What I would like you to do is to find a topic from section chapter 3 that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find a youtube clip that illustrates something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. Please use 3 or more quality resources.
Once you have completed your search and explorations, a) I would like you to say what your topic is, b) how exactly it fits into the chapter, and c) why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about it. At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. Keep in mind that it will be easier if you keep it to one topic.
By integrating/synthesizing I mean to take what your read/experienced from the internet search (and from chapter 1 if you like) organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using that information. This is hard for some people to do - many students write what we refer to as "serial abstracts." They are tempted to talk about the websites rather than the topic proper and this what you DON'T want to do! They will talk all about website #1, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #2, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #3, and then write some kind of conclusion. Serial means one after the other...again, this is what you DON'T want to do! If all three sites are on the same one topic it will be easier.
Additional instructions: For each URL (internet resource) you have listed. Indicate why you chose it and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
The topic that interested me the most from this chapter was the invention of the guillotine by Joseph Guillotin. The reason the people of France first sought out an invention like this was to find a more humane way of taking the life of a person they decided “deserving” of this. Before the invention of the guillotine, nobles were executed using a sword or an axe, which could take two or three attempts. Commoners were usually killed by hanging, which could take several minutes, burned at the stake, or had to suffer through the wheel. The wheel was a large wheel with large blunt objects on the ends. It was spun while the person’s head was repeatedly beaten until the neck was broken or completely removed. Invention of the guillotine also insured that each person was treated equally, as the guillotine became the official method of execution in France.
Prototypes for the invention started using a round blade. It wasn’t until harpsichord maker, Tobias Schmidt, intervened and suggested the diagonal blade. Further improvements were made by Leon Berger. He added a spring system which stopped the motion at the end of the groves. After these improvements were made, all guillotines were built to do the same.
The first person to fall victim to this death machine was Jacques Nicolas Pelletier, a robber, who died in the year 1792. The guillotine was used for hundreds of years until it claimed its last victim Hamida Djandoubi in 1977, a man convicted of committing murder. Today the preferred method of execution in France is the firing squad.
At first when the guillotine was invented, people were unsure as to whether or not it was actually as quick and painless as the initially thought it to be. This was thought because people saw the victim of the guillotine still twitching after the blade had already removed the head from the body. People also said that they saw eye movements and quivering facial muscles. Further testing proved this to be incorrect and accredited the twitching to a reflex movement.
http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/frenchrevolution/a/Guillotine_3.htm
This site helped with information following the history of the machine and why it was the most popular instrument used.
http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventions/a/Guillotine.htm
This site helped me find information about the structure and the invention of the guillotine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine
This site helped me with information following the history of the guillotine and where it came from and why.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L1aQzVEdgo
Thought this video was funny!
What if you could predict what a person would be like by just looking at them; their strengths, weaknesses, relationships, behaviors, their futures? Franz Joseph Gall thought he had found a way to do this. He thought that by using his fingertips to look at ridges of a person’s head and measuring the overall size of the head he could “predict the kinds of relationships and behaviors to which the patient was prone. In its heyday during the 1820s-1840s, phrenology was often used to predict a child's future life, to assess prospective marriage partners and to provide background checks for job applicants. ” (Wikipedia)
The first thing that stuck out to me was the quote from Gall, “that schoolmates with protruding eyes seemed to have better memories than he did” (76). I found his study of phrenology very interesting, although we know it has been proven wrong many times. His ideas of localization occurred early in life, he thought he could tell a lot about a person by the shape of their head and certain behavioral characteristics (76). He separated the brain into different sections controlling different cognitive and emotions, which became known as facilities. He said he could see and find prominences in the skull in certain areas explaining their personalities and actions because more brain tissue would be in areas of high facilitation. (77). One of the main flaws that arose with this ideology was that they relied on anecdotal evidence, which only reported cases that supported their hypothesis then made general statements about it.
I was amazed at how popular it became even after it had been proven wrong. People would pay a good amount of money to get their heads measured. Through this spreading ideology it shows the imperfections of the human mind. We want to believe things only good things, especially as Americans. “Phrenology provided a seemingly scientific basis for the traditional American beliege that anyone, regardless of heritage, could ‘pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps’ and accomplish virtually anything in life” (78) Many people played on the optimism that American’s wanted to find in their society. Another part that attracted American’s to this theory it supported that “everyone is a unique person, possessing his or her own special talents.” (78). Orson Fowler, a follower of Gall made a great deal of money by “examining” people’s heads to help them identify themselves. He even started the Phrenological Journal, which gave advice from who to marry to just what to do and why. (79) What he basically did was give people what they wanted to hear, for example looking at a murder he showed obvious signs of facilities leading to him become a murder. How is it possible to categorize someone’s whole being into 30+ facilities? How can we account for the other hundreds of things we can be?
Another thing I found interesting was that he had small parts of the brain for different faculties, how is it possible to know exactly that each part controlled and represented that area? For example love of life or hope? As we have found today his ideas were correct that different areas of the brain associated with certain functions, but not to the extent he proposed. We know now that areas of the brain are more centralized into fundamental functions instead of being personality based. ( NESS). It has also been proven that areas that are more developed are enlarged. It has also been proven that “Gall's area for speech and verbal memory was located very closely to today's Broca's and Wernicke's speech areas” (http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2004/phrenology.htm). Although his discoveries were not completely correct they led us to the discovery of how the brain works and was very influential in leading us to what we know now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology: Reading the book you get brief look into the history behind phrenology, but I wanted to know more about how it got started and how it progress throughout the years. This site is a great place to get general information and ideas about topics and it also includes links and references at the bottom of the page.
http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2004/phrenology.htm : I used this source to find more information about how phrenology is relating in our world today. It seems to be a reliable source because is it an educational site and has additional links if you’re interested on learning more about the topic.
http://www.theness.com/index.php/phrenology-history-of-a-pseudoscience/: this site was written by Steven Novella, MD which would be grounds for considering it a reliable source. Also a bio was given about Steven and the creation of the site.
An execution device for decapitating heads in France was called the guillotine. The guillotine was invented in France, and used for the sole killing for executions until 1981. The guillotine was in main use during the Reign of Terror of The French Revolution in the early 1790's. I wanted to research more about the guillotine because it was interesting to read in chapter 3 and a physician invented this device not a psychologist that was interesting and wanted to research more about it.
