PSYCHOLOGYCOMESALIVE.COM

Exam preparatory skit

2010-07-21T20:30:00Z

Instructions:

Beloved Students: From the following final exam-preparatory skit, performed in class on Tuesday, July 20, 2010, generate 3 questions, and then provide answers to each. Enter the questions in bold and answers under each in the comments section below.

Three Ways to Crack a Nut

Advanced Individual Counseling

Brandman University: July 20, 2010

Dr. Mod: Good afternoon. Welcome to TV D, the debate channel. Today on Three Ways to Crack a Nut, I have 2 authors and an editor, who will debate one another on preferred approaches to individual counseling.

On my left, please welcome Judith Beck. She wrote Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond. On my right, is Gerard Egan, author of The Skilled Helper. And in the middle, we have Alexander Wolf, one of the two editors of Psychotherapist’s Casebook.

I’m sorry, the other editor, Irwin L. Kutash couldn’t be here today because he’s auditioning for America’s Got Talent. And, by the way, we’d like to wish him the best. He’s doing an as-yet-undisclosed stunt

Dr. Mod: Hi, I’m doctor Mod and I’m the debate moderator. I’d like to welcome each of you to the show. Let’s start with you, Judy.

Gerald Egan: Oh, please. Why don’t we just all get into robot mode?

Judith Beck: I beg you’re pardon! Gerry! Don’t you dare put me in a box based on your assumption that I’m my daddy.

Gerard Egan: Well excuse me! Maybe this is the place to start singing Bridge Over Troubled Waters. You do engage in session bridging. Oh well, I guess that’s a step up from simply identifying faulty thoughts and attacking the thoughts one by one.

Alexander Wolf: It seems to me, Jerry, that you can be a bit of a robot yourself. You and your damn lists! If I have to read one more of your endless lists, like Suggestions for Responding with Empathy on page 183, I think I’m going to throw up. Why can’t you be like James F.T. Bugental, the Existential Humanist? Instead of following the growing Western trend towards “mechanization, impersonality and the objectification of persons.

As Paul Tillich wrote, “Man resists objectification, and if man’s resistance is broken, man himself is broken.” That’s what sucks about both of you. Sure, Judy, you give lip service to approaching persons as whole beings, and you talk about session bridging, mood check, and identifying emotions, but for you, the thoughts come first. Just check this out here on page 79. You focus on the human as a thought machine that produces feelings like a computer program would produce data.

What is all of this focus on identifying automatic thoughts, evaluating and responding to automatic thoughts? What about just being present and emotionally available for your patient, and not crowding out the unconscious with all of this structure you impose on the session.

And Gerry, at least Judy’s structure comes from some sort of easily-identifiable, if reductionistic, model. You just seem to be pulling things out of the blue, or, in layman’s terms, pulling things out of your…no, I’m not going to go there.

You have an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and see yourself as some wise counseling guru. I get tired just looking at one of your lists. If you have to go down a list to make sure you’re responding empathetically towards your patient, there’s something wrong.

Gerard: Well, you think authenticity and presence are important, but what good are those terms if you have no way to convey them in a reified, concrete manner? I actually spell it out. For example, in my SOLER structure on page 134, I tell counselors: Give me an S: Face the client Squarely. Give me an O: Adopt an Open Posture. Give me an L: Remember that it is possible at times to Lean toward the other. Give me an E: Maintain good Eye contact.

Judy: But you treat counselors in training like they are babies, needing to be spoon fed.

Wolf: And you both are so obsessed with imposing a structure that you’re not even aware of the transference/countertransference process and how early childhood developmental conflicts manifest themselves in the counseling relationship.

It is okay to focus on present behavior and all, Judy, but what about relating past history to present behaviors? What about developmental and historical context. Judy, you treat people like thought robots and Gerard, you treat them like babies. Grow up, both of you. Consider Dr. BLT’s 3 C’s context, complexity, and chaotic conflict.

You’re both so scared of chaos, that you must obsessively apply structure, or a set of rules, to the process. You are product-, not process-based. You want everything to come out in a nice, neat package, so you focus on conscious, present experience and avoid the unconscious, rife with uncertainty, mystery, and ostensible disorganization. You are both ambiguity intolerant!

