All Posts Tagged With: "psychology"

Thesis experiment to examine brain waves

Photo by CarbonNYC on Flickr

A student pursing her master’s degree in pschology is on a mission to prove psychic activity exits, reports The Sudbury Star.

Mandy Scott, a student at Laurentian University, says she plans, among other things, to measure changes in brain activity during supposed psychic episodes.

“Psychic functioning is the ability to perceive and describe targets, which could be people, places, events, situations, anything that’s hidden from you at a distance of space in time,” Scott explained to the newspaper.

Although she is sometimes criticized for her choice of study, she asserts that, “psychic function is real and we need help in pinpointing how it works.”

The study will include three groups. One will be the control. A second will be taught psychic techniques. The third will consist of “experienced psychics.” Each group will be asked to describe a photo inside an envelope. The question is, will the psychic groups do better? Each participant will also be given six EEG scans to look for changes in brain wave activity.

What’s difficult for parents to sort out is what is normal behaviour and what’s cause for real concern

Elena Dorfman/Redux

Teenagers seem to be hard-wired to take risks. Scientists who study the adolescent brain are finding that experimentation is a natural part of these years, even though some risks can have serious consequences. Among those aged 10 to 24, three-quarters of all deaths are from preventable causes, like motor vehicle accidents and suicide, according to the most recent U.S. Youth Risk Behavior Survey. It can be hard for parents to recognize the difference between “normal adolescent behaviour,” like experimenting with drugs and sex, and what’s cause for real concern, says Dr. Blaise Aguirre, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Today’s teens are “stressed out,” Aguirre  says, and it’s taking a toll. Over the last five years, there’s been a steady increase in the number of anti-depressants prescribed to Canadian teens, according to IMS Brogan, a health information and consulting company. “One in five teenagers, and one in four Ivy League students, are now self-injuring,” or cutting themselves, often in moments of emotional distress, Aguirre says. There’s evidence eating disorders are on the rise, too.

Aguirre is medical director of 3East at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, a specialized program for teens and young adults with borderline personality disorder, which is characterized by black-and-white thinking, fears of abandonment, chaotic relationships and impulsivity. Two of his colleagues, Dr. Esther Dechant, medical director of McLean’s Klarman Eating Disorders Center, and Michael Hollander, director of 3East’s day hospital and an expert in self-injury, will be in Toronto on April 7 to speak about their work as part of the Scienta Health Series.

Teens are naturally risk-takers. Last year, Stephanie Burnett of University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience published a study in which 86 boys and men (ages 9 to 35) played computer games, and she measured their response. Teenagers “chose risky options more,” she says, and got the biggest emotional charge when a risky choice produced a surprising win. The most risk-taking, she found, was among 14-year-olds. In another recent study, Temple University psychologists Jason Chein and Laurence Steinberg measured the brain activity of teens as they played a simulated driving game. When teens were with friends, they took more risks—and they were more sensitive to potential rewards of risks than when they were alone.

Teens are more driven by thrill-seeking and reward, it seems, because of how our brain changes as we age. In childhood, what Chein calls the brain’s “reward processing system” (which is involved in emotion) and its “cognitive control system” (which holds impulses in check, and allows for reasoned decisions) are immature. In early adolescence, the reward processing system undergoes rapid change—but the cognitive control system isn’t fully mature until our mid-twenties.

Teens are also vulnerable to information overload. Angelika Dimoka, director of the Center for Neural Decision Making at Temple University’s Fox School of Business, has looked at the impact of this on adult brains, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. As her subjects received more and more information to process, she found, activity jumped in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision-making. This area “reaches a plateau,” she says, “and then temporarily stops functioning.” Teens are plugged into any number of devices, often even more so than adults, and they’re “taxing a system that isn’t fully developed,” Aguirre says. “No wonder some are unable to handle it,” and find themselves overwhelmed.