The guillotine was was a tall frame with a sharp blade suspended from the frame. The blade is controlled by a rope which allows the blade to go up and down and decapitate the head from the body. The other parts of the body is their hands hang behind their bodies. This device was used during the Reign of Terror and continued until 1981, and today France uses the firing squad as the ultimate execution.
The guillotine was most used during the Reign of Terror. The Reign of Terror was from 1793-1794. The commoners overthrew the monarch government and Robespiere lead the new government and went on a terror of killing people in the guillotine. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were both guillotined in 1793. Eventually Robespiere's followers turned against him, and Robespiere was executed in 1794 by the guillotine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine - this site gave me background information about the guillotine and the Reign of Terror.
http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/guillotine.html- this site went into more detail about the executions that took place using the guillotine.
http://www.theguillotine.info/articles/reignofterror.php - this site gave articles about the guillotine, and the executions that took place during the French Revoluion.
I researched more about the curious case of Phineas Gage. I learned about it first in the chapter, and was so interested in it, I needed to know more! Phineas Gage's case was the first evidence known to us that there was a connection between the frontal cortex and personality.
Phineas Gage was a railroad worker. He was a very hard worker and great business man, says his co-workers and friends. He went through a bizarre event that left him with a huge pole stuck through his head (pictures are found in my articles). What is so amazing is that Gage actually lived through this horrible tragedy! The huge part of it all was that his personality completely changed. He went from a caring individual, to a rude, not personable at all, man. This struck interest in many doctors and scientists of their time. Dr. Harlow was Gage's doctor who took out the pole and inspected him throughout his tragic journey. What I learned from my research was quite different from what our book had to say about Dr. Harlow..
I learned that Harlow was a man who enjoyed fame. It is indeed possible that he stretched the truth about Gage's condition. Another doctor, Dr. Bigelow, was said to be the more "believed" doctor because people were skeptical of Harlow's symptoms.
There is good reason to question both doctors. I learned through my research of many cases where people had had similar injuries affecting the same part of the brain Gage did, the frontal cortex. My articles share several different cases of men who were in the armed forces who had had accidents, like a gun back firing into one's head, and they also lived. But in relation to Gage, these men lived a full recovery. Noting no form of personality change, like Gage did. This is what aroused the skeptics to think that maybe Gage's doctors' were just in it for the fame.
One interesting fact I found from one of my articles that suggested why there are so many instances where army men survived blows to the head was that gunpowder is actually a strong antiseptic. So, the men would already have this rubbed all over their heads, so when something happened to them, they were already pretty well sterilized. Also, one case from an article; a man suffered an impact through his head and recovered with mercury and ice to the head with no signs of impairment. Amazing.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/08/28/the-curious-case-of-phineas-gage-and-others-like-him/
--This gives a good overview of what happened to Gage, and also gives different cases on similar happenings to army men.
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=24&editionID=204&ArticleID=1899
--This also gives a good overview of what happened to Gage, and gives great stories about others who went through the same thing, with little to no post-injuries.
http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/04/the-incredible-case-of-phineas-gage/
--Great overview of Gage and other stories. GREAT pictures and videos of exactly where the poll hit Gage's head.
I see that a couple of people have already written about the guillotine and phrenology, two of the more interesting (and more comprehensible) parts of the chapter. One of the most striking things about stories of the guillotine though is the image of the disembodied head, gaping like a fish, staring in mute, abject terror as it is held at arm’s length before its own lifeless corpse. The question of the day was, was Dr. Guillotine’s infamous invention truly an instrument of swift and surgically precise execution - or the cruelest form of torture, as its victims were forced to witness their own dismemberment and contemplate their own imminent, inescapable demise?
As mentioned in the chapter, experts of the day performed various experiments - asking the victims to blink or otherwise respond to commands after the killing blow - yet the results seem inconclusive. Was the blinking a conscious action, or simply a reflex?
Unsurprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hard documentation on this topic. There are a lot of stories and legends - prisoners who seemed to be cursing their executioners and the like - but no cold, hard laboratory analysis. (Of course, maybe someone decided it would be better to keep it all hush-hush, and just make the problem go away.)
You do see stories occasionally where someone falls through the ice on a lake and is submerged for 20 minutes or more, then is revived with no ill effect - when by rights, they should have drowned or at least suffered brain damage. Doesn’t this suggest that the brain can go on functioning without its usual support system, under certain conditions?
Yet in the case of decapitation, they say that the oxygen and chemicals present in the brain will only sustain it for approximately 13 seconds. That seems inconsistent with the preceding to me.
On the other hand, there are those who say that the loss of blood pressure probably causes the individual to lose consciousness after just a few seconds - so that point may be moot, in any case.
Still, it reminds me of that story ('An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' by Ambrose Bierce) of the guy who gets hanged during the Civil War - who imagines himself getting free and making his escape - all in the seconds before the rope actually snaps his neck. What would those few seconds feel like?
What does our consciousness consist of? Is it simply an electrochemical process? Does it turn on and off like a light bulb, or does it slowly fade, like a dying ember?
(These sites are about as reputable and in-depth as you can get on this topic. And The Straight Dope is The Straight Dope.)
Discovery - Top 10 Myths About the Brain - by Shanna Freeman
http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/nervous-system/10-brain-myths6.htm
Info on post-decapitation observations.
About.com - Does The Head Of A Guillotined Individual Remain Briefly Alive? Exploring the 'Revolutionary' Legends - By Robert Wilde
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/thefrenchrevolution/a/dyk10.htm
Info on brain death.
The Straight Dope - Does the head remain briefly conscious after decapitation (revisited)? - by Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1172/does-the-head-remain-briefly-conscious-after-decapitation
Interesting anecdote from an army vet. Spooky!
'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' by Ambrose Bierce
http://www.litvillage.com/short-stories.html
I chose to research reflex action and the early physiological experiments that lead scientists to learn more about how the brain works. I am interested in learning more about how physiology and psychology are intertwined.
