Shout out to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook group for sharing their favorite tools for helping students study the brain. Printable black and white images of the brain from Clipart Library (shared by Achu John) Images include the brain, the eye, and the neuron. Use these images as diagrams on your next exam, write on them during your lecture using a document camera, and print them for students to take notes on. This webpage also includes a half-court basketball drawing, an empty times table chart, and a two-circle Venn diagram. I’m not entirely sure how you can use these for teaching brain-related things, but you’ll have them if you need them. 3D Brain app for iOS, Android, and web (web version needs Adobe Flash) was produced by the DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (shared by Kat West) From the dropdown menu, select the brain area of interest, such as Broca’s area. The image of the brain turns gray with Broca’s area highlighted in purple. A paragraph of text tells us what Broca’s area does and another paragraph gives us a case study. We get some information about associated functions, cognitive disorders, and what we see when Broca’s area is damaged. Three research reviews round out the text. The directional controls in the lower right allow you to rotate the brain image. Use this website during your lecture to show where the brain areas in a three-dimensional space. Students can use it as a study tool. Be aware that the functions associated with each brain area in the 3D Brain likely paints a more complicated picture of how the brain works than your Intro Psych textbook. For example, the amygdala, the 3D Brain tells us, is associated with “fear-processing, emotion processing, learning, fight-or-flight response, and reward-processing,” which is a bit more than the strong emotions-like-anger-and-fear that a lot of Intro Psych textbooks report. Pocket Brain, Brain Anatomy, and Brain and Nervous Anatomy Atlas ($9.99) all for iOS (shared by Susie Veccio); My Brain Anatomy and Brain Tutor 3D Some of these are at a level appropriate for Intro Psych. Others may be more appropriate for a neuroscience course. Take a look at each of them yourself before recommending to your students. Neuroscientifically Challenged videos (shared by Susanne Biehl) " These 2-Minute Neuroscience videos will help you learn the basics of neuroscience in short, easy-to-understand clips." Bonus resources BrainFacts.org (a resource by the Society for Neuroscience) has a webpage for educators. The target audience is K-12, but many of the resources for secondary ed teachers would also work for higher ed. The website includes a “Find a Neuroscientist” database. “Neuroscientists around the world are eager to help you educate about the brain. Our database has scientists in more than 40 countries. Connect with a scientist in your community today.” Enter your location, and a list of neuroscientists will come up. How to pick one and how they can help you is not clear, but there you go. The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by science writer Sam Kean This book is a must-read for anyone teaching neuroscience. Each chapter focuses on a different part of the brain. We get the back story on the research, a report on current research findings, and a handful of case studies. Take notes as you read; your neuroscience lectures will be much more compelling. (Read my 2015 book review.) Christina Ragan's Teaching Resources for Biological Psychology and Neuroscience Facebook Group  This is "a a centralized location to share activities, links, readings, videos, etc. on topics related to biology, psychology, and neuroscience." If you're looking for a community for sharing such resources, this is a good one. What are your favorite resources for teaching the brain? ... View more

Crows are smart. Never underestimate a crow. Comparative psychology is “the study of nonhuman animal behavior with the dual objective of understanding the behavior for its own sake and furthering the understanding of human behavior” (American Psychological Association, n.d.). The better that we understand how crows behave, think, communicate, and solve problems, the better we will understand both crows and ourselves. I have a short written assignment that my Intro Psych students do. After its completion, students have a greater appreciation for the crows around them. John Marzluff, a University of Washington zoologist, has made studying crows his life’s work. In his 22-minute TEDx talk, Marzluff shares what he thinks everyone should know about crows. I assign this during the thinking chapter in Intro Psych, after we’ve covered neuroscience and learning. It makes for a nice review of previously covered content. Here are the questions I ask my students to address: What three factors does Marzluff cite for the crow's problem-solving ability? Explain how each contributes to problem-solving skills. How do the brain areas of crows map onto the human brain? What do those brain areas do and why are they important? How do their brains differ from those of humans? Give an example from his talk of how the birds' behavior changed due to positive reinforcement. Give an example from his talk of how the birds' behavior changed due to observational learning. What is your reaction to this video?      Video Link : 2348   Reference American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Comparative psychology. Retrieved December 26, 2018, from https://dictionary.apa.org/comparative-psychology ... View more

It’s well-established that: brain cells survive for a time after cardiac arrest and even after declared death. some people have been resuscitated after cardiac arrest— even hours after, if they were linked to blood-oxygenating and heart-massaging machines. a fraction of resuscitated people have reported experiencing a bright light, a tunnel, a replay of old memories, and/or out-of-body sensations. For some, these experiences later enhanced their spirituality or personal growth.   Recently, I enjoyed listening to and questioning a university physician who is launching a major multi-site study of cardiac arrest, resuscitation, and near-death experiences. As a dualist (one who assumes mind and body are distinct, though interacting), he is impressed by survivors’ reports of floating up to the ceiling, looking down on the scene below, and observing efforts to revive them. Thus, his study seeks to determine whether such patients can—while presumably separated from their supine body—perceive and later recall images displayed on an elevated, ceiling-facing iPad.   Care to predict the result? My own prediction is based on three lines of research: Parapsychological efforts have failed to confirm out-of-body travel with remote viewing. A mountain of cognitive neuroscience findings link brain and mind. Scientific observations show that brain oxygen deprivation and hallucinogenic drugs can cause similar mystical experiences (complete with the tunnel, beam of light, and so forth). Thus, I expect there will be no replicable evidence of near-death minds viewing events remote from the body. Setting my assumptions and expectations aside, I asked the physician-researcher about some of his assumptions: For how long do you think the mind would survive clinical death? Minutes? Hours? Forever? (His answer, if I understood, was uncertainty.) When resuscitated, the mind would rejoin and travel again with the body, yes? When the patient is wheeled to a new room, the mind rides along? (That assumption was not contested.) What about the Hiroshima victims whose bodies were instantly vaporized? Are you assuming that–for at least a time—their consciousness or mind survived that instant and complete loss of their brain and body? (His clear answer: Yes.) That made me wonder: If a mind could post-date the body, could it also predate it? Or does the body create the mind, which grows with it, but which then, like dandelion seeds, floats away from it?   The brain-mind relationship appeared in another presentation at the same session. A European university philosopher of mind argued that, in addition to the dualist view (which he regards as “dead”) and the reductionist view (Francis Crick: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons”), there is a third option. This is the nonreductive physicalist view—“nonreductive” because the mind has its own integrity and top-down causal properties, and “physicalist” because the mind emerges from the brain and is bound to the brain.   The 20 th century’s final decade was “the decade of the brain,” and the 21 st century’s first decade was “the decade of the mind.” Perhaps we could say that today’s science and philosophy mark this as a decade of the brain-mind relationship? For these scholars, there are miles to go before they enter their final sleep—or should I say until their body evicts their mind?   Addendum for those with religious interests: Two of my friends—British cognitive neuroscientist Malcolm Jeeves and American developmental psychologist Thomas Ludwig—reflect on these and other matters in their just-published book, Psychological Science and Christian Faith. If you think that biblical religion assumes a death-denying dualism (a la Plato’s immortal soul) prepare to be surprised. ... View more

