...This essay will confirm this theory by analysing bilingual’s cognitive affect in memory, task switching and attention and demonstrate how these aspects relate to having a better academic performance. Numerous studies were found measuring and comparing memory, task switching and attention of bilingual and monolingual children. Result have indicate that bilingual consist of many cognitive advantage that outperformed monolinguals in cognitive task, however bilingual experience more difficulty when approaching in verbal and vocabulary task. Overall Studies showed evidence of cognitive advantage in bilingual children that may result in a better academic performance. Bilingual Children and Academic Performance Education is a form of learning and acquiring the knowledge and skills that are transferred from one generation to the next. (Lee, 2009) Academic performance in a student educational journey is one of the most significant aspects in regards to a child’s academic outcome. In many cases it is often promoted that being bilingual is a contributing factor to enhancing a child’s academic performance. In Australia, statistics show that there are around 22 million Australians speaking in approximately 400 different languages or were either bilingual (Australian Bureau Statistics, 2009). As statistics highlight the fact that there is an increasing rate of people who communicate in more than one language, researches are shifting towards the need for support and understanding of bilingualism...
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...Genetics, Brain Structure, and Behavior Presentation Janelle Gunnels Psy/340 April 25, 2013 Ioannis Papazafiropoulos Genetics, Brain Structure, and Behavior Presentation Team B presented a presentation explaining the genetics, brain structure, and behavior of individuals suffering Bipolar illness. This paper will evaluate their presentation and explain bipolar illness, explain the neurological damage or changes to the brain as a result of the illness, and also an explanation of the behavioral or functional changes that can occur as a result of the illness. I will touch bases on the following: • A description of the suspected or known causes of the illness • A discussion of current treatments or therapies and future research for the prevention or cure of the illness • The role of genetics on the onset of the illness • The visual appeal of the presentation • The overall organization of the information presented What is Bipolar disorder? Bipolar disorder is a mental illness which is also commonly known as manic-depressive illness. It is a brain disorder which causes abnormal changes in mood, energy and activity. This disorder interferes with one’s ability to handle everyday task. The symptoms and effects are extreme as this is considered a long term illness. Bipolar Disorder normally appears in an individual...
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...and scientists are trying to understand the functions of the brain. The body and mind connection and how it reacts to certain behaviors or illnesses. Most all psychological functioning can be reduced to underlying brain processes. This should serve as reason alone as to why biology plays an important part in the study of psychology. Psychological factors play a role in whether a person develops a mental illness and in how well they recover from a mental illness, yet biological and genetic risk factors, or predispositions, are fundamentals to understanding mental illnesses. In this paper, we will look at Parkinson’s disease as an example of how biology has brought us to a deeper understanding of the psychology of mental illness. Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the psychological and neurobiological processes that underlie certain functions and behaviors. For this reason, biology plays a very important role in the study of psychology. Psychology determines what people perceive to feel and behave, but underlying it all, ultimately determining the way we act, feel and behave, is biology. A biological perspective is relevant to psychology in the study of how the nervous system and hormones work, how the brain functions and how changes in structure and/or function can...
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...Chemical Senses Julie Harris PSY/345 September 28, 2015 Adam Casteberry Chemical Senses Chemical sensory is the process by which the body experiences the world through the sense of smell and taste. The process the brain uses to perceive the smells and tastes that are introduced to it is through an electrical mapping of electrical impulses similar to the sense of touch, sight, or sound. Each sense is individual but through the interaction of each a more whole picture is produced that the brain stores as a memory. Most adults have their memories peppered with the smells and tastes that helped create those memories whether it was the first time a person was asked to be married, or the first time a person faced death, each experience is marked by a distinct taste or smell that will call up the memory and shape the person who holds it. The process of chemical sensory is conducted mainly through the nose and mouth through a bombardment of sensations is experienced throughout each day. Once considered separate from each other as either the nose or mouth people have become aware of the connection between the two senses as being tied irrevocably to each other. Chemicals in foods are detected by pallia that we have labeled taste buds, small structures in the mouth that are embed in the tongue, the back of the mouth, and the palate (Society for Neuroscience, 2012). Each person has a range of 5,000 to 10,000 taste buds that consist of 50 to 10 sensory cells that are stimulated...
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...the Sensori-motor stage. This stage usually occurs from birth until 2 years of age. Here infants learn by exploring their world using their eyes, ears, hands and mouth. Because of this learning style they are able to solve simple Sensori- motor issues. An example of this would be children learning to put things and take things out of a box. The next stage according to Piaget’s theory would be called the Preoperational stage. This age group is ranged from 2 to 7 years of age. Here pre-school children would use symbols to represent their earlier discoveries. During this stage language and make believe starts to develop. The next phase is called the concrete operational stage. This stage is grouped from 7 to 11 ears of age. During this stage children become more logical with their reasoning. The last stage according to Piaget is called the formal operational stage. This stage is grouped from 11 years of age and on. Piaget’s theory has caused many researchers to not only study and learn tremendously but to challenge him as well. According to research, Piaget underestimated the capabilities of infants and preschoolers. Researchers found that when children are given challenges or tasks that are broken down to their capabilities, their level of understanding is similar to those of an adult. (Berk 2014) Many findings have challenged Piaget’s discovery learning with adult teaching proving which method is superior in child development. During the 70’s and 80’s researchers...