Physiology played an important role in the foundation of psychology. In order to better understand the mind-body connection scientists would experiment on animals’ brains, spinal cords and nervous systems. The experiments used falls into the study of the function of living systems; which is physiology. The question was what causes an action; is it a conscious decision (the mind) or an uncontrolled reflex (the body) and, eventually, how does the mind send signals to the body.
This can be seen in the text with regard to the French Revolution. After prisoners were decapitated Theodore Bischoff would run test on the heads. He concluded the movements expressed by the heads were reflexes and the mind could no longer comprehend; the conscious of the victims was no longer viable, but involuntary reflexes were still apparent for up to 30 seconds after decapitation, which remains the scientific thought even today.
Psychology and Physiology study the same series of events, but are interested in different stages of that event. Psychologists are more interested in the reflexes as a response to a stimulus. One example is the body’s response to food. When food is place in front of someone they start to salivate. Psychology looks at the response and tries to replicate it without the food being present or under other conditions; Pavlov dog experiment. Also, when stimulating a frogs muscle will there be a response and what will that response be.
Psychology also looks at whether reflexes are inherited (nature) or learned through the environment (nurture). This opens up a whole new set of questions which is also shared by physiologists, but psychologists focus on it more.
Psychology and physiology share many interests in the study of how the body functions. Psychology focuses more on the individual and their response to an event where physiology focuses on the reflex as it operates with in an organ system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiology
I used this website simply for the technically definition of physiology.
http://www.facsnet.org/international-encyclopedia-1/Action_2.html
I used this website it understand psychology’s stance on reflex action.
http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Kantor/Kantor_1922_d.html
This URL was used to understand the why psychology and physiology are intertwined and psychology and physiology stances on reflex action.
http://www.aintnowaytogo.com/beheading.htm
The information on this site was used to validate the present scientific thought of consciousness after decapitation is still that of Theodore Bischoff’s finding in the 1790s.
While there were many interesting aspects of Chapter 3, I decided to research and learn more about Phineas Gage and tamping iron accident that he survived. In 1848, at the age of 25, Gage was involved in a mining explosion that left a nearly 4 foot long rod through his face and skull. To everyone's surprise, Gage survived, even writing and talking just 30 minutes after the accident. Gage actually walked right in to the doctor's office to be seen. He was attended to by John Harlow, a local physician that already had an interest in phrenology, which is the study of the conformation of the skull as indicative of mental faculties. (Webster's Dictionary) Harlow was immediately intrigued by Gage's case and began taking in depth notes on his patient's "progress." It was not until 1868 that Harlow published a full write-up of the accident and the dramatic changes that Gage experienced afterward. Although Gage survived the accident, the tamping iron victim went from a respected railroad foreman to a vulgar, impatient man. As multiple resources state, he was simply "no longer Gage." Harlow reported that his patient made plans that he quickly abandoned, used horrible language, and developed a very short temper, all characteristics that Gage did not posess before his accident. Harlow reported that these differences in behavior and demeanor were due to the damage that Gage suffered in the frontal cortex area of his brain. Our textook states that Gage was never able to work again, but to my surprise, I did find a website that had slightly imformation. Apparently, Gage sought out Barnum's circus and displayed himself as a sideshow to support himself and his family. Gage returned to San Francisco in 1860 and died one year later of epilepsy, 12 years after his accident.
In researching this topic, I found some additional information that was not listed in our book. In 1994, 130 years after Gage's accident, two neurobiologists at the University of Iowa conducted additional research about this infamous injury. Hanna and Antonio Damasio did not feel that Dr. Harlow was getting the credit he deserved in respect to his work regarding Gage. Since the original skull is on display in the Warren Medical Museum at Harvard, Hanna Damasio used computer modeling and neural imaging techniques to decipher the exact path the tamping rod had taken through the brain. The Damasios agreed with Harlow that Gage's frontal cortex damage was the cause of his personality change, but they added to this information by reporting specific damage to the "underbelly" of these frontal lobes, called the ventromedial region.
I felt proud of my home state and the University of Iowa as I read about the research that Hanna and Antonio Damasio conducted. In my previous blog, I mentioned that I felt "inspired" as I read about Helmholtz and all that he accomplished in his lifetime. I feel it is appropriate to again mention the inspiration that I felt when doing this assignment. When I read about Gage in our textbook, I wanted to know more about how a person could survive such a blow to the head, so I found Googled Phineas Gage and John Harlow. When I found the information about the University of Iowa, I tried to think about the perspective of those two researchers. They were so passionate about Harlow getting the credit he deserved, that they took much of their time and effort to investigate further. In turn, they published new information that is now associated with the case and in turn, are now going down in history with Gage and Harlow.
http://www.neurosurgery.org/cybermuseum/pre20th/crowbar/crowbar.html
(this site provided great information about the findings of Harlow, in regards to Phineas Gage)
http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/04/the-incredible-case-of-phineas-gage/
(this site had some great pictures of the tamping iron and the exact route it took through Gage's brain)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114479/
(this site provided great info about the specifics of Gage's personality change after his accident)
http://www.mesacc.edu/dept/d10/asb/origins/phineas.html
(this was where I found the information about the additional research that was conducted at the University of Iowa)
One of the topics I wrote down as a point of interest was the idea of Phrenology and the doctrine of the Skull. I chose this topic because I knew very little about it and really thought it was more of a gimmick then an actual science. The whole concept of learning everything there is to know about somebody merely by the shape and size of their head. I think that it is a little far fetched to buy into this concept, but the book makes some good points and was an interesting read. I think it ties into the chapter well and fits in nicely with the overall mood of the chapter. However, the most interesting thing to me was the fact that they presented a theory and then showed exactly why it was downgraded to merely a psudoscience, that was unlike many of the other topics that we have read so far. http://www.behavioral.net/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=64D490AC6A7D4FE1AEB453627F1A4A32&id=1E22E65282E94585B9D7806B1DE91FF1&tier=4. Most of the articles I found on the subject were simply histories on the topic, but what i was really looking for was main concepts/ideas so that i could really understand what it was on a simper level. I feel like it is important to understand this idea and a complete and comprehensive level so that it is easier to understand the more abstract ideas and connect it with other ideas. This website allowed me learn basic concepts as well as reinforce the fact that there are serious holes in this field and that it is merely a pseudo science. http://www.science20.com/between_death_and_data/born_evil_rebirth_phrenology-81118
One of the most interesting thing to me was how relevant this pseudoscience is, even today. There are t-shirts, shops, and other pop culture avenues that we see today. So it was interesting,but not surprising, for me to see this whole analyzing of the skull thing make its way into mainstream media. I enjoyed the articles point about the Conan Doyle bit and how it had worked its way into something that is viewed as intellectually advanced as Sherlock Holmes.