While it had been common for astronauts to spend six months at the ISS, NASA wanted to know what happens when humans spend even longer in space. Depending on the orbit trajectory chosen – which depends on how much fuel you want to take with you – a trip to Mars could take 7 to 9 months (Carter, n.d.). And then once you get there, you probably want to spend some time there. Heck, I spend more than a few days in Australia when I travel there, and that’s just 7,744 miles/12,462 km. And then you have to travel home from Australia – I mean, Mars. If you’re NASA and you have identical twin astronauts, there’s only one reasonable thing to do. You put together a team of researchers who are experts in human physiology, behavioral health, microbiology, and epigenetics to find out everything you can about the twins today. Next, you send one of them into space for twelve months. When the astronaut comes back to earth, repeat the measurements for both astronauts. This is NASA’s Twin Study. Mark Kelly* was the twin who stayed on earth; Scott Kelly was the twin who spent a year aboard the International Space Station (ISS)**. In January, 2018, NASA shared some preliminary research findings from their twin study.   Another interesting finding concerned what some call the “space gene”, which was alluded to in 2017. Researchers now know that 93% of Scott’s genes returned to normal after landing. However, the remaining 7% point to possible longer term changes in genes related to his immune system, DNA repair, bone formation networks, hypoxia, and hypercapnia. This makes it sound like Scott’s genes underwent some kind of change. Journalists grabbed hold of this and declared that Scott and Mark were no longer twins since their DNA was not the same. This was not what the researchers meant. NASA clarified: Mark and Scott Kelly are still identical twins; Scott’s DNA did not fundamentally change. What researchers did observe are changes in gene expression, which is how your body reacts to your environment. This likely is within the range for humans under stress, such as mountain climbing or SCUBA diving. What changed were not Scott’s genes, but rather his gene expression – in other words, his epigenetic code. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by scientist and science writer Adam Rutherford is a nice summary of what we know, what we don’t know, and what we would like to know about genetics and, to a lesser extent, epigenetics.  Our epigenome is what turns genes on and off. Women who have two X chromosomes (that’s most of us) have all the genes on one X chromosome in each of our cells turned off. “In mammals, epigenetic modifications tend to get reset each generation, but some, very limited, rare epigenetic tags appear to be passed down from parent to child, at least for a couple of generations.”  Pregnant women who starved in the Netherlands during the winter of 1944 gave birth to low-birthweight babies (no surprise) who then grew up to give birth to babies who were high-birthweight (surprise). Other research in a rural Swedish community with variable harvests found that boys who experienced a lean year just before entering puberty were more likely to have grandsons – yes, grandsons – who lived longer. But most epigenetic changes are temporary (Rutherford, 2017). In the case of reporting that astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly were no longer identical twins, the journalists were merely reporting what they understood the NASA press release to be saying, so I’m not going to fault them. Earlier this month we read headlines declaring that despite years of research showing that the adult human hippocampus produces stem cells that grow into new neurons, that a new study declares that’s not the case at all. I was poised to pounce on journalists for getting this wrong. But I can’t. Once again, it’s the Public Relations department, this time at the University of California at San Francisco. Now UC San Francisco scientists have shown that in the human hippocampus – a region essential for learning and memory and one of the key places where researchers have been seeking evidence that new neurons continue to be born throughout the lifespan – neurogenesis declines throughout childhood and is undetectable in adults (Weiler, 2018). Rutherford (2017) reminds us that “[j]ournals are not all equal, and publication in a journal is not a mark of truth, merely that the research has passed the standard that warrants entering formal literature and further discussion with other scientists.” This is worth hammering into the heads of our students, our students who are the future writers of press releases, the future writers of news articles, and the future readers of those new articles. Our science journals are just one huge chat room. "Hey! This is what I found!" "Huh. How did find that?" "What if we looked at it this way instead?" "Anna used this other method and found something different. Anyone know why that would produce different results?" With additional research, we may discover that, indeed, the human hippocampus does not produce new neurons. And we may discover that living in space where a person is subject to the radiation equivalent of 10 chest x-rays a day (Kelly, 2017) does indeed change one’s genes, and not just the epigenetic code. Those who turn to science for definitive answers may find the responses couched in probabilities less than satisfying. But that’s how science works. Here’s a cautionary tale: Everyone knows that tongue-rolling is genetic. If you can roll your tongue, you have the dominant allele for tongue-rolling. As it turns out, everyone is wrong. The research was easy to do. Find a bunch of identical twins and see who could roll their tongues and who couldn’t. If tongue-rolling were completely genetic, each twin pair should be, well, identical in their tongue-rolling ability. Philip Matlock (1952) looked in the mouths of 33 pairs of twins. In 7 pairs, one twin could tongue-roll while the other one could not. And, yes, that date is right; he did this research in 1952. Similar studies in the 1970s found similar results (Martin, 1975; Reedy, Szczes, & Downs, 1971). If you had asked me last week, “Hey, Sue, is tongue-rolling simply controlled by our genes?” I would have said yes. But now my response is more nuanced. “There’s likely a gene or set of genes that controls it, but there is also probably an epigenetic code that turns that gene or genes on or off for different people. Let me tell you about this interesting research done with identical twins…” The more I learn, the less confidence I have in what I have always known to be true. “Half of what I’m going to tell you is wrong, but I don’t know which half.” I love this quote (or paraphrase?) as it nicely captures the moving nature of science, but I can’t find the origin – and I find that very fitting. My memory says it was something Paul Meehl said to his students, but I can’t find any such reference. A Psychology Today blogger credits an uncited and unnamed surgeon. If you know the origin, please contact me. References Carter, L. (n.d.). If Mars is only about 35-60 million miles away at close approach, why does it take 6-8 months to get there? (Intermediate). Retrieved from http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/physics/64-our-solar-system/planets-and-dwarf-planets/mars/267-if-mars-is-only-about-35-60-million-miles-away-at-close-approach-why-does-it-take-6-8-months-to-get-there-intermediate Kelly, S. (2017). Endurance: A year in space, a lifetime of discovery. New York City: Knopf. Martin, N. G. (1975). No evidence for a genetic basis of tongue rolling or hand clasping. Journal of Heredity, 66(3), 179–180. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a108608 Matlock, P. (1952). Identical twins discordant in tongue-rolling. Journal of Heredity, 43(1), 24. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a106251 Reedy, J. J., Szczes, T., & Downs, T. D. (1971). Tongue rolling among twins. Journal of Heredity, 62(2), 125–127. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a108139 Rutherford, A. (2017). A brief history of everyone who has ever lived. New York City: The Experiment. Weiler, N. (2018). Birth of new neurons in the human hippocampus ends in childhood. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/03/409986/birth-new-neurons-human-hippocampus-ends-childhood **************** *Mark Kelly’s wife is Gabrielle Giffords, the US Representative from Arizona who survived an assassination attempt in 2011.   **”at the International Space Station” – I had a hard time deciding on the right preposition to use. Can one be on a space station if one is really floating inside it, except when Velcro-ed to a wall? In seemed to be a better choice, but felt clunky when I read it. I was ready to settle for at. NASA dodges the entire question and uses “aboard the ISS.” If aboard is good enough for NASA, it’s good enough for me. I’m confident we’ll get this figured out before we head to Mars. ... View more

Long ago, I read a jest that most people believe in the shaping power of environmental nurture—until they have their second child.   That pretty well sums up the results of a not-yet-published survey of 1000 Americans by an Emily Willoughby-led University of Minnesota team. The researchers report that “educated mothers with multiple children” were particularly cognizant of the heritability of traits, adding: “Parents, after all, have the ability to observe firsthand the results of an empirical experiment on the heritability of human traits in their own home. They can see that their children resemble them along multiple dimensions; furthermore, a parent of multiple children can see how the shared environment does not necessarily make them alike.”   That has been my wife’s and my experience as parents of three children who share some of our traits, but who were distinct individuals right out of the womb. And perhaps your experience, too, as you compare your children, or observe your own or other siblings?   These researchers noted another interesting finding, related to political leanings: When asked about the relative gene and environment contributions to various traits, liberals more than conservatives saw genetics having a strong influence on psychiatric disorders and sexual orientation. As a result, liberals tended not to view sexual orientation as a choice, and they tended to have more compassionate views of those with psychiatric disorders. Conservatives more often saw a strong genetic influence on intelligence and musical ability, thus suggesting that those with these strengths had been largely “born that way” rather than advantaged by opportunity. ... View more