Gerard: Shut up, Wolf. You’re going to end up training grad students to become starving graduates. Try talking to insurance companies about object relations. Try talking about free association. Try talking about providing a corrective emotional experience for your patient. Try getting paid for wading heedlessly into unconscious infantile conflicts like psychoanalysis-loving Harold P. Blum would have you do.

Wolf: We need to educate 3^rd party payers and let them know that psychoanalysis, while sensitive to the unconscious and to early childhood conflict grounded in object relations, is not entirely without structure. Psychoanalytically oriented therapists are constantly interpreting all possible verbal and nonverbal data, formulating hypotheses and testing them out, all scientifically sound activities. But they do it within the context of a deep appreciation for process and subjectivity over over-objectification product orientation.

Judy: Who do you think you are Alex? You are grossly misrepresenting my approach. I doubt if you have read Chapter 7 in my book, identifying emotions. If I thought people were thought robots, would I devote an entire chapter to emotions?

Alex Wolf: Yes, to give the appearance of being more inclusive than your dad, Aaron. You talk about differentiating automatic thoughts from emotions on page 95, but how can you simply compartmentalize different realms of human existential experience like that. Our thoughts and our emotions cannot be studied independently from one another. They represent our conscious and unconscious experience.

Both of you are all about compartmentalization of human experience. Instead of thinking outside of the box, you want to separate everything and put it into nice, neat boxes, but human experience doesn’t work that way. It’s a mess. Deal with it! Human beings are continuously conflicted. There is constant internal conflict. There is interpersonal conflict, and there is existential angst.

Mod: Excuse me…if I may interrupt. Quite honestly, Alex, I’m beginning to wonder why I invited you. If anybody is guilty of putting things in a box, it’s Freud and his sycophantic followers. Everything is about sex. It’s all put into the box of the Oedipus complex or the Electra Complex.

Alex: Now you’re misrepresenting Freud and his followers. Sure Freud was a little obsessed with sex. He needed to back off of the complexes a bit and he was rather deterministic and dark---too much emphasis on the id and the super-ego, not enough on the ego. But his followers really opened up the ego, expanded up it and thus rendered it more salient than Freud, and thus representing human development in less deterministic, more humanistic terms.

And each had their own areas of emphasis. Sure, they all relied upon free association, which, by the way, is better than the structure you impose on the process, Judy, or the manner in which you crowd out the gradual unfolding of unconscious experience with so-called common-sense applications, Gerard.

And they analyzed transference and resistance, instead of rushing in with artificially established, robotically delivered empathy, Gerard, or rushing in with analysis of automatic thoughts. But according to Marks, on page 55 of my book, the ego psychologists or neo-Freudians differed in “the kind, the dosage, and the timing of interpretations.”

As Marks puts it, “To Reik, the evenly suspended attention was crucial,” to Reich, it was all about analysis of resistance. To Strachey, all of the emphasis was placed on the analysis of transference; and “to Alexander and Klein, it was about the analysis of the superego.” Anna Freud, on the other hand, focused on “equidistance toward ego, id and superego---and the neutrality of the analyst toward those three structures.” Then we have Spitz, who focused on “the development of structure within the framework of the mother/infant dyad.”

In Malcolm J. Mark’s chapter on Ego Psychology, chapter 4 of my book, he tells us that Heinz Hartmann, for example, “went beyond the defensive functions of the ego to how the person develops and uses his or her organizing ego in adapting to life (inner and outer).”

Hartman wasn’t about sex, Hartman was about adaptation. You know what musical synthesizers do, bringing lots of diverse sounds together, well he did that with the ego, he emphasized its synthesizing function. This stuff is rich, it’s diverse, it’s non-reductionistic.

Gerard Egan: Who cares about Spitz? How cares about “the emergence of the smiling response initiating the beginning of the social relations in men?” Was some face that the mother made the “prototype and premise of all subsequent social relations?” Who cares about early narcissistic wounds? Does development “require the capacity for object love and object loss, for tolerating frustration, depression, and pain?”

Forget the Oedipus complex. Let’s “respond accurately to clients’ feelings, emotions and mood by using “the right family of emotions and the right intensity,” and by distinguishing between expressed and discussed feelings.”