One of the topics that interested me most from the chapter was the story of Phineas Gage. The topic caught my attention because of sheer shock value. The man had a steel pole go through his head and he lived! One of the most interesting aspects of this situation is the fact that Gage’s personality changed as a result of the accident. Where once he was upbeat and happy he became vulgar and dissonant. The topic relates to the chapter due to the study of brain process as well as being a prominent case in the history of psychology.
The case was a result of an accident while working during railroad construction. Gage became the unfortunate victim of a tamping rod that became a projectile due to the explosives being lit while the rod was in the rock. The rod flew through the air and struck Gage. The rod was projected with such force it flew through Gages head and was recovered 30 yards away from the incident. After it happened Gage was able to walk after just a few minutes. After being treated Gage made what some would call a full recovery. However, those close to Gage saw a dramatic change in his personality. He became severely impatient and vulgar. This change has brought about questions by researchers for years since the tamping iron basically removed the front part of his brain. Gage unable to return to his former job lived out the rest of his days until his heath began to deteriorate. When this happened he went back to stay with his mother where he passed away.
The removal of this part of his brain gave researchers cause to believe that the front of the brain has much to do with one’s personality. Gage’s story gave researchers information regarding what a lobotomy of a human’s brain might do to the person. The accident also gave researchers a great insight to how brain surgery might be conducted.
http://www.deakin.edu.au/hmnbs/psychology/gagepage/PgLobot.php This link i used to help determine what might have caused his personality change.
http://www.mainstreetmuseum.org/wiki/index.php?title=Phineas_Gage This link I used to get more background info as well as what happened after the accident.
http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/04/the-incredible-case-of-phineas-gage/
This link I used to get more background info as well as what happened after the accident.
There were plenty of interesting topics to delve further into from this chpater. I decided to research more on Pierre Flourens and his method of ablation. I found Flourens and his method very intersting because ablation is something I don't know much about and I think its interesting to see how certain parts of the brain are removed, what still can function and what doesn't work.
Pierre Flourens was a child prodigy getting his medical degree at the ripe age of 19, even though many men this age were getting degrees. Flourens was highly intelligent. At this time Gall and his idea of phrenology were being questioned by some and they asked Flourens to try and find if phrenology had some reality to it. Flourens's ideas were opposite entirely to Gall and his theories of phrenology. Gall believed that the personality is determined by the skull shape (which has been proven incorrect). Flourens devloped the method of ablation to test Gall's ideas about the brain. Flourens believed that the brain worked together, and by removing parts of the brain, that the subject would still be able to function. Flourens removed certain parts such as the cerbellum in his subjects (mainly birds) which effected the motor coordination. He removed many different parts and noticed the different side affects and what parts stopped working. He did find if the brain stem was destroyed, this caused death because the medulla contains life-sustaining reflexs such as circulation and respiration. He also learned that in his pigeons when the cerebellum hemisphere is removed they lose all cognitive functions.
Flourens is an important part to psychology and this chapter because he had an important role in the progress of psychology and the functioning of the brain.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117745/
This site had some really good information on the parts Flourens removed.
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n01/frenolog/frenloc.htm
This site had Flourens and other many important scientists who studied the brain and how it works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwDFR5FFBa0
This is a neat clip about what happens when certain things in the cortex gets scrambled around and what it does to the motor movement
http://content.karger.com/produktedb/produkte.asp?typ=fulltext&file=000206858
This is where the majority of my information came from, it described many important aspects of Flourens life and his findings.
I am very interested in the science of phrenology and the different specializations of each area of the brain. Developed by Franz Joseph Gall, phrenology was a huge theory in the development of psychology. All human faculties can be identified and located in the different parts of the brain, and this is very interesting to me. This fits into the chapter in that there is an entire large section of the book devoted to the localization of brain function and the work of Franz Joseph Gall.
The first idea that I found interesting during my research was the hypothesis that the shape of the skull can tell us something about a person's mental faculties. The theory was that the cranial bone conforms to accommodate each individual's differently-shaped brain, and a person's skill level in a particular area can be determined simply by measuring the area of the skull overlying the brain portion associated with that skill. For example, according to this theory, a person who is particularly gifted at musical instruments would have a larger-sized part of the brain than another individual who has no interest/skill in music. Gall utilized something he called a "brain map," using a caliper and his fingers to measure size and find bumps, then corresponding each indent or bump to a section of the brain.
Another point I found interesting in the theory of phrenology was its history. Originally, I was under the impression that phrenology was discovered by Gall. However, the first person to actually locate the mental abilities of each different area of the brain was Aristoteles, though Gall was the first to actually measure the shape of the skull. Gall was also the first to consider the brain to be the center of all mental activity, probably the reason he was thought of as the initiator of phrenology. In the Victorian age especially, phrenology was a very big deal. People consulted phrenologists on many various issues, including hiring employees and searching for a mate! However, once psychoanalysis came around, phrenology began to fall out of favor with society, which leads me to my next point of interest.
Phrenology now tends to be thought of as a pseudoscience, a laughable theory. There have been so many neurological advances that now the thought of measuring one's skull seems silly to us. Feeling the hills and valleys of a person's skull just isn't a valid predictor of their behavioral tendencies, imagine that! However, regardless of whether or not it is taken seriously in today's views of psychology, phrenology is definitely a very important historical breakthrough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
Wikipedia had a ton of great information on phrenology, Gall, and the history of the science. It especially described Gall's methods and history in great detail.
http://www.phrenology.org/intro.html
This site seemed just a tiny bit fishy to me; however, it seemed to have some pretty valid info on the origins of phrenology. It also talked about the idea of using phrenology in modern psychology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQWn-QnEmEk
I thought this youtube video was very interesting! It was all about the different areas of the brain determined by phrenology and the abilities/feelings associated with those areas. I found the range of abilities to be pretty interesting.