A young man, raising funds for his high school football team, knocked on the door of a Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) researcher. And not just any CTE researcher: a CTE researcher who looks specifically at teenage brains. The two sat down, and the young man learned about how concussions are not necessary to trigger CTE; repeated shots to the head will do it. The young man listened, and, in fact, chose CTE as his research project in English. When I read this NPR story, I was hoping for a better ending. And what did the young man decide about playing football? He’s still going to play. “This is something I love. I dedicate myself to [this]. This makes me healthier physically, mentally. I'm doing what I love, making friends, there's a lot of great experiences that I'm having from this.” He did decide, however, to cut back on boxing, so that’s something. When I read this article I was immediately struck by the power of immediate reinforcement over the potential of bad things happening at some unknown time in the distant future. [As an operant conditioning bonus, in the very first paragraph, the student gives us a great example of discriminative stimuli. “He’d look for lights on and listen for kids’ voices.” Those stimuli signaled a greater likelihood of receiving a donation.] But the reinforcement aside, I wondered about the social psychology of playing an intense team sport, like football. The student said, “I’m doing what I love, making friends, there’s a lot of great experiences that I’m having from this.” In Sebastian Junger’s book, War, the author writes about his experience spending 15 months with a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan. Once, when out on patrol, the platoon got into a firefight along a road, taking cover behind a rock wall. Afterwards, Junger asked one of the soldiers if he was scared. He said he was. Junger asked why he didn’t run. He said he stayed because the soldier on his left stayed and the soldier on his right stayed.   While still considering the power of groups, my news feed produced a fascinating article on identity fusion. Research “suggest[s] that extreme self-sacrifice is motivated by 'identity fusion', a visceral sense of oneness with the group resulting from intense collective experiences (e.g. painful rituals or the horrors of frontline combat) or from perceptions of shared biology.” Once a person fuses their identity with the group, all it takes is a threat to the group to lead the person to self-sacrifice. And those groups need to be “local” groups, like a team or a platoon. “Extended fusion” to bigger groups like one’s country can happen, but it looks like it can only happen after “local fusion.” Those who have experienced identity fusion with a local group describe the others in the group as family. It’s common to hear teammates and platoon-mates describe each other as brothers (Whitehouse, 2018). What sacrifices are you willing to make for your family?   References Whitehouse, H. (2018). Dying for the group: Towards a general theory of extreme self-sacrifice. Behavioral and Brain Sciences . https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X18000249 ... View more

Apophenia is seeing patterns in randomness, which may be the mechanism behind conspiracy theory generation. If it feels to me like a set of random events are connected and no one is talking about the connection, then conspiracy must be afoot (Poulsen, 2012). Psychiatrist Klaus Conrad is credited with coining this term in 1958 to describe the descent into psychosis, “Borrowing from ancient Greek, the artificial term ‘apophany’ describes this process of repetitively and monotonously experiencing abnormal meanings in the entire surrounding experiential field, eg, being observed, spoken about, the object of eavesdropping, followed by strangers” (as cited in Mishara, 2010). But this isn’t a post about conspiracy theories or psychosis. While conspiracy theories and psychosis take our ability to see patterns to whole other level, seeing patterns in randomness is just how our brains work. The visual version of apophenia is pareidolia. Have you ever seen a rabbit in a cloud formation? That’s pareidolia. Have you seen a face in a piece of toast? Also pareidolia. After covering the cerebral cortex, tell students that there is an area in the temporal lobe that is especially good at detecting faces: the fusiform face area (FFA). Show students these 20 objects where faces appear. Ask students to guess whether they think that seeing these objects would cause the FFA to be activated. How could that hypothesis be tested? Give students a minute to think about it, a minute to share with a partner, and then ask for volunteers for their suggestions. This would be a nice time to review independent variables and dependent variables. When you’re ready, tell students that researchers compared such face objects with everyday no-face objects, and found that face-objects activated the FFA (Hadjikhani, Kveraga, Naik, & Ahlfors, 2009). If time allows, describe prosopagnosia (pro-soap-ag-nose-ee-ya; face-blindness). Do students think that the FFA would be activated when people with congenital prosopagnosia look at faces? Why or why not? The FFA is activated, but it doesn’t show habituation. When people without prosopagnosia are shown faces a second time, the FFA shows decreased activation; “Not interesting; I’ve seen this before.” For those with prosopagnosia, the activation is just as great the second time around; “Hey, this is new!” (Avidan, Hasson, Malach, & Behrmann, 2005). Again if time allows, do students think the FFA would be activated in people with autism. Why or why not? For the participants in the study, the severity of their autism varied. For those who had impaired face recognition (about half of their sample, 14 out of 27) , the activation of their FFA was weaker.   For 30 years, researchers have debated whether the FFA is face-specific or whether it is for detecting any complex pattern we’re expert in (Kanwisher & Yovel, 2006). Some recent research has found that the FFA is active when expert chess players look at positions of chess pieces, positions taken from actual gameplay, but not a specific chess piece (Bilalic, 2016). And researchers have also compared expert radiologists with beginner medical students. When the experts looked at X-rays, their FFAs were active (Bilalic, Grottenthaler, Nagele, & Lindig, 2016). While the jury is still out on whether the FFA is face-specific or not, this is a wonderful example of science in action. Researchers describe a finding. All researchers start thinking about what might be the cause of that finding, and they start devising experiments to test their hypothesized causes.   References  Avidan, G., Hasson, U., Malach, R., & Behrmann, M. (2005). Detailed exploration of face-related processing in congenital prosopagnosia: 2. Functional neuroimaging findings. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(7), 1130–1149. https://doi.org/10.1162/0898929054475154 Bilalic, M. (2016). Revisiting the role of the fusiform face area in expertise. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 28(9), 1345–1357. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn  Bilalic, M., Grottenthaler, T., Nagele, T., & Lindig, T. (2016). The faces in radiological images: Fusiform face area supports radiological expertise. Cerebral Cortex, 26 (3), 1004–1014. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhu272 Hadjikhani, N., Kveraga, K., Naik, P., & Ahlfors, S. P. (2009). Early (N170) activation of face-specific cortex by face-like objects. Neuroreport, 20 (4), 403–407. https://doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0b013e328325a8e1 Kanwisher, N., & Yovel, G. (2006). The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 361 (1476), 2109–2128. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2006.1934 Mishara, A. L. (2010). Klaus Conrad (1905-1961): Delusional mood, psychosis, and beginning schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 36 (1), 9–13. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbp144 Poulsen, B. (2012). Being amused by apophenia. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reality-play/201207/being-amused-apophenia ... View more