Let’s “read and respond to feelings and emotions embedded in clients’ nonverbal behavior.” Let’s “use variety in responding to clients’ feelings and emotions.” Beck, you underemphasize feelings. Wolf, the ilk you gravitate towards overemphasize it.

Let’s “respond accurately to the key experiences, thoughts and behaviors of clients’ storied.” Let’s “become competent and confident in responding with empathy, using empathy throughout the helping process and throughout all stages, including Stage 1: Problem clarification and opportunity identification; stage 2, discovering and evaluating goal options; and stage 3, choosing actions to accomplish goals.”

Alex: As I was saying, before being so rudely interrupted, sure, Adler focused a great deal on gathering specific information about the patient’s formative years, but you never hear Adler talking about Oedipus. He was more interested in the family constellation, on “family factors that influence personality development---birth order, behavior modeled by parents, family values, family atmosphere, sibling rivalries and the way the child established (his/her) place in the family—(his/her) role.”

It’s about how we, as individuals, strive to overcome feelings of inferiority. It’s all about examining a patient’s Style of Life. There was even a cognitive component associated with Adler. He was interested in “faulty convictions that interfere with efficient adaptation to the developmental challenges of life.”

Then you have Jung, who relied on such phenomena as introversion and extroversion, persona, shadow, self, archetype and collective unconscious, not to mention the complex.

Dr. Mod: I hate to cut you off, Alex, just when you’re about to elaborate on Jung, but we’re out of time. I hope all of you wonderful people out in television land learned that there are three ways to crack a nut, start at the head, start with a list, or start by drilling a tiny hole it and gazing at the insides until you have it all figured out! Please tune in for the next show while these authors and this editor duke it out one more time for the sake of great debate!

The Bottle's Gettin' Bigger: The Sad, Short life of Hank Williams

2010-06-23T15:35:00Z

After having viewed the documentary movie on Hank Williams, please
follow the instructions below, completing each question succinctly in
the comments section below.

The following song, aired "live" in class on Tuesday, was used as a prelude leading to the presentation of the documentary movie: Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues.

The Bottle's Gettin' Bigger
Dr BLT
words and music by Bruce L. Thiessen,
aka Dr BLT copyright 2010
(as aired on KWMR's Bakersfield and Beyond radio show which airs tonight from 6:40 pm to 8:30 pm)
http://www.drblt.net/music/bottle_demom.mp3

1. How does the song relate the the life story of Hank Williams?

2. Pretend that instead of continuing down his self-destructive course, you were alive, and practicing as a psychologist or other mental health practitioner in the town in Alabama where Hank Williams started his life as a musician. Pretend you were his Cognitive Behavioral Therapist.

a. What would be a likely dysfunctional "core belief" that you might identify in Hank?

b. How about "Intermediate beliefs," such as attitude, assumptions or rules that seemed to be contributing to Hank William's self-destructive tendencies?

c. Now, hyothetically, identify some Automatic thoughts of a deleterious nature.

Finally....

3. How might early intervention, in the form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, have altered or shaped Hank William's musical career? Would his music have been as good if you were to have made signficant therapeutic inroads with him at the early stages of his musical journey?

Ordinary People, extraordinary psychiatrist and Mrs. Pain

2010-06-09T21:29:00Z

First, I'd like to welcome all newcomers to PSYCHOLOGY COMES ALIVE. Review the following post, and then answer all questions in the comments section. Also, feel free to respond to the comments of others who post comments here, so we can engage in an intellectually-stimulating and emotionally-charged dialogue.

While ostensibly, the psychiatrist in ORDINARY PEOPLE shares a similar world view, or Weltanschauung, with psychoanalytically-oriented psychiatrists and psychologists, he would not be considered the paragon of such an orientation because, like Gestalt therapists, he is much more confrontational, more directive and at least as focused on the present as he is on the past.

Old school psychoanalysts depended heavily on free association, and they constantly interpreted verbal and nonverbal statements of patients in accordance with possible unconscious motives born of infantile, pathogenic conflicts and developmental fixations.