As a result of reading this chapter I have found a lot of interesting topics to expand upon. I felt that the most interesting topic was the case of Phineas Gage. This chapter had a lot of discussion about the brain. The case of Phineas Gage fits into this chapter because it is a story of a man who was working on the railroad and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. After reading these articles and watching this video clip I learned why Phineas Gage suffered so little. I was interested in this topic because I remember learning about it in high school and thought it was one of the most fascinating things we looked at. When I look over the facts of what happened, it does not seem possible that he could be conscious after something like that. It is curious how something that looks so painful be as tolerating as it was for Phineas. The brain does some extraordinary things. In my opinion Phineas caught that tamping iron in a pretty good place.
Dr. Harlow was responsible for treating Phineas Gage. I couldn't imagine what must have been passing through his head at the time he saw Phineas. Considering the time period they were in he must have just been overwhelmed with what he had on his plate. How could he have had any belief that this man was still alive? Dr. Harlow put a lot of time studying Phineas after his recovery. Some feel that what Dr. Harlow had to say was a little far fetched. What can anybody trust these days? I would probably have to stand by what Dr. Harlow said even if his tale was a tad flexible. The man helped save Phineas's. It was a miracle how it all played out. The odds of something like this ever happening again are very slim. Very interesting stuff.
http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/04/the-incredible-case-of-phineas-gage/
This source a good article on the case of Phineas Gage. This article portrayed some background of Phineas Gage and later describing the accident. It also had good illustrations of the accident as well.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114479/
This source was another good article on the case of Phineas Gage. It describe information on what happened at the scene and how it affected Phineas Gage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCXOrNc99yY
I chose this as one of my sources because I remember watching this clip in my high school psychology class. I thought it was a great illustration of what probably happened to Phineas Gage.
I really wanted to research experiments that used ablation, specifically with the brain. This task seems extremely difficult, especially in the time period described in the text. I was curious how some of these physiologists were successful, and what they were able to find through these experiments. Chapter 3 discussed a few of Pierre Flourens’s experiments, and I wanted to find more examples, maybe more recent.
Ablative brain surgery targets a specific part of the brain that needs to be removed, and either burns or freezes that part so it is no longer functional. I have a video link to part of an ablation surgery, which I think is very cool, but it may be too much for others. I advise that if you are uncomfortable seeing a brain be cut into pieces, you should probably not watch this video. The video doesn’t say what animal it is, but the bran looks fairly large. I am guess it is a mammal of some kind. There are four parts to the video, but this one had the most “action.”
Brain ablation is done in animals to identify which part of the brain affects which bodily functions. Learning where these areas are will help scientists figure out how to treat humans with various dysfunctions. Ablation has been used in humans to treat various diseases and psychological disorders, such as Parkinson’s, cluster headaches, schizophrenia, and depression. China has used ablation to treat schizophrenia in the past, but has since banned this practice. The disorder I was able to find most about was Parkinson’s.
In Parkinson’s patients, the surgeon tries to destroy the tissue that makes abnormal chemical or electrical impulses that result in the classic Parkinson’s symptoms, tremors and dyskinesia. There are two different places in the brain that can be ablated, either the Globus pallidus, or the thalamus. The illustration below is a good picture depicting where in the brain these two structures are (link #5). The procedure that removes the Globus pallidus is called a pallidotomy. In this procedure, surgeons put in hole in the globus pallidus, which is (hopefully) supposed to relieve the dyskinesia. In a thalamotomy, on the other hand, a hole is made in the thalamus in order to eliminate tremors. There is also a third procedure, called a cryothalamotomy, which uses a very cold probe to freeze the areas of the thalamus responsible for producing tremors. One thing that surprised me (and freaked me out a little) was that the patient is awake the entire procedure! This is so the surgeon can see if the surgery worked right away by whether or not the dyskinesia and tremors subsided. Only a local anesthetic is used, and since the brain has no sensitivity to pain, it can be manipulated without pain to the patient.
Most of the time ablation surgery today is done using a laser. Many times, it may be difficult to judge how much tissue to destroy without damaging healthy tissue surrounding it. One particular procedure I found was called Visualase, where the surgeon is guided by an MRI to make incisions and precisely ablate a particular problem area. The procedure is minimally invasive and has been reported in medical journals to be pain free and require a shorter recovery time than other laser surgeries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_brain_surgery - This resource talked about what brain ablation is and the different types of diseases it is used to treat.
http://www.visualaseinc.com/ - The website gave a good description of a specific technique for laser brain ablation called Visualase.
http://www.healthcommunities.com/parkinsons-disease/surgery.shtml - This site describes brain ablation in Parkinson’s disease patients to help treat different symptoms of the disorder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnSbHGJBsIw&feature=related - This video illustrates a temporal lobe ablation in Madrid, Spain. WARNING: If you are squeamish, I would suggest you not watch this.
http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/upload/2006/12/basal-ganglia.jpg - This picture shows the location of the Globus pallidus and the thalamus.
The topic I decided to look into further was phrenoloy. I chose this topic because it just seems so bizarre and interesting that you can possibly tell a persons personality just on regions on the head. I decided to learn more about the regions and their meanings. According to phrenology there could be anywhere between 27 to 38 regions that can be looked on the head. Each of these is unique. Amativeness is one of these regions and it deals a lot with human emotions such as love and attraction. An excess in this area means the person had lewd and obscene behavior while a deficiency means a lack of affection. There are several more interesting regions such as philoprogenitiveness and concentrativeness. There are also general faculties and areas that are grouped together. They are the areas of intellect, the energetical faculties, the moral faculties, and the area of love. To find these areas and do readings phrenologists would usually use their bare hands to search for raises and pits in the head and would look at a chart to help them decipher the areas and meanings. They would also occasional use other devices such as tape measures and callipers.
http://www.phrenology.org/faculty.html
- This site contains a lot of information on phrenology and has both arguments for and against the issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQWn-QnEmEk
- This video is a segment from a long one. It show some sections that phrenologist would have looked at and described them.
http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/overview.htm
- This site also contained a lot of general information and talked about how phrenology was performed and why it was so popular.