A couple months ago I wrote a suggestion on how to incorporate coverage of the opioid epidemic into Intro Psych (Frantz, 2017). There I put it in the context of the availability heuristic. Here I will suggest covering the opioid epidemic in the context of neurons and neurotransmitters. The opiates work in a complex way to produce feelings of euphoria. Under non-opiate conditions, neurons release the neurotransmitter GABA that, in turn, inhibits the release of dopamine. When endorphins are released during sympathetic nervous system arousal or you take an opiate – legally or illegally, the body doesn’t care – the endorphins or opiates (endorphin agonists – drugs that look and act like endorphins) block GABA from being released. Without GABA’s inhibition, dopamine is free to flood synapses and attach to dopamine-receiving neurons resulting in warm, fuzzy feelings (Genetic Science Learning Center, 2013; Vaughan, et.al., 1997). That explains why people choose to use opiates. But how do people overdose on opiates? Part of the cause is that fentanyl, an opioid " that is similar to morphine but is 50 to 100 times more potent " (NIDA, 2016). "In 2014, 35 percent of [Rhode Island's] fatal overdoses occurred because of fentanyl, but it was involved in 56 percent of drug deaths by 2016" (Brown University, 2017). There is no question that fentanyl has entered the illegal drug supply and is contributing to the number of overdoses. Here's another factor that contributes to opiate overdoses. Opiates, in addition to producing euphoria, also act on the brainstem to reduce breathing. Take too much and you stop breathing. Like many drugs, the more you use, the greater your tolerance, meaning you need more opiates to get the euphoria. But here's a problem. Unfortunately, your brain’s ability to tolerate more opiates does not extend at the same rate to breathing. In other words, while you need more for the high, your brainstem isn’t keeping up. With continued opiate use, the window is closing. The amount of opiate it takes to feel the high is getting closer and closer to the amount that stops breathing (Boyer, 2012). Enter naloxone, brand name Narcan. Naloxone is an opiod antagonist. It blocks the receptor sites, but doesn’t activate the neurons. With the opioid receptors blocked, the opiates cannot have their effects – and breathing returns to normal (NHPR Staff, 2016). Because naloxone binds more strongly to the receptor sites than the opiates do, naloxone actually bumps them out and takes their place. That’s why naloxone acts so quickly, showing effects within five minutes (College of Pharmacists of British Columbia, 2016). Prevention Point Philadelphia provides naloxone and the training of its use to the librarians at McPherson Square Library, a library located in a high drug use area of the city. “While other libraries practice fire drills, McPherson began overdose drills.” It’s needed. Philadelphia is looking at a 30% increase in overdose deaths in 2017 as compared to 2016. That’s 1,200 expected ODs. When people started overdosing on heroin in the library and in the nearby park, the librarians decided it was time to get training on using the naloxone kits – and they’ve used them to save lives (Newall, 2017; Wootson, 2017). The opioid epidemic is not bypassing colleges and universities. “Last fall, three Washington State University students overdosed and died in Pullman, Wash.; a 25-year-old died from an overdose on the potent opioid fentanyl and heroin in a bathroom at Columbus State Community College in Ohio; and a student died from a suspected overdose at State University of New York at Geneseo. Fatalities in recent years have also hit campuses in New Mexico, Louisiana and beyond.” Institutions of higher learning are starting to step up to the plate by “distributing the anti-overdose drug naloxone to campus police and even students. Drug company Adapt Pharma Ltd. announced last month that it would offer 40,000 free doses of its branded version, called Narcan, to colleges nationwide. So far roughly 60 schools have reached out, according to company officials... The University of Texas at Austin now stocks naloxone at the front desk of its residence halls” (Korn & Kamp, 2017). Ask students to investigate who at your institution, if anyone, has been trained to administer naloxone. Do students feel like the number of people trained is sufficient? If not, what can students do to make a difference?   References Boyer, E. W. (2012). Management of opioid analgesic overdose. New England Journal of Medicine, 367(14), 1370-1373. doi:10.1056/nejmc1209707 Brown University. (2017, June 7). Feared by drug users but hard to avoid, fentanyl takes a mounting toll.   ScienceDaily . Retrieved June 28, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170607123841.htm  College of Pharmacists of British Columbia. (2016, April 4). Naloxone: Frequently asked questions. Retrieved from http://library.bcpharmacists.org/6_Resources/6-5_Pharmacy_Resources/5183-Naloxone_FAQ.pdf Frantz, S. (2017, April 16). Do you cover drug abuse in Intro Psych? If not, it might be time to. Retrieved from https://community.macmillan.com/community/the-psychology-community/blog/2017/04/16/do-you-cover-drug-abuse-in-intro-psych-if-not-it-might-be-time-to Genetic Science Learning Center. (2013, August 30) Mouse Party. Retrieved June 22, 2017, from http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/mouse/ Korn, M., & Kamp, J. (2017, May 07). Fatal student opioid overdoses prompt colleges to action. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-take-action-on-opioid-epidemic-1494158403 NHPR Staff. (2016, June 6). Primer: How does Narcan work? Retrieved from http://nhpr.org/post/primer-how-does-narcan-work Newall, M. (2017, May 21). For these Philly librarians, drug tourists and overdose drills are part of the job. Retrieved from http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/mike_newall/opioid-crisis-Needle-Park-McPherson-narcan.html National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). (2016, June 06). Fentanyl. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/fentanyl  Vaughan, C. W., Ingram, S. L., Connor, M. A., & Christie, M. J. (1997). How opioids inhibit GABA-mediated neurotransmission [Abstract]. Nature, 390, 611-614. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v390/n6660/abs/390611a0.html Wootson, C. R., Jr. (2017, June 02). ‘Drug tourists’ keep overdosing at this library. Here’s how employees are saving their lives. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/06/02/drug-tourists-keep-overdosing-at-this-library-heres-how-employees-are-saving-their-lives/ ... View more

If the hardiest weed in our cognitive neuroscience garden is that “we only use 10 percent of our brains,” the next hardiest weed is this myth: “All our past experience is ‘in there’ and potentially retrievable by hypnosis or brain stimulation.”   I could almost believe this, after marveling at my aging mother-in-law, a retired pianist and organist. At age 88, her blind eyes could no longer read music. But sitting at a keyboard, she could flawlessly play hundreds of hymns, even ones she had not thought of for 20 years.   How and where did her brain store those myriad notes? For a time, some surgeons and memory researchers marveled at patients’ apparently vivid memories triggered by brain stimulation during surgery. Did this prove that our whole past, not just well-practiced music, is “in there,” in complete detail, just waiting to be relived?   That’s what neurosurgeon Ben Carson presumed in this 2013 tweet: And that’s what he said again on March 6 th in his first speech as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: “I could take the oldest person here, make a hole right here on the side of the head, and put some depth electrodes into their hippocampus and stimulate, and they would be able to recite back to you verbatim a book they read 60 years ago. It’s all there; it doesn’t go away.”   Alas, everything is wrong about this. Our flawed memories, as every introductory psychology student learns, are constructions that incorporate both our past and recent experiences. Moreover, the hippocampus, while a vital part of our memory processing, is not a long-term computer memory stick.   And about those brain-stimulated memory flashbacks . . . . As Elizabeth Loftus has reported, they appear invented, not a vivid reliving of long-forgotten experiences. But our memory imperfections have a silver lining. As Williams James wrote in Principles of Psychology, “If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.” To discard the clutter of useless or out-of-date information—where we parked the car yesterday or our old phone number—is surely a blessing. So be glad that neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who knows a lot, is wrong about memory. ... View more

Here’s a quick (seven minutes!) and engaging way to start your brain lecture. Annette Jordan Nielsen (Woods Cross High School in Bountiful, UT) harnesses her students’ connections to gather a little data. Students pull out their phones or other web-enabled devices and using whatever means they prefer to connect to others (group text, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), students ask “What percent of their potential brain power do you think most people use?” On the board, she draws a horizontal line. Under the line she writes 10%, 20%, 30%, etc. Then she shows this 4-minute video from the SciShow that debunks the 10% brain myth. Video Link : 1785 As students watch the video, they keep an eye on their devices for the responses to their question. Students come to the board to mark the first three responses they get, doing this as the video plays.  A nnette reports that “the charts always end up looking like this [see below] and it really helps open the door to how widespread this myth is. The kids usually walk out the door ready to teach the people who responded what they learn and why they are wrong. I also like to joke that the 100% markings are all my former students.” Photo credit: Annette Jordan Nielsen ... View more

Originally posted on August 16, 2016. In Psychology, 11th Edition, Nathan DeWall and I illustrate brain plasticity with a 6-year-old girl who had most of her right hemisphere removed to end life-threatening seizures. In one of the most astonishing neuroscience findings, her remaining hemisphere compensated by putting other areas to work, enabling her to function well. One medical team, reflecting on other child hemispherectomies, reported being “awed” by how well the children had retained their memory, personality, and humor. The younger the child, the greater the chance that the remaining hemisphere can take over the missing hemisphere’s functions. Only recently did I become aware—thanks to a delightful new article by Scott Lilienfeld and Steven Jay Lynn—of a review of 52 hemispherectomy cases by Benjamin S. Carson and six of his Johns Hopkins colleagues. Nearly half of the 52, the Carson team reported, were living successful independent lives—at their age level in school or working productively. And, yes, for the rest of the story, “Carson” is that Benjamin Carson . . . or as he later became known to millions of Americans, 2016 Republican presidential hopeful, Ben Carson. ... View more

Originally posted on August 2, 2016. News flash . . . from the current New Yorker (July 24, 2016), Wall Street Journal (July 25, 2016), and Time (August 8, 2016) . . . “In the most rigorous study to date, researchers pitted different types of cognitive training head-to-head and concluded that one strategy in particular—a kind of computerized brain training that helps the mind to process information more quickly—can significantly lower rates of cognitive decline and dementia.” So impressed is Time (from which those words come) that it promotes, at the article’s conclusion, a smartphone app available for $96 annually that the researcher recommends “for everyone over 50. . . . There’s now evidence that this type of training has multiple benefits, the risk is minimal, and it’s not even expensive.” Money can’t buy advertising that credible-seeming. And the study is, indeed, impressive-sounding. It reportedly trained nearly 3000 people for five weeks and then followed them for 10 years. But is this a case of premature hyping of research (via a University of South Florida press release)? Other prominent researchers with whom I have corresponded raise two caution flags. First, a 2014 scientific consensus statement found “no compelling scientific evidence” that brain games can reduce or reverse cognitive decline and warned against “exaggerated and misleading claims.” Researcher Zach Hambrick summarizes: “Play a video game and you’ll get better at that video game, and maybe at very similar video games,” but not at driving a car or filling out your tax return. What is more, new research reviews—here and forthcoming in Psychological Science in the Public Interest (“Do ‘Brain Training’ Programs Work?”)—confirm that brain training appears not to produce any lasting, meaningful change apart from the training task. Second, the newly reported findings, though presented at a convention, have not yet been published. As the New Yorker writer acknowledged, the “findings may not stand up to peer review, or they may turn out to be a fluke that cannot be replicated by others. Perhaps her central conclusion—that a dozen hours of training cuts the risk of dementia nearly in half, ten years later—will have to be walked back.” With this level of publicity (including other outlets) there’s no easy walking back the public message. Will this big new study point us toward a brain-training program that does work? Stay tuned. And until such evidence is published and replicated, I’d suggest that we psychological educators not over promise. ... View more

