8.  Harry Hemi, who drives a semi, actually owns a hemi, but it sits on his driveway most of the time.  This is not the only hemi Harry neglects.  You see, Harry suffers from a condition known as hemineglect.  This means that:

a.  he doesn't eat the types of foods generally considered nourishing for the brain's right and left hemisphere

b.  he experiences a marked disruption in his ability to refocus his attention to one side of his face or the other.

c.  he experiences a disruption or decreased ability to attend to something in the (often) left field of vision

d. all of the above

e.  b and c only


9.  (page 161)  In the recency effect:

a.  all items in a to-be-recalled list are perceived with exactly the same level of salience

b.  the late positions in a to-be-recalled list are sensitive to deliberate rehearsal that transforms information into long-term memory, whereas early positions tend to be recalled with high accuracy in the free recall task

c.  early positions in a to-be-recalled list are sensitive to deliberate rehearsal that transfers information into long-term memory, whereas later positions tend to be recalled with high accuracy in the free recall task

d.  all of the above


10a.  T or F:

Dr BLT's balloon-0-brain-ogram diagramming excercise, Part 1, is hypothesized to produce a more efficient memory for areas of the brain than simply diagraming the brain via pen and paper, because it likely creates a greater level of stimulation to the motor cortex of the brain, even as it profoundly engages both hemispheres of the brain. 

10b.  T or F:

Dr BLT's balloon-o-brain-ogram diagramming excercise, Part II, by engaging a creative-labeling scheme, is hypothesized to produce a more efficient memory for the functions of the brain than simply assigning the conventional name to each brain part/region because involves creative thought processes that involve meaningful associations between structure and corresponding function.


11.  T or F: When you were asked to write a piece of fiction that, through the process of storytelling, and character development, portrays a particular cognitive phenomenon because it is more creatively challenging than simply writing a scientific paper.

12.  Two of the greatest recent discoveries in Cognitive Psychology include:

a. the way that memory mimics attentional processes and the way that intentional processes mimic attention
b.  new studies that illustrate, in a dramatic way, neuroplacitity (the brain's ability to mend itself) and new studies in an exciting new category known as epigenetics, which suggest that human behavior may impact generations that follow
c.  episodic memory and semantic memory
d.  all of the above
e.  none of the above

13.  T or F: Conceptually-driven processing is also known as bottom-up processing.

14.  To or F: Proactive interference is interference or difficulty, especially during recall, because of some previous activity. 

15.  Figure out what an online comprehension task is, based on the context associated with the following sentence:

"What do you think this is, Selena, an online comprehension task?  We don't have the luxury of measuring performance while comprehension is taking place.  We'll draw those measurements later, when we can get to it."

Based on the context of the sentence, one can logically conclude that an online comprehension task:

a.  is one that is performed on a blog on the computer
b. a task in which measurements of performance are obtained as comprehension takes place
c. a task in which measurements of performance and recall are obtains after a period of time elapsing beyond the duration of the comprehension task itself
d. all of the above

16.  The question that you've just completed is an example of:

a. contextual cueing
b. contextual learning
c. contextual priming
d. all of the above

17.  T or F
A neurotransmitter is the chemical substance released into the synapses between two neurons, responsible for activating or inhibiting the next neuron in sequence

18.  T or F: Metamemory is knowledge about one's own memory system and it's functioning

19.  To or F: B. F. Skinner is generally credited with introspection, the method of investigation in which subjects look inward to describe their mental processes and thoughts. 

20.  MRI stands for:
a. memory response input
b. mega-recall instructions
c. magnetic resonance imaging, a medical scanning technology that reveals anantomical structure, especially of the brain

21.  In the movie, Charly, recognition-hungry researchers committed an ethical breach against Charly by...
a. forgetting to feed Algernon
b. failing to give Charly Gordon enough anesthetic prior to his operation
c. rushing ahead with the experiment before understanding possible complications, and in the process, failing to warn Charly that the collosally impressive results were not permanent, but temporary

22.  The future that Charly described to scientists in the room where he was displayed as a trophy, was...
a. a bright one
b. a pretty good one
c. a gloomy, Stygian, and dire one, marked by abject pessimism
d.  one marked by ostensible scientific progress at the expense of losing basic common sense and humaness
e. c and d
f. all of the above

23.  T or F: While a person may lose a limb, the brain continues to map, or represent the lost limb as if it still exists, contributing to the pheneomenon of phantom pain