The thought that I could instantly know someone’s personality, behavior, and skills just by measuring the person’s head seems kind of foolish today, but this idea had scientific backing and was commonly accepted by the public for many years in the 18th and 19th centuries. The pseudoscience of phrenology to many seemed to crack one of life’s mysteries at the time of using modern scientific methods (at the time that is) to study one’s physical body and instantly know some major characteristics about the person was the basis behind phrenology. It fits into the chapter because of the idea of localization of function of the brain which scientists were attempting to figure out what parts of the brain served specific what specific functions. One of those theories was the science of phrenology. I’m interested in the topic because for me I can’t understand how something that seems so ridiculous now could gain such large widespread acceptance only a couple hundred years ago. When I get to thinking about it however, I wonder if there are scientific theories and certain sciences that exist today in which in 50 years we will look at and wonder how did we ever believe that? So for that reason I find it interesting as well I like looking at the phrenology sketch of different sections of the brain and see the corresponding characteristics of that section of the brain.
Phrenology was one of the leading pseudo sciences during the 1800’s and was started by the Viennese physician Franz Josef Gall. He believed you could determine a person’s character by measuring the bumps on their head. Gall had seen pictures of Mozart composing music leaning on the piano with his knuckle against his temple so he assumed that must be the location of musical skills. He also had two acquaintances that were low-life characters with large bumps above their ears so he called that part of the brain acquisitiveness. He went along and characterized the parts of the brain based on different instances like the previous two described. Walt Whitman was a follower of phrenology and made phrenology references in many of his poems. However, the author Mark Twain was a great debunker of phrenology and made fun of the science. The psychograph was a machine created in support of the science of phrenology which would measure the thirty-two mental faculties of the skull depicted by Gall and give a rating between one and five, five being very superior and one being deficient. Orson and Lorenzo Fowler brought a head with the phrenology numberings depicted on it from England and popularized phrenology in America in the early 1800s. The first phrenological society was founded in Edinburgh in 1820. The society in Edinburgh as well as other societies that were created led to the publications of journals and scientific meetings on phrenology. The first such journal, Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, began in 1823. By 1838, of the 1,000 members of the English phrenological societies, about 170 members were physicians and surgeons. After the flawed scientific basis of Phrenology was realized it was no longer considered a real science. However, it did provide the basis of cerebral regional specificity, which is, that specific areas of the brain have designated functions. As Simpson says, "phrenology thinking played an important part of the growth of clinical neurology in the second half of the nineteenth century." Gall contributed to the ongoing debate of the origins of personality (nature versus nurture) by emphasizing areas of the brain as fundamental to personality types, and later research found that mental and neurologic disorders can be tied to specific areas of the brain. MRIs have demonstrated specific locations of brain activity in Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and ADHD. The mental faculties of the brain set up by Gall were split into eight different sections: DOMESTIC PROPENSITIES, SELFISH PROPENSITIES, ASPIRING AND GOVERNING ORGANS, MORAL SENTIMENTS, PERFECTIVE FACULTIES, PERCEPTIVE FACULTIES, LITERARY FACULTIES, REASONING FACULTIES. Each mental faculty contained a description of what the area was for and also included what the characteristics of the person will be if the mental faculty is in excess or is deficient. For example, one mental faculty in the selfish propensities is called ‘destructiveness.’ Its description states, “executiveness; propelling power; the exterminating feeling.” Its excess description states, “the malicious, retaliating, revengeful, and murderous disposition.” Its deficiency description states, “tameness; inefficiency, and want of resolution.”
http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/psychist.htm This website gives a nice description of the psychograph and the commercial marketing power it had for a few years before it died out.
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/phrenology/phrenology_frames.html This website shows every mental faculty depicted by Gall along with a description of the mental faculty as well as some attributes for people with an excess or deficiency in the mental faculty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80dZ71Km6_g This video, while definitely being on the side of not taking phrenology seriously at all and poking a little fun at it, still gives a good description of the basics of phrenology as well as a demonstration of the psychograph in use.
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?action=interpret&id=GALE|A159594448&v=2.1&u=uni_rodit&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&authCount=1 This article from “Behavioral Healthcare” gives the origins of phrenology while summing up at the end the influence that phrenology did have on the modern understanding of the brain.
I’m doing my topic on Paul Broca. His case with Tan was interesting to me so I’d like to learn more about him and his studies. We all read the story about Tan, whose real name is M. Leborgen, so now it’s time to learn more about Broca other studies he did throughout his lifetime.
Pierre Paul Broca was born on June 28, 1824 in Sainte-Foy-Grande France. He had a normal childhood and when he turned seventeen in 1841 he attended the University of Paris. His parents strongly encouraged him to go into the medical field, which he did. In three years he graduated from medical school with degrees in physics, mathematics, and literature. In 1848 he returned to the University of Paris and become the youngest prosector of the medical department. Within twenty years of his life Broce had already achieved so much, but for the rest of his life he would achieve so much more.
In his later years Broca become a neuroanatomist, polygenist, anatomist, physician, surgeon, and an anthropologist. He started to look at things like cancer pathology, aneurysms, the mortality rate of infants and the human brain. The part of the brain that was of most interest to Broca was the limbic system, which is a major part of emotions, and the rhinencephalon.
In 1858 he developed the Anthropological Institute in Paris. He was also the founder of other institutes like the Anthropological Society and the School of Anthropology. Not everyone was thrilled about Broca’s findings. The Roman Catholic Political Party would be the prime example. In 1876 they held a campaign that ran against Broca’s institutes and his teachings. This didn’t stop him from his works.
What is Broca mostly known for? Finding the Broca’s area of course! Tan was one of two people that Broca examinded. The other was a man of eighty four who was a lot like Tan. The man’s name was LeLong and he had, like Tan, lost his speech. Broca examined the man’s brain and found that the right side was healthy and working like it should. The left side however had a lesion, or a cut. From the time this took place to 1863, Broca found twenty five people with the same problem. The damaged part of the brain soon got a name, the Broca’s area.
I found a couple other interesting things about Broca that doesn’t quite fit the top part. So this next part is what I found interesting about Broca. As I mentioned earlier he was a polygenist. He believes that each race is a separate “species”. He conducted a study of each races craniums. From this he wrote about how closely some races are.