Instead of presumed, deep-seated personality conflicts, with roots in parental-infant relationships, cognitive behavioral therapists focus on problematic patterns of thought that support current behavioral deficits. How would Dr. Berger's efforts to uncover traumatic events in Conrad's life, to gently but firmly puncture through his repression, and to confront Conrad's transference-based projections compare with how a cognitive-behaviorist might work with Conrad?

Listen to the following song, and then compare Conrad's mother, in the movie, to the character in this original song, or, if you prefer, Dr BLTrack, Mrs. Pain.

Mrs. Pain
Dr BLT
words and music by Dr BLT

Finally, do a little more investigation on both the psychodynamic or psychoanalytic and the cognitive-behavioral orientations (drawing heavily from your text books), then offer three first clinical impressions of Conrad, one, as an imaginary psychodynamic therapist, and one as a cognitive-behavioral therapist, and one as a psychodynamic-cognitive-behavioral integrationist. If you cannot offer the third clinical conceptualization or first impression, because you feel the two approaches are incompatible, offer a rational for that opinion.

Then, come to the next class prepared to do a similar excercise in which you will form groups and develop 2-3 treatment plans for Conrad.

Flooded with painful emotions? Channel them into a cause like Nashville flood relief

2010-05-11T17:56:00Z

Focusing on the needs of others, and playing an active role in ameliorating the suffering of others can help individuals who suffer from depression and other states of psychological malaise. Who knows, though the research hasn't yet caught up with my hypothesis, helping with an important cause can not only have individual, one-time psychological benefits, it can have multiple benefits for multiple people, even multiple generations, in an epigenetic fashion.

If I can get as many folks to download this the country blues ballad, "Washed-out in Nashville Tonight," as they did for my currently most popular song, "Sky, We Salute You," I can raise nearly 1/4 million in relief for the flood-ravaged region of Nashville. If I can get 1/2 that many to download it, and another half to download the R&B groove, Problems (in Nashville), I'll come out with that amount, divided by two songs, so I'm coming at you with both barrels.

Sample WASHED OUT IN NASHVILLE TONIGHT here:

Washed Out in Nashville Tonight (GL Redux Sample)
Dr BLT

Sample PROBLEMS IN NASHVILLE here:

Problems (In Nashville) sample
Dr BLT
Words and music by Dr BLT copyright 2010

...Then hit the "music" link here,

Dr BLT official website

...go to the CD "Kick-ass Country," to find Washed out in Nashville Tonight (scroll down) for sale, and go to the "Shrink Rapped," and scroll down to find Problems (In Nashville) for sale. All profits from sales of these two digital Dr BLT downloads go towards flood relief in Nashville via the Red Cross.

PS: Don't forget to stream or listen via FM (if in the Marin County region), this rad radio show Thursday, May 13 from 6:40 pm to 8:30 pm.
Bakersfield and Beyond

Stream it via this link:
KWMR

This is your final exam, and that's final! Open book, open note, open blog, open mind

2010-04-16T18:03:00Z

Final Exam: Neuropsychology of Learning: Fresno Pacific University, Winter/Spring, 2010

This started out as a mock final, but morphed into your actual final exam. This exam is open book, open blog, open note and open mind. Please bring in your answers to the final class, which will be on May 5, 2010, beginning at 5:30 pm. We will correct the exams and have one final class session on that day. Please contact me if you have any questions about the exam or what will take place on the final day of class.

1. Here's your opportunity to showcase the skills you acquired and strengthened in the cognitively challenging game we played in class, the neurological psychology edition of the game, JOHNNY HAD IN HIS POCKET.

a. List 5 parts of the brain and assign to each a two-word discription of one of it's main functions.
b. List 3 disorders or traumas of the brain, 2 of which covered by movies we saw in class, and, in one or two words, list an ameliorative intervention or an etiological cause.

Very few questions on the final will involve lecture or discussion of material that is not also, in some way, presented in your text. But this second question should prepare you in the event that a question about extra-text, in-class lecture/discussion material is introduced.

In the class held on April 14, I compared and contrasted a phenomenological approach to understanding human experience with a scientific, experientail approach. The following original song (hear audio sample and see lyrics below) approaches the human experience by comparing and contrasting two seemingly distinctly different human experiences, that of being released from the womb, and that of being released from a stint in prison. Listen to the song sample, read the lyrics, and then answer the questions below.