Originally posted on May 7, 2014. The Iran and Afghanistan Wars introduced a new and troubling picture on the relationship between traumatic brain injury and mental health. Multiple deployments exposed soldiers to more frequent risks. New combat gear helped them survive blasts. Suicide, substance use, and strained relationships often followed. But according to an Ontario study, we shouldn’t forget another vulnerable group: adolescents who have experienced at least one traumatic brain injury, defined as a head injury that caused either 5 minutes of unconsciousness or an overnight hospital stay. By comparison, the severity of the soldier injuries probably trumped those of the Toronto teens. Yet the two groups experienced similar consequences. In a study of almost 5000 Canadian students Grades 7-12, those who experienced a traumatic brain injury, compared those who didn’t, were nearly three times more likely to attempt suicide. The brain injured adolescents were also more likely to engage in antisocial behavior and experience anxiety and depression. Here is the most stunning statistic of all: roughly 20% of Ontario adolescents have a lifetime history of traumatic brain injury. Part of this makes sense. Think back to when you were a teenager. Perhaps you skateboarded, played soccer, hockey, football, or roughhoused with your siblings. Learning how to drive, you might have been injured in a car accident. Our teenage years are often filled with risk because the teenage brain is hypersensitive to reward. (To watch some videos of a true genius on the topic of the teenage brain, click here). Yet the drive for reward can come at the greatest cost of all. By risking their bodies, adolescents risk their brains. And when that piece of equipment doesn’t run on all cylinders, life becomes more of a slog than a sweet dream. The next time you think of brain injury, think of those who put themselves in harm’s way. For some of us, risk if part of our job. For others, it’s part of our development. For all of us, it’s time to reconsider who needs help.      ... View more

Originally posted on May 20, 2014. Three years ago, I gained a new appreciation of consciousness. My mom had an accident that caused her brain to bleed. It seemed to rip away her consciousness. As I slept next to her bed before she died, I wondered, “Is she conscious of what’s happening?” New research suggests that the brain can give us a clue. Prior to this research, you had limited options to know if someone had consciousness. You could ask them. That’s easy. But what about those cases, like my mom’s, when a person hasn’t experienced brain death but is still unresponsive? To find out, researchers scanned the brain of a woman who was in a vegetative state. They asked her to imagine playing tennis, along with several other activities. The results, published in Science, made a big splash. Although the woman couldn’t answer the questions, her brain did. When she imagined playing tennis, her brain reacted by increasing blood flow to the motor cortex. She was immobile, but her brain acted as if she was playing on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. To watch a wonderful video of the researcher leading this effort, click here. It might change the way you think about consciousness. I know it helped me. ... View more

Originally posted on May 27, 2014. Psychology is ripe with history. Unlike many sciences, psychology grips us because we are its main characters. People have more experience with quarrels than with quarks. But one of psychology’s most famous case studies continues to evolve. So, I ask, will the real Phineas Gage please step forward? The name Phineas Gage might not perk up a person’s ears as easily as Freud, Bandura, or Skinner. But the story of Phineas Gage occupies precious real estate in most psychology textbooks. He showed the world that people can survive a major brain trauma. Yet understanding his post-accident life grows fuzzier over time. In a recent article that foreshadows the upcoming book, “The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons,” Sam Stein argues that what we think we know about the most famous name in neuroscience needs historical revision. Did Gage really become a psychopath? Why do people ignore Gage’s major life events, such as when he tried to make a new life in Chile? We’ll never know the true Phineas Gage. The riddle will always be partly unsolved. That isn’t such a bad thing. Sifting through material will inspire new questions—with the hope that they will inform how we understand friends, loved ones, or the many others who have suffered traumatic brain injuries. ... View more

Originally posted on May 29, 2014. How would you like to increase your brainpower? All you need is a 9-volt battery, some mad scientists, and a heaping portion of creativity. So says a slew of recent studies using a noninvasive, neuroscientific technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Think of tDCS as the ultimate symphony conductor. It can pep up certain brain regions by exciting neuronal impulses. But it can also quiet a crowd of neurons by decreasing their firing rate. A 9-volt battery powers the electrodes that rest on people’s scalps, giving people a slight twinge as the equipment increases or decreases their brain activity. In one study, Air Force pilots who received frequent tDCS stimulation, compared with those who didn’t, learned more information in less time. But tDCS isn’t merely a way to learn better. It can help people cope with upsetting situations. In a pair of papers, my colleagues and I showed that stimulating a brain region that aids emotion regulation reduced rejection-related distress and aggression. To succeed, people need some combination of talent, grit, and luck. Should a personal brain zapping machine get added to the list? ... View more

Originally posted on April 16, 2015. Our brains are amazing. I am endlessly fascinated by how the brain works. In nearly every interview I do, the reporter asks, “What part of the brain lights up when that happens?” Now reread the previous sentences. As you came upon each word, how did you read them? Did you look at each letter and arrange it into a word? Have you ever thought how we read? How can we skim so quickly through a passage and absorb its contents? Our brains don’t look at letters. So says a new study. Instead of seeing a group of letters, our brain sees the entire word as an image. Neurons in our brain’s visual word form area remember how the whole word looks, using what one researcher called a “visual dictionary.” Researchers tested their theories by teaching 25 adult participants a set of 150 nonsense words and investigating (using fMRI) how the brain reacted to the words before and after learning them. The results: The participants’ visual word form area changed after they learned the nonsense words. Pretty cool stuff. But, it’s also useful. Knowing how our brains process words could help us design interventions to help people with reading disabilities. People who have trouble learning words phonetically might have more success by learning the whole word as a visual object. Pavelen/E+/Getty Images ... View more

Originally posted on April 8, 2014. An editorial in yesterday’s New York Times questioned the nearly $1 billion the U.S. Transportation and Security Administration has invested in training and employing officers to identify high-risk airline passengers. In 2011 and 2012, T.S.A. behavior-detection officers at 49 airports “designated passengers for additional screening on 61,000 occasions.” The number successfully detected and arrested for suspected terrorism? Zero. But then again, the number of plane-destroying terrorists they failed to detect was also, I infer, zero. (Wonkish note:  A research psychologist might say the T.S.A. has made no Type II errors.) Regardless, psychological science studies of intuitive lie detection, as the Times’ John Tierney noted in an earlier article, suggest that this has not been a wise billion-dollar investment. Despite our brain’s emotion-detecting skill, we find it difficult to detect deceiving expressions. Charles Bond and Bella DePaulo reviewed 206 studies of people discerning truth from lies. The bottom line: People were just 54 percent accurate—barely better than a coin toss. I have replicated this in classroom demonstrations—by having some students either tell a true or a made-up story from their lives. When seeking to identify the liars, my students have always been vastly more confident than correct. Moreover, contrary to claims that some experts can spot lies, research indicates that few—save perhaps police professionals in high-stakes situations—beat chance. The behavioral differences between liars and truth-tellers are just too minute for most people to detect. Before spending a billion dollars on any safety measure, risk experts advise doing a cost-benefit analysis. As I reported in Intuition: Its Powers and Perils, some people were outraged when the Clinton administration did not require General Motors to replace ill-designed fuel tanks on older model pickup trucks. The decision spared General Motors some $500 million, in exchange for which it contributed $51 million to traffic safety programs. “GM bought off the government for a pittance,” said some safety advocates, “at the expense of thirty more people expected to die in fiery explosions.” Actually, argued the Department of Transportation, after additional time for litigation there would only have been enough of the old trucks left to claim 6 to 9 more lives. Take that $500 million ($70 million per life)—or the $1 billion more recently spent on behavior detection—and apply it to screening children for preventable diseases (or more vigorous anti-smoking education programs or hunger relief) and one would likely save many more lives. By doing such cost-benefit analyses, say the risk experts, governments could simultaneously save us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Ergo, when considering how to spend money to spare injuries and save lives, critical thinkers seek not to be overly swayed by rare, dreaded catastrophes. The smart humanitarian says: “Show me the numbers.”  Big hearts can cohabit with cool heads. ... View more