The other interesting thing about Broca is his brain collection. Over the years he collected 140 women brains and 292 men brains. That’s a lot of brain power! With all his brains he did some research and this is what he found. A brain of a modern person is smaller than to those of a prehistoric person. Adults are smarter than the elderly. And the final I don’t agree with, women are less intelligent than men. Since I’m a women I would of course not agree with that .
">http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/1982.html--> This is a pretty awesome site. It has a ton of information about Broca, even about the case with Tan. I got a lot of good, useable information out of this website.
">http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/130/5/1432.full--> This is a pretty neat site. It mostly talks about Broca’s find of the brain and the area of the brain conveniently called Broca’s Area.*
">http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/broca.htm--> This is one of the best sites I came across. It goes into his early years. This is also the site where I learned Tan’s real name!*
">http://web.sau.edu/WaterStreetMaryA/Broca.htm--> I didn’t use much from this article, but it is a neat time line of Broca’s life and findings that I thought would be great for this topic.*
">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Broca--> I usually try to stay away from Wikipedia because I’ve always been told not to use it, but I find it to have a lot of great information that is very useful for assignments like these. This is where I got must of Broca background information at.*
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/80601/Paul-Broca --> this one is really short but I did find a thing or two of information (that’s the only reason why it’s on here and why its last on the list).*
In previous courses, such as biological psychology, we learned about Broca’s area. When it came up in chapter three, I was immediately interested. I do not remember hearing the story of “Tan,” and I found it so fascinating that I wanted do more investigating about Broca and his discoveries. I decided that I would like to do a deeper search regarding more about Broca's discoveries,what the results of damage are, and what causes damage to the area.
Broca actually had two patients with speech disabilities. One was a 51 year old man names Leborgne or “Tan.” The only word he could say was “tan.” He could change the tone of the word, but it was the only word he was capable of saying. During this man’s autopsy, a lesion on his frontal cortex was found. His second patient was 84 years old and names Lelong. Lelong could only say 5 words. The same lesion was found during Lelong’s autopsy. In future autopsies he found that the majority of the lesions occurred in the left-hemisphere of the brain. Broca’s area was the first area to be describes with a specific function.
A recent case of a patient with Broca’s aphasia is Sarah Scott. She shows signs that have been discussed earlier. She has progressed very far, as you can see progressive videos on youtube, but her first video shows that while she can phrase more than one word, she cannot form full understandable sentences. She often seems to have a loss of words, as if she can think it, but cannot say it. Some common causes of Broca’s aphasia are strokes, hard blows to the head, and brain tumors. In Sarah’s case, she had a stroke.
Broca’s area has been found to control the muscles of the larynx and the mouth, which describes why language issues result from damage to this area. In recent research, the brains of Leborgne and Lelong have been looked at and the results show evidence other than what Broca had stated. The damage was found right behind Broca’s area. Broca's work is still held with high respect, but it is being investigated as to whether or not Broca’s area is the only area involved in speech.
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/130/5/1432.full.pdf This article was used to get more information about Broca's discoveries, including stories on Leborgne and Lelong.
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_10/d_10_cr/d_10_cr_lan/d_10_cr_lan.html This article was good to use to check my facts on Broca's work. It also helped me to decipher the difference between Broca's area and Wernicke's area.
http://www.medicinenet.com/aphasia/article.htm#tocd This article helped me figure out the causes of aphasia.
http://internetmd.info/brocas-aphasia-sarah-scott-teenage-stroke/ this is the link to the video of Sarah Scott. It also tells her story about having a stroke and what she is doing to helps the symptoms.
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/07/old_brains.php This article gave me a resource of new information about areas involved in speech.
There were so many things that I really found interesting in this chapter that I actually had a hard time choosing. I decided since I fancy sharp objects and learning about things that would make most people cringe, I would go with the Guillotine invented by French physician, Joseph Guillotin.
This topic fits in with this chapter because the chapter is primarily discussing the nervous system and how the brain works. By using the Guillotine, it was being tested if someone could function a brief time after execution. I was interested in this because it sounds cool that a device such as this was invented to cut a persons head off. I wonder why today we do not opt for using the Guillotine instead of lethal injection, which I have read studies that this method can cause pain to the person being executed.
To start with, it was a question in the 19th century as to whether or not this device that was created in the 1700's was humane. Did the brain control our voluntary actions? Did the person feel any pain? This is where the Guillotine comes into play. For those who do not know, according to the Webster dictionary, a Guillotine is "A machine for beheading a person by one stroke of a heavy ax or blade, which slides in vertical guides, is raised by a cord, and let fall upon the neck of the victim.
This question was brought up by Theodor Bischoff, who wanted to study and conduct tests on these decapitated criminal heads. It was said that the Guillotine acted quickly, was very clean, but also left bodies twitching for a brief moment following execution. Was awareness and pain present after this process was completed? Bischoff decided that in order to conduct these tests, he would thrust fingers toward the eyes of the severed head, cruelly speak the word "pardon!" into the severed head, or place smelling salts under the nose. If this worked, reasoned Bischoff, then there must be consciousness that remained. Eventually Bischoff ended these tests by concluding that consciousness must reside in the brain, and therefore the Guillotine must be humane. Even though Bischoff concluded that consciousness ends the moment of execution, it was still unknown as to why these bodies were having muscle twitches.
The Guillotine was used in France until 1981 when the death penalty was officially abolished. The last person to ever be executed by Guillotine in France was Hamida Djandoubi. This person was executed for being a torture-murderer. No one knows if Hamida showed any signs of twitching once executed, but today it is believed that these twitching reactions are just random or can be automatic reflex action.
http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/guillotine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken (Just for fun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo5BBHtn4tM
http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/frenchrevolution/a/Guillotine.htm
Left my comments out again...
The first website is just a simple definition of the Guillotine.
The second website really gave good information about how the Guillotine was used and insight as to whether it was humane or not.
The third website was just for fun since we had discussed the headless chicken in class.
The fourth website which is a video shows the reader how a Guillotine actually works. It's still okay for people with a weak stomach, it doesn't show anything bloody.
The last website gives a detailed description on how the machine works. If someone was unable to watch the video, this would be a good site to visit.