The Day Merle was Released from ‘Quentin

(Was the Day I Was Released from Mama’s Womb)

(as aired on KWMR radio)
New Dr BLT song
(audio link)

it’s two o’clock in the mornin’

Merle hasn’t slept a wink

Today is his release date

And he can hardly think

Of anything at all

Except for freedom’s call

Freedom from the doom

Freedom from the gloom

The day that Merle was released from ‘Quentin

Was the day I was released from mama’s womb

I was born in Steinbach, Manitoba

And on that fateful day

Never thought that I’d be headin’

Headin’ all the way

To the very same place

The very same county

He was born

Where he grew

The day that Merle was released from ‘Quentin

Was the day I was released from mama’s womb

It’s 3 o’clock in the mornin’

The sun ain’t come up yet

Grabs all his belongings

Smokes one cigarette

He’ll be leavin’ this prison

And it can’t be too soon

The day that Merle was released from ‘Quentin

Was the day I was released from mama’s womb

It’s 4 o’clock in the mornin’

My mama feels the pain

Of a little tiny baby

And Bruce would be my name

I wiggle deep within her

And it can’t be too soon

The day that Merle was released from ‘Quentin

Was the day I was released from mama’s womb

It’s 5 o’clock in the mornin’

The gates are open wide

Sees the road before him

Takes one great big stride

Meanwhile back in Steinbach

My mom gives one more push

Inside that room

The day that Merle was released from ‘Quentin

Was the day I was released from mama’s womb

The day that Merle was released from ‘Quentin

Was the day I was released from mama’s womb

2. The commonality between the two phenomenological events that exists is:
a. both involve release, and, the end of something involving a long period of anticipation
b. both involve prison
c. both involve a crime
d. both involve musicians, one famous, and one with a relatively small underground following
e. both involve an end, followed by a beginning
e. a and d
f. a, d, and e
g. none of the above

3. The differences that exist between these two phenomenological events that exists is:
a. one involves the release of a country star from prison, and one involves the birth of a boy whose music would eventually write and record a song referencing the inmate/country star
b. one involves a prison, the other, a womb
e. none of the above
f. all of the above, except e

4. Techniques that allow scientists to peer into the human brain include:
a. PET
b. CAT
c. MRI
d. EEG
e. all of the above

5. The central nervous system (CNS) consists of:
a. the brain and eyes
b. the cerebellum and Broca's area
c. the spinal cord and brain
e. the corpus collosum and the brain stem

6. The ____________ gather(s) neural impulses from other neurons:
a. dendrites
b. synapses
c. the myelin sheath
d. neurotransmitters
e. axon

7. An axon is:
a. part of a neuron
b. a long tubular transmitting pathway
c. a carrier of neural signals
d. sometimes wrapped in a myelin shealth
e. all of the above

8. The junctures between neurons are called:
a. myelin sheath
b. terminal buttons
c. axons
d. synapes
e. nodes

9. The fatty substance surrounding the axons is called:
a. the myelin sheath
b. terminal buttons
c. axons
d. synapses
e. the ranvier sheath

10. At the synapse neurotransmission is achieved by means of:
a. a direct physical link between neurons
b. terminal buttons
c. axons
d. synapses
e. the ranvier shealth

11. Neuronal firing can be measured using:
a. transitory potentials
b. event-related potential recordings
c. chromic electrode implants
d. impusle monitors
e. they cannot be measured accurately

12. The movie, Autism, The Musical, illustrated the myriad benefits of:
a. creative intervention strategies, employed in an effort to engage both sides of the the brains of autistic children
b. the basics: reading, writing and arithmetic to challenge the minds of autistic children
c. homework in inculcating self-discipline in autistic children
d. all of the above
e. none of the above