Originally posted on July 1, 2014. In all of recent psychological science, there has been, to my mind, no more provocative studies those by Benjamin Libet.  His experiments have seemingly shown that when we move our wrist at will, we consciously experience the decision to move it about 0.2 seconds before the actual movement. No surprise there. But what startled me was his reporting that our brain waves jump about 0.35 seconds before we consciously perceive our decision to move! This “readiness potential” has enabled researchers (using fMRI brain scans) to predict participants’ decisions to press a button with their left or right finger. The startling conclusion: Consciousness sometimes appears to arrive late to the decision-making party. And so it has also seemed in Michael Gazzaniga’s reports of split-brain patients who readily confabulate (make up and believe) plausible but incorrect explanations for their induced actions. If Gazzinga instructs a patient’s right brain to “Walk,” the patient’s unaware left hemisphere will improvise an explanation for walking: “I’m going into the house to get a Coke.”  The conscious left brain is the brain’s public relations system—its explanation-constructing “interpreter.” So, do Libet’s and Gazzaniga’s observations destroy the concept of free will?  Does our brain really make decisions before our conscious mind knows about them?  Do we fly through life on autopilot?  Are we (our conscious minds) mere riders on a wild beast? Not so fast.  Stanislas Dehaene and his colleagues report that brain activity continuously ebbs and flows, regardless of whether a decision is made and executed.  The actual decision to move, they observe, occurs when the brain activity crosses a threshold, which happens to coincide with the average “time of awareness of intention to move” (about 0.15 second before the movement).  In their view, the mind’s decision and the brain’s activity, like a computer’s problem solving and its electronic activity, are parallel and virtually simultaneous. The late neuroscientist Donald MacKay offered a seemingly similar idea:  “When I am thinking, my brain activity reflects what I am thinking, as [computer’s] activity reflects the equation it is solving.”  The mind and brain activities are yoked (no brain, no mind), he argued, but are complementary and conceptually distinct.  As my colleague Tom Ludwig has noted, MacKay’s view—that mental events are embodied in but not identical to brain events—is a third alternative to both dualism and materialism (physicalism). ... View more

Originally posted on July 24, 2014. Some recent naturalistic observations illustrated for me the results of longitudinal studies of human development—studies that follow lives across time, noting our capacities for both stability and change. My procedure, though time-consuming, was simple: Observation Stage 1:  Attend a small college, living on campus with ample opportunity to observe my many friends. Intervening experience:  Let 50 years of life unfold, taking us to varied places. Observation Stage 2:  Meet and talk with these friends again, at a college reunion. Time and again, researchers have documented the remarkable stability of emotionality, intelligence, and personality across decades of life.  “As at age 7, so at 70” says a Jewish proverb. And so it was for my friends (with names changed to protect identities).  Thoughtful, serious Joe was still making earnest pronouncements.  Driven, status-conscious Louise continues to visibly excel.  Exuberant Mark could still talk for ten minutes while hardly catching a breath.  Gentle, kind Laura was still sensitive and kindhearted.  Mischievous, prankster George still evinced an edgy, impish spirit.  Smiling, happy Joanne still readily grinned and laughed.  I was amazed:  a half century, and yet everyone seemed the same person that walked off that graduation stage. In other ways, however, life is a process of becoming.  Compared to temperament and to traits such as extraversion, social attitudes are more amenable to change.  And so it was for us, with my formerly kindred-spirited dorm mates having moved in different directions . . . some now expressing tea partyish concerns about cultural moral decay and big government, and others now passionate about justice and support for gay-lesbian aspirations.  Before they opened their mouths, I had no idea which was going to be which. And isn’t that the life experience of each of us—that our development is a story of both stability and change.  Stability, rooted in our enduring genes and brains, provides our identity . . . while our potential for change enables us to grow with experience and to hope for a brighter future. (For more on the neurobiology that underlies our stable individuality, and on the brain plasticity that enables our changing, see Richard Davidson’s recent Dana Foundation essay. ) ... View more

Originally September 7, 2014. My wife loves me, despite smirking that I am “boringly predictable.”  Every day, I go to bed at pretty much the same time, rise at the same time, pull on my khaki pants and brown shoes, frequent the same coffee shops, ride the same old bicycle, and exercise every weekday noon hour.  As I walk into my Monday-Wednesday-Friday breakfast spot, the staff order up my oatmeal and tea.  I’ll admit to boring. But there is an upside to mindless predictability.  As my colleagues-friends Roy Baumeister, Julia Exline, Nathan DeWall and others have documented, self-controlled decision-making is like a muscle.  It temporarily weakens after an exertion (a phenomenon called “ego depletion”) and replenishes with rest. Exercising willpower temporarily depletes the mental energy needed for self-control on other tasks.  It even depletes the blood sugar and neural activity associated with mental focus. In one experiment, hungry people who had resisted the temptation to eat chocolate chip cookies gave up sooner on a tedious task (compared with those who had not expended mental energy on resisting the cookies). President Obama, who appreciates social science research, understands this.  As he explained to Vanity Fair writer Michael Lewis, “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”  Lewis reports that Obama mentioned “research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions,” noting that Obama added, “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.” So, amid today’s applause for “mindfulness,” let’s put in a word for mindlessness.  Mindless, habitual living frees our minds to work on more important things than which pants to wear or what breakfast to order.  As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead argued, “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” ... View more

Originally posted on December 16, 2014. The December APS Observer is out with an essay by Nathan on “The Neural Greenhouse:  Teaching Students How to Grow Neurons and Keep Them Alive.” Our brains are like greenhouses, he notes, with new neurons sprouting daily, “while others wither and die.” To take this neuroscience into the classroom, he offers three activities. In the same issue, I say, “Let’s Hear a Good Word for Self-Esteem.” Mindful of recent research on the perils of excessive self-regard—of illusory optimism, self-serving bias, and the like—I offer a quick synopsis of work on the benefits of a sense of one’s self-worth. I also offer Google ngram figures showing sharply increased occurrences of “self-esteem” in printed English over the last century, and of decreasing occurrences of “self-control.” ... View more

Originally posted on June 30, 2015. From the daily information stream that flows across my desk or up my computer screen, here is a recent new flashes: How marital support gets under the skin. A mountain of research shows that good marriages predict better health and longer life. But why? In a longitudinal study, Richard Slatcher and colleagues found that the perceived responsiveness of one’s partner predicted healthier stress hormone levels ten years later. “Our findings demonstrate that positive aspects of marriage—not only partner responsiveness but also provision of emotional support—may help shape the HPA axis in beneficial ways, potentially leading to long-term changes in cortisol production.” (The HPA axis is the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal network that controls our reactions to stress.) ... View more

Originally posted on October 27, 2015. Phantom limb sensations are one of psychology’s curiosities. Were you to suffer the amputation of a limb, your brain might then misinterpret spontaneous activity in brain areas that once received the limb’s sensory input. Thus, amputees often feel pain in a nonexistent limb, and even try to step out of bed onto a phantom leg, or to lift a cup with a phantom hand. Phantoms also haunt other senses as the brain misinterprets irrelevant brain activity. Therefore, those of us with hearing loss may experience the sound of silence—tinnitus (ringing in the ears in the absence of sound). Those with vision loss may experience phantom sights (hallucinations). Those with damaged taste or smell systems may experience phantom tastes or smells. And now comes word from the Turkish Journal of Psychiatry that 54 percent of 41 patients who had undergone a mastectomy afterwards experienced a continued perception of breast tissue, with 80 percent of those also experiencing “phantom breast pain.” As I shared this result (gleaned from the Turkish journal’s contents in the weekly Current Contents: Social and Behavioral Sciences) with my wife, I wondered: Is there any part of the body that we could lose without the possibility of phantom sensations? If an ear were sliced off, should we not be surprised at experiencing phantom ear syndrome? The larger lesson here: There’s more to perception than meets our sense receptors. We feel, see, hear, taste, and smell with our brain, which can experience perceptions with or without functioning senses. ... View more