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...life-long mental activity in novel tasks learning new information, an aging person can gain wisdom and minimize clinical brain injury. Wisdom has intellectual, practical, moral, and spiritual facets. It can be defined as extensive pattern recognition of new information or situations as accurately being in some way similar to familiar information or situations, thus leading to successful problem-solving and reasoning abilities. There are many types of wisdom, including genetic, phylum wisdom, species or cultural wisdom, group wisdom, and individual wisdom. The wisdom of the phylum, which is contained in the amygdala, includes genetically-programmed, innate fears and survival mechanisms that have existed in all species for millions of years through evolution. This type of wisdom uses sensory and motor regions of the cortex, as well as subcortical regions of the brain. Cultural wisdom is expressed as language and other symbolic systems passed down through the generations for thousands of years. Language is made up of a self-organizing, complex neural network widely spread throughout various regions of the cortex that are not pre-wired. Group wisdom includes certain remarkable talents or expertise shared by a group of people, which also come from self-organization of the association areas of the cortex. Lastly, individual wisdom is expressed by a person’s unique cognitive templates and pattern recognition devices that also are not hardwired in the brain. This type of wisdom is the main...
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...Failing Schools: A New Approach Elizabeth Thorup PSY: 370 Learning and the Brain Kelly Wells October 3, 2011 Education has always been considered to be a process where important information is transmitted to students by an educator. It has always been the main focus of schools to develop a curriculum that enables the educator to do this. The curriculum is based upon what we as a society see as important topics to develop students into productive successful adults. In some cases, this way of thinking has merit; however, it is not successful for many types of students. Testing students to see what level of intelligence they possess is often inaccurate, and reaching out to students that have different perspectives of learning that may be more creative or just different than the average person is a very important matter to consider when developing a strategy to teach and present the curriculum. Schools that often have very low test scores and are considered unsuccessful or failing for that matter could benefit greatly by adjusting their teaching methods into more brain based learning. Schools today are often based upon ideas or curriculum that is very old fashioned. New methods are rarely explored. Most of this is due to expense, but by bettering the education system of today, it is much more likely that future generations will become more productive and happy thriving adults which will in turn better the future for everyone. This is an investment that should not be taken...
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...Slide 1 Hi everyone! My presentation will be about brain development and plasticity. Slide 2 “The human brain is estimated to have about a hundred billion nerve cells, two million miles of axons, and a million billion synapses, making it the most complex structure, natural or artificial, on earth.” Tim Green, Stephen F. Heinemann and Jim F. Gusella (from a paper in Neuron, 1998) Slide 3 Brain development. Slide 4 What we know about human brain? The human brain is the most complex of all biological systems. It is made of a hundred billion information processing cells called neurons. The neurons communicated with each other by making connections. This connections called synapses. It is estimated there are 60 trillion connections in the adult brain. It has about 200 000 neurons. Slide 5 Brain has right and a left hemispheres. They connected by a fiber bundle that leads to the two sides of the brain that connect to each other. Average human brain weighs about 2-3 pounds. If we will look inside of adult brain we will see two kinds of tissue: grey matter and white matter. It contains of the cell bodies of the neurons. We can see grey matter along the entire surface of brain. Thats the neocortex. Cortex the brain's outer layer, which is essentially our gray matter. The white matter consist other fiber that connect neurons into information processing networks. Each neuron extends a connecting fiber called axon. Axons covered with a fatty substance called mylan that...
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...Advantages of Brain Compatible Learning environments BOJ1127A: PSY370: Learning & the Brain August 1, 2011 Although we learn in school and use our brains, it is important to have a brain compatible environment that will enrich the minds of our students. This paper will explain what brain compatible environments are and how they can enrich the brain. It will also explain the curriculum (what is taught) and instruction (how it is taught). This paper will also discuss brain based planning strategies, and ways to integrate brain based learning. In order to discuss brain compatible environments we have to first explain what brain based education is. We all know that we use our brains when we learn, however, we, as educators, have to find a way to maximize our students’ learning. Our brain learns when it is ready to learn, it does not learn on demand because it has its own rhythms. “Brain-based education is learning in accordance with the way the brain is naturally designed to learn,” (Jensen, 2008, p. 4). The brain needs an appropriate environment for any intelligence to develop. If a student feels any threats they will use negative behaviors to survive because our brains are designed to help us survive. Moreover, our brains are not set up for typical formal instruction. So, it is important to make sure the environment focuses on positive reaction. That being said we will now talk about brain compatible classrooms. Brain compatible classrooms should have absence...