Information overload isn’t the only source of stress. “There’s been a shift in what we think of as a beautiful body,” says Dechant, from curvy Marilyn Monroe to today’s models, who are “size zero or double zero.” Rates of bulimia seem to be increasing, and anorexia is spreading from what was traditionally “the upper middle class, to all walks of society,” she says. Alarmingly, more teens seem to be cutting themselves. “It looks like it’s starting earlier and earlier,” Hollander says. Cutting is rarely a suicidal act, he notes, but those who commit suicide often have a history of self-injury. Parents need to talk about it with their teens in a “neutral way, which isn’t easy,” he says, “and access some help.”

Aguirre uses mindfulness, derived from Buddhist meditation practice, as part of his treatment for patients. Studies have shown that mindfulness-based meditation can reduce anxiety, improve attention and reduce the emotional impact of pain. “It’s about slowing down the brain, and focusing on the here and now,” Aguirre says. A few slower moments each day sounds like something most teenagers, whose brains are programmed to take risks, could benefit from.

The Harvard team will speak in Toronto on April 7, as part of the Scienta Health lecture series:
www.ramsayinc.com/html/lunches.html

The first thing you need is a new ‘spiral of success,’ explains this Calgary expert

Getty images; iStock; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

People confess to procrastination and then laugh it off, like the 900,000 members of the Facebook group, “I was doing homework then I ended up on Facebook.” For many, though, procrastination isn’t funny. Look at the poet Samuel Coleridge, writes Piers Steel, the Calgary professor who’s becoming known internationally for his insights on procrastination, in his new book The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things off and Start Getting Stuff Done. The poet spent 25 years writing the poem Kubla Khan. His excuses were legendary. For other people, Steel writes, the pain of procrastination “is about diets postponed, late-night scrambles to finish projects and disappointed looks from the people who depend on you.”

The good news is that techniques for treating procrastination exist. “They are scientifically proven. It’s not a question of will they work. They’re vetted,” Steel tells Maclean’s. “I was one of the first guinea pigs for this.”

Steel knows that procrastination is not the by-product of perfectionism, as it was once believed. The theory that “we delay because we are perfectionists anxious about living up to sky-high standards” feels good, he writes, but doesn’t pan out. “Neat, orderly and efficient perfectionists don’t tend to dilly-dally.” Laziness isn’t the problem either, he says. The truly lazy person thinks, “I don’t want to do this. You can force me to do it but I have no desire to do it.” The procrastinator, on the other hand, wants to do the work, “yet finds when the moment of action comes, they keep putting it off.”

To treat procrastination, it helps to know that impulsiveness or “wanting it all now” is the main source of it, he writes: “Showing self-control or delaying gratification is difficult for those of us who are impulsive. We just don’t have much ability to endure short-term pain for long-term gain.”

Past failures and “learned helplessness” also lead to procrastination. Steel gives the example in the book of Eddie, an underperforming salesman. “After a series of attempts that all resulted in failure, Eddie began to expect failure even before he started.” The problem is, “if you start believing your goals aren’t achievable, you stop effectively pursing them.”

To combat the problem, create a new “spiral of success,” he suggests. “If you can’t run a mile, then run a block. Stop when you’ve done that and the next time try two blocks. Nobody has to know about your small successes; keep them as your own happy little secret.” Steel writes that “personal stories of triumph can bolster people’s spirits for years. ‘I did it!’ translates into ‘I can do it.’ ”

Still, don’t be overly confident, he warns. The overconfident “tend to discount problems,” often underestimating how long a task will take. “As Freud puts it, we need to activate the reality principle. This entails imagining what could go wrong and how you would prevent or mitigate potential pitfalls.”

It’s wise to anticipate temptation. “If you can anticipate powerful temptations, you can act in advance to ward them off.” Steel gives the example of Ulysses from Homer’s Odyssey. The goddess Circe warns Ulysses to guard against the lure of the Sirens. If his men hear the singing of the Sirens, these beautiful naked women will distract them and the men will become enthralled, and blissfully starve to death. Circe tells Ulysses to fill his men’s ears with wax to make them deaf. It works and he sails safely past temptation.

For solutions to modern temptations such as sleeping in, Steel cites such gizmos as an alarm clock called SnuzNLuz. “Every time you press the snooze button, it donates 10 or more dollars to your most detested charity; a little extra sleep comes at the cost of you assisting groups that represent the antithesis of your political position, sexual orientation or environmental stance.”

