The Mind's Storehouse: Other Brain Structures Involved in the Memory Game
Different parts of the prefrontal cortex are involved in storing information referred to as the working memory. The more distinctive a memory trace, the more likely it can be retrieved later. If something interesting or emotionally exciting occurs, ...
The Enduring Self: Genetic Links to Personality
There is growing evidence that many personality traits have a genetic basis. Human neuromodulatory systems have set points that regulate such dimensions as how active a person is and whether or not they tend to avoid new experiences. These set point...
The Most Amazing Machine: Influence of Neurotransmitters, The
After the electrical signal, also called the action potential, reaches the end of the axon it stimulates the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters. These chemical messengers carry information from the sending neuron across the synaptic gap...
The Most Amazing Machine: Brain Injuries
When a brain injury occurs, the deficits that follow depend on which parts of the brain are injured and the degree of damage. Matt Dykas was an 18-year-old high school senior when he suffered a paralyzing stroke after running track. In this segmen...
The Most Amazing Machine: Neural Communication
The neuron is the fundamental unit or cell in the brain. Neurons interact with each other by generating small blips of electricity which zap down an axon at rates up to 250 miles per hour. Each neuron is networked with about 10,000 other neurons...
Thinking and Language: Child's Remarkable Ability to Acquire Language, A
Young children gain access to language in well-documented stages, from cooing and babbling to an explosion of words at about 18 months. B. F. Skinner thought that language acquisition relied on operant conditioning and reinforcement, whereas Noam Ch...
Thinking and Language: Does Language Influence the Way We Think?
The linguistic relativity hypothesis suggests that the language a person speaks influences the way he thinks. Asian languages are often described as high context languages (what you say may or may not be what you mean, depending on the context), whe...
The Magic of the Mind: Introduction of Scientific Tools and Approaches
The introduction of tools like fMRI and PET allows psychologists to determine the contribution of biology to psychology. Further advancements will someday reveal how the brain achieves its understanding of the world, and how we are able to inter...
Codes of Life: Genes-Our Biological Blueprint
Genes are DNA segments that provide the code for assembling protein molecules, the building blocks of human development. All of our abilities and behaviors have some genetic component. Whether or not the genes get turned on or off may depend the...
People to People: How Attitudes Can Affect Our Judgment
Attitudes-- feelings based on beliefs-- predispose our reactions to objects, people, and events. The very thing that makes us intelligent beings is also that which allows us to fall prey to biases or mistaken perceptions. When we stereotype people w...