24.  The two types of thinking most valued by your instructor are:
a. concentrated thinking and rote memorization
b.  concrete thinking, which is initiated in Piaget's concrete operational stage of development
c.  creative and critical thinking
d.  some of the above

25.  The use of skits and songs that seamlessly incorporate course material are used in Dr BLT classes for the purpose of:
a. giving students an opportunity to show off their skills in the studio
b. stimulating holistic learning that draws extensively from both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously
c. disabusing students of the notion that everything must have a purpose
d. casting down on traditional methods of learning

THE VILLAGE
NeuropsychologicalAnalysis

Welcome to an opportunity to expand your knowledge of the brain and of the phenomena associated with the brain by applying principles of the subject matter to the movie, THE VILLAGE.

Give a brief overview of the plot.

How does the movie relate to the course?  I'll offer these words as cognitive primers to put your mind in motion: language; attention (think of selective attention); interference; perception; awareness; encoding; emotion and memory; states of consciousness; representation of knowledge; pattern recognition; problem solving; creative thinking; decision-making; spoken and written communication; memory and the effects of stress on the brain). 

Describe in more detail what principles of neuropsychology and cognition are demonstrated in the movie.

Consider the song, YOUR HIDING PLACE, penned by yours truly and performed by Practially Poetz.  How does this single-song-movie-analysis-soundtrack relate to the theme of the movie? 

Your Hiding Place
Practically Poetz
words/music by Dr BLT

Download | Duration: 00:04:37

Practically Poetz is:

Dr BLT: lead vocals; rhythm guitar
Rod Marlin: bass
Chris Wise: drums

Students: No blog homework is due for the next class, but if you want to get a jump start on the blog homework for the following week, then review these lyrics and then respond in these two ways:

1.  The song (music to be added later) provides a creative adaptation of course material, and an informational skeleton that you will add flesh to.  Elaborate on each of the neuro pioneers identified in the lyrics.

2.  Elaborate and flesh out with more detail, each of the neuro-imaging techniques alluded to in the lyrics.

 this in the comments section, and you're good to go.

The Neurosurgeon’s Methods Dance

By Dr Bruce L. Thiessen, aka BLT copyright 2010

 

They used to slice the brain all up

To find out brainy, research stuff

Old Sperry didn’t spare a brain

He needed lesions for his game

He made himself a wondrous name

but all their losses were his gain

and now we’re so much more advanced

so join our neurosurgeon’s dance

 

That’s now reserved for mice and men

Already damaged, on the mend

They say hey, stimulate instead

Directly stimulate the head

T’was pioneered by Penfield too

A great Canadian, t’was imbued

With neurosurgeon skills so deft

He’d stimulate the right and left

 

The patients in his surgery

Stayed conscious in emergency

A little local that is all

To numb the head and it involved

The application of a shock

To brains exposed and on the block

 

The regions triggered?

Very small

And barely noticed, if at all

He’d shock ‘em then

Asked them questions

Or have them share with “Pen,” their friend

Their thoughts and memories then and there

He’d analyze them and compare

Their words with others under knife

A dreamlike state is what it’s like

 

Could these reported thoughts and such

Be stuff of fantasy and fluff?

A feeble effort to construct

A pattern based on not enough

Of real thoughts and real states

Pen simply said, “I think it’s great!”

 

 

 

Regardless of the things they say

The value of “let’s stimulate”

Is in the way they’re localized

The functions of the brain realized

The kinds of knowledge stored in parts

Of neocortex torn apart

Let’s cheer the man we call “The Pen”

And ask not why, but what and when?

 

The neuroimaging technique

Intrigues me so, it’s so unique

The CT’s, MRI’s and PETS

Are pretty cool, way cool, you bet!

 

They all give pictures of the brain

So clear, and it’s hard to contain

The joy I’m feeling every time

I see an image of my mind

The different colors are a trip

Reflecting blood flow, there, that’s it

When blood gets oxygen it moves

The pictures cause me to be moved

 

They used to look at brains as dead

Just structures fixed inside the head

But these techniques bring it alive

The brain in action, actualized

 

And Tulving is the one we love

A pioneer of all this stuff

His look at memory inspired

A bunch of people to admire

The two types of our memories

The episodic and, you see

Semantic memory, yes, two types

Now never mind the pomp and hype

 

Just watch the different ways it flows

Where different types of memories go

Inject some junk inside the vein

That binds the oxygen contained

Inside the blood, that sticks like mud

There is a lag, and that’s a dud

But through these fancy things they do

We find a broader, cooler view

Our theories grow and stretch you know

According to these brains that glow

 

Electro-en-ceph-alograms

And ERPs are groovy, man

Two ways to look

Inside the brain

And and see the functions it contains

The first is primitive and crude

But ERPs are awesome, dude!