13. Mr. and Mrs. Dezz Parrot are pulling their hair out over the behavior of their two year old son, Bipp. One day he's manageable, the next, he's an absolute nightmare to manage. They've tried to reward him with corndogs and candy, and it seems to have worked in the short-term, but in the long-term, the effects of this regimen have been dubious at best. They hear about this psychiatrist in town named Dr. Bigkidd who specializes in children with behavioral problems so they call him up and he invites them in for a consultation. They get a babysitter and go in to see the doc, reporting to them that their son's behavior is "like a roller coaster," and that at times, his tantrums are unmanagable. He assuages their anxiety by stating: "I believe your son may be suffering from bipolor disorder and I recommend Remeron."  Dr. Bigkidd goes on to declare that their Bipp likely has too much serotonin and noradrenaline going in and out of his nerve endings, and may have too much of the neurohormone acetylcholine in his system. He recommends Remeron for it's ostensible ability to block the passage of the aforementioned stimulant chemicals (serotonin and noradrenaline) and its ability to counteract the effects of a surfeit of acetylcholine. Dr. Bigkidd is making myriad mistakes, and Mr. and Mrs. Dezz would be foolish if they automatically took his advice. The biggest mistake Dr. Bigkidd is making, according to the Frontline film, The Medicated Child, as viewed in class on April 21, 2010, is:

a. possible diacritical nuitritional antecedents to Bipp's behavior are not considered
b. he should be prescribing Lithium instead of Remeron
c. because of the shortage of scientific data on children and psychotropic medications, he is generalizing results of studies conducted on adults, onto children, whose brains, unlike those of adults, are not fully developed
d. none of the above

14. In addition to critics from the film, your instructor, as evident in a statement he made in class on 4/21/10, would object to Dr. Bigkidd's recommendations on the grounds that...
a. his opinion reflects an abject failure to consider that mental health problems are multidimensional in their etiology and so he automatically ignores possible environmental causes such as poor nutrition and inadequate role models in the home
b. he is not licensed
c. Dr. Bigkidd is an illegal alien
d. Dr. Bigkidd is projecting his own issues onto the child
e. none of the above
f. all of the above

15. Billy Bob's 2nd grade teacher, Ms. Wise, has been worried about Billy ever since she learned he was taking Seroquel for bipolar disorder per his doctor, Dr. Doap Amean's orders. He told her, "Don't worry, Ms. Wise, I'll be much easier to manage now that my serotonin, dopamine and histamine can no longer bind so readily to my cell receptors. " Billy Bob is obviously wise beyond his years, and her teacher is wise for being concerned about Billy. But why?

a. according to the movie, Medicated Children, the brain's action in response to Seroquel in adults, may not be exactly the same.
b. brains of children, and those of adults are not the same
c. childrens brains are not fully developed, but, are, instead, in a relatively inchoate state of development, as compared with adults
d. in the short term, medications like Seroquel may be, ostensibly, working, but we do not know enough about the effects of Seroquel on children to assume that the substance does not have deleterious effects
e. all of the above
f. none of the above
g. none of the above except one or two, but I don't know which ones, not exactly

16.  (Page 336 in your text, Learning Disabilities and Brain Function) In 1968 the World Federation of Neurology offered two definitions of dyslexia (Critchley, 1970). These included:

a. "A disorder manifested by difficulty in learning to read despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence, and socio-cultural opportunity. It is dependent upon fundamental cognitive disabilities which are frequently of constitutional origin."

b. "An inexplicable failure to learn to read by a chld whose intelligence level, oral language development, and sensory capacities appear to be fully adequate to permit the development of reading skills... " (Benton, 1975).

c. "A disoder in children who, despite conventional classroom experience, fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing, and spelling comensurate with their intellectual abilities."

d. all of the above

e. a and c

f. e and f

17. (Page 336 in your text, Learning Disabilities and Brain Function) Harris and Hodges (1981) have produced an operational definition that includes which three conditions:

a. 1. failure to read despite normal sensory processes, intelligence and opportunity 2. no birth defects 3. the reading disability must be moderate to severe

b. 1. failure to read despite normal sensory processes, intelligence, and opportunity 2. the reading disability must be severe; and 3. it must be due to CNS dysfunction

c. 1. failure to write and spell despite normal reading ability 2. only mild to moderate birth defects that haven't been dectected yet
3. the writing ability must be free of spelling errors

