Supplement your EPPP Study Materials with this video from Dr. Wayne Casio of University of Colorado Denver, and the Taylor Study Method. Listen as he shares about EPPP key term Adverse Impact, when and how it occurs, and what the implications of it happening are. Please enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Neuroplasticity and the Fire-Wire Principle
In an earlier post I introduced the idea that neurons that fire together wire together. When we experience a habitual simultaneity between two things, the part of the brain that responds to those two things becomes fused. The reason this it’s possible for this to happen because the brain is plastic, in the sense of being adaptable and malleable. (We discussed the phenomenon of neuroplasticity earlier in our posts ‘From Localizationism to Neuroplasticity’ and ‘The Adaptive Brain.’) Continue reading
EPPP Study Video – TREND ANALYSIS
Listen as Dr. Elizabeth Soliday shares some insight into EPPP keyword; Trend Analysis. This video is from a series created by the Taylor Study Method to supplement your EPPP study materials, and aid in visual association to EPPP exam relevant content. Please watch and enjoy!
Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together
Our last post looked at the power that associations have in organizing experiences presented to our brains, and we considered the phenomenon of smell as one example of this. We saw that if certain things are associated with pleasant or unpleasant experiences, then those things can actually become pleasant or unpleasant to our brains through the power of association. Continue reading
The Power of Association
In our earlier post ‘The Eroticism of Odor‘, we looked at the strange (to us) custom of other cultures to actually prefer the smell of body odor, especially that of the opposite sex. We saw how it was typical for a woman to put apple pieces under her arm and, after it had absorbed her scent, offer it as a gift to her boyfriend.
There’s a good reason why other societies have felt like this about BO and why we don’t, and it gives us insight into an important feature of the human brain that we will be discussing in a series of posts over the next few months.
The reason has to do with the power of associations. Having largely banished body odor from Western society, we now associate the body’s natural smell with uncleanness and lack of hygiene. But put yourself back in Elizabethan times. In their pre-deodorant society, the smell of the body was normal, because that is what they were used to. Moreover, it could even be pleasant because that was the smell you associated with being in the presence of the person you love.
Don’t worry, this is not a plea for a new naturalism. I am not about to embark on a campaign to eliminate deodorant from our society. However, I mentioned the above facts because it leads into a theme I wish to spend some time unpacking, which is the power associations have in ordering our brains.
Put simply, if certain things are associated with pleasant or unpleasant experiences, then those things can actually become pleasant or unpleasant to our brains through the power of association.
Even today there are more subtle body odors that can only be perceived if we are in close proximity with a naked member of the opposite sex, which means that such odors tend to be associated with sex—an association that renders certain smells pleasant to us because of the power of association, though this process usually happens on an instinctive level far beneath the conscious mind.
The Eroticism of Odor
In her book, Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray, anthropologist Helen Fisher notes that during Elizabethan times it was the custom for a woman to keep a peeled apple under her arm long enough for it to absorb her scent. Once the apple was fully saturated with her odor, she would offer the ‘love apple’ as a gift to her boyfriend, who could then enjoy his lovers’ smell during her absence.
Fisher further explained that “Today in parts of Greece and the Balkans, some men carry their handkerchiefs in their armpits during festivals and offer these odoriferous tokens to the women they invite to dance; they swear by the results. In fact, sweat is used around the world as an ingredient in love potions.”
To us this seems strange, if not downright gross, and there’s a reason why we feel like that. In the next post we will explain why we feel like as we do about body odor, and why other societies find body odor to have an erotic charm. Unpacking this question will lead us into a discussion of some fascinating recent discoveries about the human brain.
The Brain Compared to the Universe
In the human brain, neurons don’t communicate directly with each other because they don’t actually touch. Instead they secrete chemical molecules (called neurotransmitters) which travel across the gaps (called synapses). Neurotransmitters can link neurons in an almost infinite amount of ways.
It is in these gaps—the spaces between neurons—that the really important activity of the brain occurs, because it is here that the connections between different parts of the brain occurs. Continue reading
EPPP Study Video – DISJUNCTIVE TASK
Listen as Dr. Wayne Casio shares about EPPP key term “Disjunctive Task”. Hear a brief overview that is sure to enhance your understanding of this term, and aid in your overall preparedness for your upcoming EPPP!
How the Brain Works
In our series of posts about online study skills, we had frequent occasion to from Nicholas Carr’s fascinating book The Shallows. In the book Carr gives a succinct and extremely helpful summary of how the human brain operates.
“[discrete nerve cells]—our neurons—are both like and unlike the other cells in our bodies. Neurons have central cores, or somas, which carry out the functions common to all cells, but they also have two kings of tentacle-like appendages—axons and dendrites—that transmit and receive electric pulses. When a neuron is active, a pulse flows from the soma to the tip of the axon, where it triggers the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters flow across [the] contact barrier—the synapse, we now call it—and attach themselves to a dendrite of a neighboring neuron, triggering (or suppressing) a new electric pulse in that cell. It’s through the flow of neurotransmitters across synapses that neurons communicate with one another, directing the transmission of electrical signals along complex cellular pathways. Thoughts, memories, emotions—all emerge from the electrochemical interactions of neurons, mediated by synapses.”
Further Reading
Study Skills for Psychology Licensing Prep – Overview of Series
Over the past few months, I’ve been sharing some of the ways you can improve your online study skills in your psychology licensing prep. The suggestion I’ve offered have been rooted in the latest advances in brain science, including some discoveries that are still considered cutting-edge. Now that we’ve completed running that series, it may be helpful to summarize the ground we’ve covered and provide a complete list of links for future reference.
We opened the series with our post ‘Online Learning: The Way of the Future.’ This article looked at some of the important shifts that have occurred in the history of the university, culminating in the rise of online education. We suggested that, as with other changes in the past, special skills are required to maximize the benefits of the new tools available to students.