 

Momentary recent change

Is soooo detected in the brain

With ERPs that map the flow

Of currents ranging high and low

Semantic words---anomalies

Will be detected, yes, with these

An N4, for anomalies

And also for abnormalities

Like when you’re breakin’ grammar’s rules

An N4’s found with this great tool

Could epigenetics play a role in the whole matter of homelessness?  Please offer your opinion, and a little support for such an opinion in the comments section below.

Then head over to this blog and listen to the new Dr BLT/Dave Howe duet. 


Duet

After listening to the duet, offer suggestions in terms of how the heart and the head could work together to produce solutions to the issue of homelessness.  Could it be possible for epigenetics to one day play a role in the eradication of homelessness?  Offer a modicum of support for your answer. 



Happy Valentine's Day!

We're about to study the brain and mental/cognitive phenomena from multiple perspectives in order to gain a contextual understanding of how we think, and how we process our thoughts, underlying emotions, and memories.  This may get complicated and that prospect may seem intimidating, so I'd recommend taking a breath, telling yourself that you're up for the challenge (after all, you are!), and then takling this blog entry head first. 

Three types of abuse are evident in the movie, DOLORES CLAIBORNE: Sexual abuse, or child molestation, domestic violence (mutual, but it could be argued, Dolores was acting in self-defense), and alcoholism (four if you consider nicotine abuse).   Certain research seems to indicate that memories characterized by emotional intensity, appear to be easier to recall than memories corresponding to little, if any, emotional intensity. 

How would you reconcile this research with the revelation in the movie, that the only traumatic event that the character of Selena St. George seems to remember, involves the sight of her father bleeding after her mother struck back at him, shortly after being brutally attacked by him?  It takes a series of vivid reminders by her mother to finally trigger memories of having been molested by her father. 

We, as a scientific community, used to believe that DNA was fixed and that enviornment was a separate influence on the development of the individual.  This had to do with the general consensus that our behavior had no impact on the genes of future generations. 

While Darwin has carried the prevailing paradigm of Western civilization since the early days of science, Jean-Baptiste (1744-1829)Lamarck, who came before him, and the Lamarckian-based relatively new field of epigenetics (born of Lamarckian theory), appears to be nipping at that paradigm's achilles heel, and thus, threatening to bring about a dramatic paradigmatic shift. 

This shift began to surface as a possibility when Dr. Lars Olov Bygren, a preventative-health specialist began examining, and later, publishing, the records of generations of offspring whose parents, grandparents and greatgrandparents from Norrbotten County in Northern Sweden, were exposed to abrupt shifts in food availability, leading alternatively, to periods of near-starvation followed by periods of exteme abundance, which triggered episodes of severe overeating. 

The results flew in the face of the Darwinian-based assumption that changes in the development of species takes place over many generations and millions of years of natural selection.  The boys, for example, who suffered from food consumption extremes, produced children and then grandchildren, with conspicuously shorter life-spans.  This consequence proved to be enduring throughout several generations beyond the initial offspring. 

Lars' findings, coupled with other epigenetic studies that have followed, suggest that environmental factors such as nutrition, stress and trauma can actually produce relatively enduring changes in offspring due to changes in epigenetic markers associated with DNA.  For example, mothers who experience a great deal of environmental stress during pregnancy are found to have a higher rate of children who develop asthma. 

Do a little research on epigenetic studies.  A good place to start would be the cover article in the January 18, 2010 edition of Time magazine---an article entitled "Why Your DNA isn't Your Destiny."  Then formulate an hypothesis that suggests how, if untreated, the trauma Selena experienced in her childhood, associated with family violence and her experience of having been molested, could impact future generations, if she were to marry, and subsequently have children.  First, consider how changes in the epigenetic markers alone could impact future Selena decendants, and then consider the additional role of modeling and how it may interact with the epigenetic process to shape the behavior of her decendants. 