“Quick tip,” he tells Maclean’s. “If you want to address procrastination, find out when your power hours are, when your circadian rhythm pops, and try to reserve your hardest work for then. For most people that’s 10 to 2. A lot of people use that time for meetings and emails, and that’s sad, really. That’s when you could’ve got most of your entire day done.”

Remember when choice and flexibility were good things?

With Nova Scotia’s O’Neill report in the books, and a similar report just released in Ontario, specialization is the new watchword for Canadian universities. Thus Bonnie Patterson, President of the Council of Ontario Universities: “the funding realities mean we’re going to have to build on the differences that already exist.”

Setting aside the question that the so-called funding realities are really funding decisions, the emphasis on specialization is troubling from the point of view of quality higher education.

Of course, some specialization is inevitable, or at least practical. Not every university can have a medical school, and a law school, and a major in South American Urban Geography. Fine. But I worry when I hear people like Harvey Weingarten, President of the  Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario say things like this: “If Ryerson were to say its priority is undergraduate programs that graduate the next wave of entrepreneurs, for example, it might be that the U of T wouldn’t have a program exactly like that.”

Related: B.C. PSE split sets dangerous precedent

Setting aside the fact that if Ontario really wanted to save money it could eliminate a few of these education councils, Weingarten’s comments hint that specialization is all about output. If Ontario needs graduates in various areas, the implication runs, it doesn’t need every school to fulfill that need. Put another way, if a student wants program x, she only needs one school to offer it and she can go there.

But the underlying assumption is that a university education is designed only, or mainly, as an economic investment. Universities are understood like factories, turning out useful products and thus should be specialized so as to be more efficient.

Setting aside the fact that it is inherently repugnant to think of people as products (the report calls for graduates who, like iPods should be “highly valued and competitive” [p.15]), the specialization perspective assumes that students know what they want to study when they go to university and will stick to that field of study all the way through. Anyone who teaches at a university  knows that these assumptions are actually false, and idealists like me see them as deeply troubling.

For one thing, circumstances mean that students are not infinitely mobile.  A student in Sudbury may not feasibly be able to move to Windsor to study. Consequently, specialization means limiting choices. The report claims that “differentiation” will mean more variety of programs overall (p. 6) but later reveals that claim to be false by insisting that universities must work with their existing programs (p.10). In other words, the Kingston girl who might have been a world-class artist may end up toiling as an accountant because Fine Arts was only available at Western, not Queen’s. Such things may happen even now, but they become more likely the more specialized institutions become.

Being from the 19th century is no excuse

I just finished reading a chapter in my psychology textbook. It gave an overview of the history of psychology, including the work of Freud. It described him as the “father of modern psychology,” and praised him for his “innovative ideas that continue to influence psychology, science, and the world at large.” And then it went on to describe some of his “revolutionary” theories.

After reading about the psychoanalytic perspective, I’m not exactly sure if “revolutionary” is quite the right way to describe Freud’s theories.

I’m thinking more along the lines of “totally bizarre, freaky, and creepy.”

A quick summary of Freud’s ideas:

1. All boys want to marry their moms and kill their dads.
2. There’s no such thing as a seemingly-innocent pencil collection.
3. Your 18 month-old brother is going through an Oral stage, soon to be followed by an Anal stage, Phallic stage, and eventually a Genital stage.

Yeah, sure, it’s easy to dismiss and ridicule the ideas of someone from the 19th century. And sure, Freud did have some really important ideas. He explored the “unconscious” aspect of the human mind. He defined and conceptualized personality structures and stages. He just went a little overboard.

But let’s face it: early physicists, biologists, or astronomers from the 19th century weren’t freaks. It’s just early psychologists. Namely Freud.

Consider Sir Isaac Newton. When he proposed the idea of universal gravitation, he didn’t go off the deep end and suggest that objects are gravitationally attracted to one another because they’re going through a Phallic stage. Or because the Earth has repressed feelings of love for its mother and wants to kill its father.

Newton understood the difference between “scientific theory” and “revealing that I probably murdered my own father.”