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...Under the harsh light of a headlamp with a primeval scalpel in one hand, Dr. William Beecher Scoville was prepared to cut into the brain of his 23 year old epileptic patient. He leans over the operation table, looking deep into the hole he just drilled above Henry Molaison’s eyebrow. And with a hook like tool, he pulls aside the frontal lobe, reaching deep into the center of the brain towards the goal – the seahorse-shaped hippocampus. Using an electric cautery to snip it lose and a thin tubed vacuum to remove it, the surgery was complete. In 1953, the precise function of the hippocampus was still shrouded in mystery. But the hippocampus was known to have a connection with epilepsy, proven by the successes of the removal of half a hippocampus...
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...progressive brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually even the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. In most people with Alzheimer’s, symptoms first appear after age 60. Estimates vary, but experts suggest that as many as 5.1 million Americans may have Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia among older people. Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning—thinking, remembering, and reasoning—and behavioral abilities, to such an extent that it interferes with a person’s daily life and activities. Dementia ranges in severity from the mildest stage, when it is just beginning to affect a person’s functioning, to the most severe stage, when the person must depend completely on others for basic activities of daily living. Alzheimer’s disease is named after Dr. Aloes Alzheimer. In 1906, Dr. Alzheimer noticed changes in the brain tissue of a woman who had died of an unusual mental illness. Her symptoms included memory loss, language problems, and unpredictable behavior. After she died, he examined her brain and found many abnormal clumps (now called amyloidal plaques) and tangled bundles of fibers (now called neurofibrillary tangles). Plaques and tangles in the brain are two of the main features of Alzheimer’s disease. The third is the loss of connections between nerve cells (neurons) in the brain. Although we still don’t know how the Alzheimer’s disease process begins, it seems likely that damage to the brain starts...
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...to restrict daily life activities. This disease is extremely dependent upon one’s age and develops over several years. Many people consider the early symptoms of AD as typical signs of aging such as being easily confused and having minor, sporadic memory loss. These characteristics eventually worsen, impairing cognitive abilities like language skills and decision making. An intense loss of all mental function then occurs and correlates to the decline in breakdown of specific brain neuron connections. All of this compounds, leading to the eventual death of the affected person. AD is the most common...
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...Reflection on Understanding and Treating PTSD Xxxxxxx xxxxxx EmpireState College I have read and am aware of the university requirements regarding academic honesty Instructor: Bernard Wakely December 21, 2012 Introduction What is now known as Posttraumatic Syndrome Disorder has a long history and list of names. It has been suggested that Homer form the Odysseus described symptoms of PTSD upon his return from the Trojan War. More recently it has been given many names. During the civil war it came to be known as Soldiers heart. During WWI it became known as “shell shock” and “war neurosis”, changing again during WWII to “battle fatigue” and ‘combat neurosis”. During this war the condition was so severe during this war psychiatric discharged soldier outnumbered new recruits. The name once again morphed during the Vietnam War to “post-Vietnam syndrome” and finally settling to its current moniker Posttraumatic syndrome disorder. Despite the many name changes one thing has remained constant and that is the condition causes suffering Over View Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is an anxiety disorder that is caused by exposure to a situation or environment that is violent or life threatening to an individual or others. Its symptoms include flashbacks, hyperarousal and avoidance. It was originally believed that PTSD represented a natural and normal response at the extreme end of a response continuum based on the severity of the trauma. This response is the flight...
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...Chapter 1 The Dimensions of Psychology Summary: Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors. Psychology has the immediate goal of understanding individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases, and by many accounts it ultimately aims to benefit society. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist, and can be classified as a social, behavioral, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and neurobiological processes that underlie certain cognitive functions and behaviors. Structuralism was the first school of psychology and focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components. Researchers tried to understand the basic elements of consciousness using a method known as introspection. Wilhelm Wundt, founder of the first psychology lab, was an advocate of this position and is often considered the founder of structuralism, despite the fact that it was his student, Edward B. Titchener who first coined the term to describe this school of thought. Functionalism formed as a reaction to the structuralism and was heavily influenced by the work of William James and the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. Functionalists sought to explain the mental processes in a more systematic and accurate...
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...an endless and tedious process, they continued. Scientist have discovered that there are ways to lower the risks of being diagnosed with the disease in the future. Although there is no cure once diagnosed, there have been studies found on how to lessen your chances of getting it. Multiple articles, including National Institute of Agings “alheimer’s prevention”, state that vitamins are always a natural and healthy route as well as anti inflammatory drugs. While a healthy diet and exercise can be effective for staying healthy and fighting against most viruses, which also plays a big part in dementia and alzheimer’s prevention as well. There are know foods that protect your memory and keep you mind sharp. A mediterranean diet is said to be one, if not the healthiest diet to go by in terms of memory consumption. Other things like red wine and tea has said to play a factor in this topic as well....
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