Students, it would be helpful to refer to a diagram of the brain and its structures, as a frame of reference, to answer the next question.  Cognitive Psychology students, there's one on page 53 of your text, Neuropsychology of Learning students, there's one on page 60 of your text.  See if you can also do a little digging in your textbooks, and additional sources to shed further light on the function of each area or part of the brain.  Then identify and discuss 3 areas of Selena's brain that likely played a role in facilitating, first memory blockage, and then, the gradual recall for memories of her father having abused her. 

Now do a little independent research on the areas of the brain impacted by alcohol intoxication.  Discuss what areas of the brain Selena's father likely influenced while he was drinking and how this may have influenced his behavior? 

Do you think Selena's father would have been likely to molest her if he hadn't had a drinking problem?  Why or why not? 

Now listen to this original song (sorry about the rough nature of the recording):

Through the Eyes of a Child
Dr BLT
words and music by Dr BLT copyright 1988, 2010

Then answer this:
Describe how the theme of multi-generational perpetuation of the cycle of abuse is introduced in this song?  Then answer this:

How could the field of epigenetics add insight into the understanding of the multi-generational perpetuation of the cycle of abuse, and develop methods, based on epigenetic findings, that could play a role in the eventual breaking the cycle? 

This blog will be due by Wednesday, January 27, 2010 for Fresno Pacific University students.  For students in my Cognitive Psychology class, this one is optional, and please, Cognitive psychology students,  just disregard the final question, referencing Table 1.1. 

Although it's virtually impossible to be born into this world, or to be exposed to the trials of life, and come out completely functional.  But when an individual suffers from a profound brain disorder, or a profound learning disability, the challenges that everyday individuals experience seem to pale in comparison.  Yet, as this song suggests, it is human nature to foolishly take everything for granted, including a relatively functional brain. 

Everything 4 Granted  (as aired on the KWMR show,
Bakersfield and Beyond 

Dr BLT
words and music by Dr BLT copyright 2009

What are a few of the things the character in this song took for granted?  What were the consequences of taking "everything for granted?" 

We can lose our brain functioning if we take it for granted.  I can think of one example----alcoholism, either through excessive, prolongued abuse, or through drunk driving resulting in a serious automobile accident that could render a person brain-damaged?

Can you think of other examples?  If so, offer them in the comments section below. 


What is it like to be somebody who has suffered a stroke, or a series of strokes?  What is it like to experience hemiplegia?  Who would you feel if you couldn't move one side of your body?  What if you couldn't move your right arm, or your right leg?  Life would become so much more challenging and things we all take for granted would take on a whole new meaning.   In order to work with children, adolescents or adults with learning disabilities or brain dysfunction, we need to be able to understand the nature of their suffering, the extent and nature of their challenges, and we need to have, above all, empathy. 

Empathy vs. Pity:

Empathy empowers, pity only weakens and enables those with brain dysfunction to be ensconced in self-pity, a victim mentality, and a sense of hopelessness, haplessness and helplessness. 

Before we can develop a subjective understanding of what it means to experience brain dysfunction, we must have an objective understanding of what areas of the brain are impacted, the extent of injuries or damage to the brain, and the practical manifestation in terms of the effect of brain dysfunction on thought, emotions and behavior. 


Drawing from Table 1.1, along with any supplemental sources you'd like to incorporate,  please create a vignette, involving one of these cases: a child that suffers from brain damage (either one showing hard or soft signs); a child that suffers from a specific learning disability, a child that suffers from a psychiatric condition without any clear indication of brain damage.  Include details about the experience of that student that would convince your treatment team to establish feelings of empathy, but not pity, for your child case.   

The movie, Phoebe in Wonderland depicts and family in conflict and a young girl in crisis, all because of a syndrome or clinical condition that has impacted her thoughts, her behavior and her actions.  After viewing the movie, please answer the following questions in the comments section, and please, use the comments section to delve further into a dialogue with students, peers and other blog visitors who may have chimed in on the conversation.

What diagnoses did you entertain, if any, for Phoebe as you watched the movie?

What diagnosis did she and the family discover to be the one that most adequately matched her symptoms?

After learning about the various brain structures and their functions seamlessly identified and addressed in the most recent episode of the short story, "Oil" Dale, posted here...

Bakersfield Sound Underground

...or more directly, here:

Adventures of Oil Dale

...please discuss which of the brain regions and their functions would be most related to Phoebe's case, and tell us why. 

After listening to the song, It Only Hurts When I Cry, posted there, please tell us which centers of the brain were activated, if any, by your experience of listening to the song.