d. all of the above

18. (Page 349 in your text, Learning Disabilities and Brain Function)
In Alexia Without Agraphia:
a. The subject cannot write but can still read

b. The subject cannot read but can still write

c. The subject can read, but can't spell if her/his life depended on it

d. is usually the life of the party, but cannot read, write or speak

19. (Page 324 in your text, Learning Disabilities and Brain Dysfunction):
Expressive signs of childhood aphasia include:
a. Little or no expressive speech with near-normal understanding.
b. telegraphic speech in which there is an absence of connectives (articles, prepositions, conjunctions) and a presence of what Benton (1963a) has called "syntactical poverty." This lack may also show in a child's writing.
c. articulation may be normal or nearly normal on repetition but poor in spontaneous speech
d. all of the above

20. Neuropsychological Clinical Classifications (as represented in table 1.1 on page 11 in your text, Learning Disabilities and Brain Dysfuntion) include all except:

a. brain damaged
b. MDB
c. specific learning disability
d. non-specific learning disability
e. normal
f. psychiatric

21. (Page 10 of your text), The Neuropsychology of Reading Disorders, Feifer and Fina)

Jill Vargenheimer has a very severe case of dyslexia. Her teacher, and her parents are deeply concerned because they understand that the type of dyslexia she suffers from is the most severe. She experiences extreme difficulty with reading, spelling, and written language on both a dysphonetic and visual-spatial level.  She is likely suffering from:

a. deep dyslexia
b. surface dyslexia
c. developmental dyslexia
d. mixed dyslexia
e. cranial incontinuity
f. deep lesion of the left hemisphere
g. all of the above

22. According to Feifer and Fina, authors of your text, The Neuropsychology fo Reading Disorders (pages 13-17), The Discrepancy Model of determining reading disabilities is problematic because:

a. A discrepancy model of reading disabilities precludes early identification
b. Intelligence is more a predictor of school success, and not necessarily a predictor of successful reading
c.  There is no evidence to suggest that poor readers on the lower end of the reading distribution differ from individuals classified as dyslexic
d. A discrepancy model promotes a wait and fail policy forcing interventions to come after the fact
e. all of the above

23. The Neuropsychology of Reading Disorders (page 21) True or False?
In neuropsychology, the term cerebral dominance generally refers to the lateralization of language functions

24. The Neuropsychology of Reading Disorders (page 21) True or False?

Language functions tend to be more lateralized in females than in males.

25. Sarah, a teenage girl, hitched a ride with a young man on a Harley who was showing off and, as a result, was hit by a truck. Sarah flew off the bike and hit her head on the pavement. She was not wearing a helmet.   After being rushed to a hospital, a neurological surgeon determined that her Broca's area may have been damaged. Findings that may have led him to this conclusion could potentially include:

a. a diminished ability to produce recognizable speech
b.  the presence of seizures
c. an inability to comprehend the speech of others
d. none of the above
e. all of the above

26. The two divisions of the autonomic nervous systems include:
a. the sympathetic and the parasympathetic
b. the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous systems
c. none of the above
d. all of the above

27. True or False

The sypathetic division of the autonomic nervous system is our flight-or-fight system and it kicks in as we respond to stress

28. True of False

The paraysmpathetic division restores and maintains normal functioning

29. The movie, Ghost in Your Genes, which was viewed on April 28 in class, suggests that science may be on a brink of a dramatic paradigmatic shift due to:

a. The genome project
b. new finds suggesting a key role that epigenetics may play on human behavior
c. Darwin's theory involving survival of the fittest
d. none of the above
e. all of the above

30. While rather tacky and, ostensibly, officiously opportunistic at points, the movie, ADD/ADHD, Smart Solutions, shown in class on April 28, introduces the notion that:

a. yoga may have beneficial effects for children
b. epigentics can reverse the effects of ADHD within two generations
c. harmful food additives, including many of the dyes and preservatives, can have a delerious effect on behavior and can play a powerful role in contributing to or causing the symptoms of ADHD

THE END!

Happy Easter!: No blog assignment this week

2010-04-02T22:27:00Z

I've giving your mind to reflect upon the message of Easter. We will consolidate a discussion of the movie, Autism (The Musical) and another movie will will see on Wednesday, April 7 in a blog that will be posted after that class.