Originally posted on February 2, 2016. You’ve likely heard the NPR ads for brain fitness games offered by Lumosity. “70 Million brain trainers in 182 countries challenge their brains with Lumosity,” declares its website. The hoped-for results range from enhanced cognitive powers to increased school and work performance to decreased late-life cognitive decline or dementia. But do brain-training games really makes us smarter or enlarge our memory capacity? In our just-released Exploring Psychology, 10th Edition, Nathan DeWall and I suggest “that brain training can produce short-term gains, but mostly on the trained tasks and not for cognitive ability in general.” As an earlier TalkPsych blog essay reported, Zachary Hambrick and Randall Engle have “published studies and research reviews that question the popular idea that brain-training games enhance older adults’ intelligence and memory. Despite the claims of companies marketing brain exercises, brain training appears to produce gains only on the trained tasks (without generalizing to other tasks).” And that is also the recently announced conclusion of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), when fining Lumosity’s maker, Lumos Labs, $2 million for false advertising. As FTC spokesperson Michelle Rusk reported to Science​, “The most that they have shown is that with enough practice you get better on these games, or on similar cognitive tasks...There’s no evidence that training transfers to any real-world setting.” Although this leaves open the possibility that certain other brain-training programs might have cognitive benefits, the settlement affirms skeptics who doubt that brain games have broad cognitive benefits. ... View more

Want to add a little psychopathy to your neuroscience or emotion lectures? Or add a little emotion and neuroscience to your psychopathy lecture? Kevin Dutton (University of Oxford), in a 5-minute video, presents a couple versions of the trolley problem and explains the role of emotion in responding to the dilemma. He notes that psychopaths respond in a purely utilitarian way, without emotion getting in the way. In the first video below, Dutton describes a scenario in which five people will die if a trolley continues on its path but where flipping a switch will send the trolley down a different track killing one person. Pause this video at the 49-second mark and give students an opportunity to think about their decision. Ask students to decide, but not reveal their response. If you use a student response system, ask students to click in with, say, A once they’ve made their decision. Return to playing the video. Dutton changes the scenario so that now you are faced with a different decision. The trolley, again, on its current course will kill five people. But now there is a “large stranger” in front of you. If you shove this person to their certain death in front of the trolley, the trolley will stop and the five people will be saved.  Pause the video at the 1:38 mark and give students time to mull over their decision. Again, ask students to decide, but not reveal their response. As before, if you use a student response system, ask students to click in with A once they’ve made their decision. Dutton goes on to say that the first decision involves primarily the cerebral cortex. But when it comes to the second decision of whether to physically push someone to their death, for most people the emotion-heavy amygdala becomes involved and the decision is much more difficult. What about psychopaths? The amygdala stays quiet, and psychopaths don’t feel a difference between the two dilemmas. The decision to shove the stranger feels no different than the decision to flip the switch. Video Link : 1665 If you have time and wish to continue the topic, Dutton has another 5-minute video that expands on this one. To introduce it, ask students if there are any benefits to having someone who is willing and able to sacrifice one person, regardless of circumstances, to save many people? If time allows, ask students to discuss in pairs or small groups, and then ask for volunteers to share their responses. Now, play this video. Video Link : 1666 After this, students will have a lot to think about and may not be able to focus on anything else you have to say. It may be best to time this activity so it ends when your class session ends. ... View more

The coverage of epigenetics in Intro Psych textbooks appears to be slowly on the rise. And with good reason. If you're not familiar with epigenetics, this 9-minute student-friendly video is a nice introduction Video Link : 1576 For a more scholarly introduction to epigenetics, this 2016 article from Child Development will get you up to speed. In Intro Psych, your textbook may give an overview of the topic wherever it covers genetics and revisit epigenetics again during coverage of psychology disorders. Research is stacking up. Our experiences influence the turning on and off of genes that are linked to psychological disorders. For example, "Exposure to stressful or traumatic life events, especially early in life (early life stress (ELS)), is one of the strongest risk factors for a number of psychiatric disorders, ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) over depression to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Over the past decade, an ever growing body of evidence indicates that exposure to stressful life events can lead to long lasting changes in a number of systems including the endocrine system, the immune system and brain structure and function" (Provencal & Binder, 2015). If a cause of psychological disorders is related to epigenetics, the effectiveness of treatments may also reside in epigenetics. Electroconvulsive therapy, for example, may alter epigenetic tags (Jong, et.al., 2014). Psychiatric drugs may also work this way (Boks, et.al., 2012). For Intro Psych, the specifics of epigenetics is probably not that important, but a broad overview and the implications of the research are certainly worth the time. References Boks, M. P., de Jong, N. M., Kas, M. J. H., Vinkers, C. H., Fernandes, C., Kahn, R. S., … Ophoff, R. A. (2012). Current status and future prospects for epigenetic psychopharmacology. Epigenetics, 7 (1), 20–28. http://doi.org/10.4161/epi.7.1.18688 Jong, J. O., Arts, B., Boks, M. P., Sienaert, P., Hove, D. L., Kenis, G., . . . Rutten, B. P. (2014). Epigenetic effects of electroconvulsive seizures. The Journal of ECT, 30(2), 152-159. doi:10.1097/yct.0000000000000141  Lester, B. M., Conradt, E. and Marsit, C. (2016), Introduction to the Special Section on Epigenetics. Child Development, 87: 29–37. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12489 Provencal, N., & Binder, E. B. (2015). The neurobiological effects of stress as contributors to psychiatric disorders: Focus on epigenetics. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 30, 31-37. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2014.08.007  ... View more

I was looking at how my students did on my Intro Psych exam questions this past fall. One item on split-brain jumped out at me. I have such a question on the first exam and another on the final. Both questions posit that something is briefly shown in the left visual field and another something is briefly shown in the right visual field of someone who has had split brain surgery. The answer choices ask the student to identify what the person can do, e.g., use their right hand to point at the first something, say what the other something was. Last fall, how did my students do on the split brain questions? Not so well. On the module exam, about 50% of my students got the question right. On the final exam, about 20% did. I know this is a tricky concept. Initially I was thinking I could do some sort of in-class demo to help students see the difference. I had some ideas that involved student volunteers, but then when it came time to do it in class, I thought, "There is no way this is going to work. They're going to leave being more confused." So I didn't do it. At my next department meeting, I said that I was trying to find a way to help students grasp split brain and was wondering if anyone had ideas. Rod Fowers said that he had created a worksheet [download here] that helps students think it through. He acknowledged that a 2-page worksheet for this concept may feel like overkill, but he was also trying to model to students how to break something that is complex into smaller chunks to make it more digestible. That makes sense. I sent the worksheet to my students as a 5-point extra credit opportunity (over 600 points in the course) via our course management system on Friday. The instructions were to print it out (or manipulate it digitally), follow the instructions (which includes drawing), and get it to me by the beginning of class on Monday (day of their first exam, an exam that included a split brain question). About half of my students completed the worksheet correctly. (Only one student who turned it in didn't earn credit for it.) How did they do on that first exam split brain question? Of the 26 who successfully completed the worksheet, 69% answered the question correctly. Of the 28 who didn't do the worksheet, 25% answered the question correctly. I can see that difference even without a statistical test. Now, I know what you're thinking. "But Sue, it's the students who tend to do better on tests who do the extra credit." I removed the split brain question from my students' total exam scores. Was there a difference in their adjusted exam scores? Nope. Next up is the final exam. Will I see an increase in performance on that split brain question as well? I'll let you know in a couple months. I have data at this point to include this split brain worksheet in my classes next term as a required assignment. I may even make it part of an in-class small group activity like my colleague Ruth Frickle did yesterday. Although I will probably modify the worksheet, removing the questions about how each eye is halved since that's a bit more than I really want my students to know. If you try this worksheet, I'd love to hear how it works for you! ... View more