BRAIN ATTACK! THE SKIT! THE SONGS! THE STUDENTS!

2010-03-18T14:15:46Z

Well the day has finally arrived for the brand new skit, BRAIN ATTACK, complete with a 3-song soundtrack. Great job, Cognitive Psychology students of Brandman University, COC University Center campus. Please, if you would, in the comments section, introduce yourselves and tell us what part(s) you played. Without further ado, I give you...

BRAIN ATTACK
(skit with Soundtrack)
written and produced by Dr BLT ft. Conrad Gill
and Brandman U Cognitive Psychology students (class of Winter, 2010)

I must say, this is a class with much class! They're all stars in their own right.

This is beginning to look like a yearbook! LOL

Thank you, Alex, for engineering this production and saving us from our studio location change crisis!
*Alex Crescioni runs SHRINE STUDIO where this production was recorded and engineered.
He has produced his own CD, DIMINISHED 7: Dim WORLD, which I plan to review soon.

Song Credits:

My Heart has a Mind of It's Own
Dr BLT ft. Conrad Gill
words/music by Dr BLT © 2010
all instruments and loop arrangements by Dr BLT
vocals by Dr BLT and Conrad Gill

I Get Forgetful
Dr BLT
words and music by Dr BLT © 2010

vocals and rhythm guitar by Dr BLT
bass and drums by Mark McKinney
lead guitar by Reggie Langendorfer

Brain Attack
Dr BLT ft. Conrad Gill
words/music by Dr BLT © 2010
all instruments and loop arrangements by Dr BLT
vocals by Dr BLT and Conrad Gill

THANKS AGAIN TO ALL OF MY WONDERFUL STUDENTS!

Cognitive Psychology students: Studio session location change, final exam information

2010-03-16T18:17:00Z

Dear Brandman University Cognitive Psychology students:

Just in case you didn't get the email, we will no longer be meeting at Command Studios on Avenue Staniford for our 6 pm recording session. Robert, the engineer, informed me this morning that he was counting on having the studio equipment fixed in time for the session, but wasn't able to make that happen, so we will meet at the same time, 6 o'clock pm at a different location, this one:

Shrine Recording Studio
28355 Industry Drive
Valencia, CA
(818) 531-2649

Alex is the studio engineer.

Here are the directions, from Valencia Ave:

Once again, we'll meet at Shrine Studios, not Command, as originally planned. Here are the directions (we'll meet at 6 pm):

From Valencia Ave, exit I-5 North and head to Newhall Ranch Rd.

Exit Newhall Ranch Rd and take a left

Take a right on Commerce Center Drive

Take a left on Industry Drive

Shrine Recording Studios

28355 Industry Drive

Valencia CA 91355

(818) 531-2649

Also, a couple of you have reported having difficulty locating the final exam. I was certain I explained to the class that the exam would replace what was the practice or mock final at the same blog post, but apparently I didn't explain that well enough, and I apologize.

You can either scroll down a few posts to find the Olympic curling/final exam post, or simply hit this link:

Cognitive Psychology exam

PSA EXTRA: 100 Amazing Memory Hacks to Maximize Your Brain

2010-03-06T05:08:00Z

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.

100 Amazing Memory Hacks

Charly: Movie PSYCHOanalysis

2010-03-05T23:52:00Z

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.

Skit: Match the Melody to the Malady: For Cognitive Psychology students, Brandman University

2010-03-01T23:46:00Z

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!

Cognitive Psychology: THe Winter Olympics aka Final Exam

2010-02-25T18:59:00Z

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

Neuropsychological analysis of the movie, "The Village"

2010-02-18T06:27:00Z

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

Practically Poetz is:

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

The Neurosurgeon's Methods Dance

2010-02-09T23:40:00Z

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

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

Streetheart Serenade: Epigenetics and the matter of homelessness

2010-02-05T00:33:00Z

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!

Dolores Claiborne: Examining the family abuse, alcoholism and dysfunction through epigenetics

2010-01-28T18:56:00Z

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?

Everything 4 Granted: Inculcating empathy for those with serious brain dysfunction

2010-01-20T22:30:00Z

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.