When I first started teaching, not as a grad student, but as real live instructor out on my own, I was 24 years old. I was a part-time instructor at a community college near Kansas City. Thinking I had to look the part, I bought some new clothes -- khakis and button-down shirts. It probably didn’t take me more than a couple weeks to realize that wasn’t going to work for me. Most of the students in my classes were older than I was, some by a full generation or two. And a lot of them were scared. They had never been in a college class before, but life circumstances gave them an opportunity – or forced them – to be here. A lot was riding on their being able to do well. Trying to project some sort of authority didn’t mesh with how I walked in the world, and, frankly, I didn’t think it would help my students. Instead, I decided to go where they were. I traded in my new khakis for new jeans. And over time the button-down shirts were gradually replaced by t-shirts. My overarching philosophy to teaching psychology boiled down to this: I know the theory and the research, and you have the life experience; let’s merge them together and see what we can learn from each other. Long ago I moved on to full-time teaching, currently up here in the Pacific Northwest, and I finally caught up to and then surpassed the average age of my students. Even though I’m now older and my students are now younger, I know that many of them are still afraid. I want to lighten the mood. Over the last 15 years, I have amassed a t-shirt collection suitable for Intro Psych. Frankly, I don’t know if wearing these t-shirts in class makes me more approachable. I do know that it’s common for students to look forward to seeing the day’s shirt. And if the connection to the material isn’t immediately obvious, they are on the edge of their seats waiting for the connection to become clear. Okay, maybe no one is quite on the edge of their seats, but I have heard audible “Oh!”s after explaining the relevance of the shirt. Besides, knowing what I’m going to wear on most every class day -- my classes meet on Mondays and Wednesdays -- eliminates having to decide what to wear. I typically wear a denim shirt or a light fleece over top, and then reveal the shirt when it’s relevant to what I’m discussing. This post will feature nine shirts. Next week will feature an additional ten. [Read that post here.] First day -- It's in the syllabus I debated about getting this one. I was concerned it would sound snarkier than I meant it to be. Snarkiness is not the tone I’m after upon meeting my students for the first time. I carefully frame it by asking, by a show of hands, for whom is this their first college term. I explain that I remember by first college term. As I went from class to class, the professors were all talking about the syllabus – a word I had never heard before. Finally I figured out they were referring to these pieces of paper they were handing out.  “Any time you have questions about anything related to the course, the answer is probably in the syllabus.” Completely anecdotally, when I wear the shirt on the first day, I seem to get many fewer questions about the course later on. Biopsych – Serotonin and the Dopamines: The Happiness Tour In Intro, I don’t spend oodles of time on neurons, but this shirt is a handy reminder of the role neurotransmitters play in our everyday lives. Besides, what better way to remember that serotonin and dopamine influence feelings of happiness? Biopsych - Brain Sometimes, when teaching, it helps to have an extra brain. Memory – Les Déspicables I admit that when I first saw this one, it cracked me up so much I just wanted it. And then I figured out where to fit it into Intro. I use it in the memory chapter when talking about retrieval cues. The image retrieves both memories of Les Misérables and minions from the Despicable Me movies. The juxtaposition of such different memories makes this funny. Thinking – Penguin experiencing insight  When you have wings, you think you should be able to use them to fly. And this young penguin flaps and flaps, all to no avail. And then with what is apparently a flash of insight given the presence of the lightbulb in panel 8, the penguin dons a jetpack. Easy peasy. Operant or classical conditioning – Exercise: Some Motivation Required I love this shirt for both operant and classical conditioning. For operant conditioning, the behavior is running. The t-rex is being positively reinforced (running faster gets t-rex closer to a tasty morsel), and the person is being negatively reinforced (running faster gets the person further away from the t-rex).  For classical conditioning, being chased is the unconditioned stimulus and fear is the unconditioned response. Seeing a t-rex in the future would be the conditioned stimulus, and fear at seeing the t-rex is the conditioned response. Stress or classical conditioning – Godzilla destroying city If Godzilla destroys your city, you will likely experience stress. For classical conditioning, Godzilla destroying your city would be the unconditioned stimulus and fear would be the unconditioned response. Seeing Godzilla in the future would be the conditioned stimulus and fear at seeing Godzilla would be the conditioned response. Stress or operant conditioning – Procrastination… just one more game For stress, this is a nice example of emotion focused coping. As long as you are playing the game, you can avoid thinking about all the homework you need to do. For operant conditioning, game play is one big variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. You never know when you’re going to win, but the more you play, the faster you’ll get to that next win. Attention – Car Talk inattentive driving [Currently on clearance. Not available much longer.] When covering attention, the back of this shirt nicely illustrates how we really can’t do two things at once. ... View more

As a psychology instructor it is clear to you the myriad ways in which psychology can be used to both understand social issues and speak to solutions. In fact, the APA Guidelines for the Major (2013; see below) encourages us to help our students see the same. Debra Mashek (2016) suggests a few assignments that provide our students opportunities to connect psychology with today’s social issues. Integrative essay The instructor chooses three articles (interesting, nifty methodology, and not too difficult for students to understand – but on the surface may not have anything obviously to do with each other), and assigns one of those articles to each student, i.e. 1/3 of the class gets article A, 1/3 gets article B, and 1/3 gets article C. Each student writes a one-page summary of their assigned article and brings that with them to class. The class breaks up into groups of three, where the groups are composed of students who have all read different articles. In a jigsaw classroom format, the students tell the others in their three-person group about their article. Students then “articulate an applied question that invites application of ideas from all the articles.” Each 3-person group then co-authors a short paper (two to three pages) that identifies their applied question and how each of the three articles speak to that question. Persuasion research activity Right after Hurricane Katrina, Mashek decided she wanted her Intro Psych students to experience psychological research firsthand while also contributing to the relief effort. Mashek gave a brief lecture on foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, and reciprocity. She randomly assigned ¼ of students to foot-in-the-door, ¼ to door-in-the-face, ¼ reciprocity (she gave these students lollipops to hand to people before asking for a donation), and ¼ to a command condition (“give money”). During that same class period students were sent out in pairs to different areas of campus to return an hour later. Thirty-five students collected $600. Students reported a greater connection to the victims of Katrina after they returned than they reported before they left. Mashek used this experience as a leaping off point for discussing research methodology in the next class session. Current headline classroom discussion Pick a current headline. Break students into small groups, perhaps as an end of class activity, and give them one or two discussion questions based on the current chapter you are covering that are relevant to the headline. For example, if you are covering the social psychology chapter in Intro Psych, give students this headline from the January 9, 2016 New York Times: “Gov. Paul LePage of Maine Says Racial Comment Was a ‘Slip-Up’.” This is a short article, so you could ask students to read the article itself. Sample discussion questions: (1) What evidence is there of ingroup bias? (2) Do Gov. LePage’s comments illustrate stereotyping, prejudice, and/or discrimination? Explain. If time allows, student groups can report out in class. Alternatively, this could be a group writing assignment or a scribe for the group could post a summary of the group’s responses to a class discussion board. Students will gain an appreciation of the scope of psychology and how it is relevant to today’s social issues. This activity throughout the course should help students, after the course, to continue to see psychology at play. The APA Guidelines for the Major (2013) include these indicators related to social issues: 1.3A Articulate how psychological principles can be used to explain social issues, address pressing societal needs, and inform public policy 3.3c Explain how psychology can promote civic, social, and global outcomes that benefit others 3.3C Pursue personal opportunities to promote civic, social, and global outcomes that benefit the community. 3.3d Describe psychology-related issues of global concern (e.g., poverty, health, migration, human rights, rights of children, international conflict, sustainability) 3.3D Consider the potential effects of psychology-based interventions on issues of global concern American Psychological Association. (2013). APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major: Version 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/index.aspx Mashek, D. (2016, January 4). Bringing the psychology of social issues to life. Lecture presented at National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology in Tradewinds Island Grand Resort, St. Petersburg Beach. Seelye, K. Q. (2016, January 9). Gov. Paul LePage of Maine Says Racial Comment Was a 'Slip-up'. The New York Times . Retrieved January 9, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/08/gov-paul-lepage-of-maine-denies-making-racist-remarks ... View more