A well know slogan for phrenology was the statement Know Thy Self. This statement alone could sum up the general idea of phrenology however; that statement does not do phrenology justice. Although it has been discredited I see phrenology as very unique and interesting because, it was popular to a lot of people for a significant period of time. I enjoyed doing research on this topic because it allowed me to learn a lot more about how phrenology was done, and why so many people would by into a pseudo science along with a lot of other interesting things.
The original technique for phrenology involved having a phrenologist run their palms across an individuals head. This was done to try and locate any bumps or crevices in on the head that may be abnormal. Although this is not a real science those who practiced it were very skilled at what they do and were able to notice abnormalities in skull structures. Another technique was created when Henry Lavery patented the psychograph in 1905. This machine would measure the head and then a printer would print out a report that was unique to the individual. The creation of this device on increased the popularity of phrenology.
Another question that weighed on my mind as I researched this topic was why would so many people by into a pseudo science? I was able to formulate two reasons. The first reason I believe people by in is because the individuals marketing phrenology appeared to be very intelligent people. The second reason is because of a concept I learned called subjective validation. When talking about the marketers of phrenology I will focus solely on the individuals involved with the Fowler and Wells publishing house. The Fowlers were made up of Orson (Amherst Graduate), Lorenzo (studies at Amherst), and Charlotte (academy educated). Charlotte then married Samuel Wells who was a medical student, making this group of well educated individuals. The second reason people bought into phrenology was subjective validation. Subjective validation is the defined as a cognitive bias in which an individual with view information or a statement as correct if it is of significance to them. This probably play a big role in why some individuals who were diagnose as smart or as great people by phrenologist would not object to it.
At this present time it seems to me that phrenology should have never been believed by anyone. From my research on it I can see why some people may have bought into it at the time it was very popular however. The presenters of this information appeared very educated, and the also had great marketing ability. Also it is always hard for some people to reject things that sound good to their ears, which would have been the case for some. All in all I loved this topic because it was interesting to research a pseudoscience.
http://www.google.com/search?q=subjective+validation+wiki&rlz=1I7DLUS_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7
Introduced me to Subjective validation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80dZ71Km6_g
Gave me morePhrenology/psychograph history
http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/psycogrf.htm
Went into depth about the psychograph
http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/overview.htm
Explained to me the technique used by phrenologist and also more history
http://www.pilgrimhall.org/Phrenology3.htm
Explained the lifestyle of the Fowlers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_validation
Definition of subjective validation
The topic I chose to write about from chapter 3 was how enlightenment ideas of the time contributed to the idea of psychology to be treated as a science and also as to other topics such as the guillotine, phrenology and the research of Lashley and Helmholtz. This goes with the chapter in that these sources show how the enlightenments new way of thinking helped to contribute and create a supportive and positive environment for these new psychological developments to occur. I am interested in it because so many new discoveries were made in an age where there was still much opposition to new ways of thinking. The fact that some of these new discoveries were made in the 1500-1700’s is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vkx7hNXE3Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDesbafzYWs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO1NkB4_zzQ&feature=related
All three of my sources are videos on the enlightenment and present and approach the information in different ways.
I was very surprised throughout chapter three because the things that were discovered and the experiments that were done were just mind boggling. However, something that captured my attention among all of them was Helmholtz on vision, audition, and the problem of perception. There have been many studies that have proved that we, as individuals, tend to be more confident than realistic. When it comes to perception, we would be surprised on how our mind plays tricks on us.
I am actually taking Kim’s Psychology and Law class along with this one, so when perception came up I was able to relate a lot of the information. First, when discussing perception, it is important to remember that there are different types of perception. There is perceptual organization, depth perception, figure ground perception, law of simplicity, shape constancy, color constancy, and many more. What’s so interesting is the fact that we all feel what we see is what we get. This isn’t always the case, in fact, we all see something different. When going through the different types of perception I thought to myself that I could be a good eyewitness because I have a tendency to pay attention to a lot of things others may not. What I realized is that when put in that type of situation I may not remember what it was I actually witnessed. I found a good clip that proved to me that I don’t always see everything. This test on perception showed a team wearing black shirts and the other wearing white shirts. This video asked the viewer to count how many passes the white shirted team made. The answer is thirteen and I thought, “Well, that was easy.” Then it asked if you saw the moonwalking bear that went across the screen. I thought for sure, once I was told to watch for it, that they put that in the second part of the clip to throw me off. The fact is, it was there the whole time. The whole point is, “it’s easy to miss something we aren’t looking for.” That’s the truth!
Perception is very important in many ways. We do not realize how bad our perception is until it is shown to us first hand. However, when it comes to eyewitnesses (relating this to my Psychology and Law class) many people take their word. Officers and the jury are swayed by an eyewitness. They believe that because the person was there, they know what they are talking about. FALSE! Memory is distorted in many ways and perception is one of the biggest. For example, research suggests that people group colors into eleven categories. How can we rely on one person’s perception of a color when they only put it in one of the eleven categories? There have also been studies that show we overestimate slow speeds and underestimate high speeds. Another important thing to remember that memory is also bias toward expected events. My whole point is, we all have a different perception of the world and to rely heavily just on what we see is unrealistic, in a court case especially. There should be more reliable evidence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNGwGGOjifY : This was the youtube clip that gave the test on perception. I still find it crazy how our perception isn’t as good as we think it may be.
http://academics.tjhsst.edu/psych/oldPsych/perception/types.html : This was a good website because it listed all of the different types of perception and it was in simple form. There wasn’t a lot of mumbo jumbo, it was straight forward and to the point, I like that!
http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/eyewitnessmemory.html : I really liked this website because I was able to look closer at why eyewitness testimonies are unreliable. This also gave me a better understanding of not only perception but also what to watch out for when I get to our mock trial.
I spent an opportunity or two worth of time pondering the image of a Vitalism and Materialism. So I thought about how I continue to think of memories and how I need to write them down more as I think of them because ways of writing things is not to far away.
He played in sand laying inside a huge tire laying in a sand-bottomed playground. Sweat bees were in the sand and it Norwalk, Iowa and the bees never stung him, he just remembered them. He ate plums from his Mom’s fridge while she was at work and called her there to tell her that he and his friend Chance would be planted the plum seeds backyard. So he and Chance planted the seeds and dug up a red ant empire which bit them each a few times on the forearms and legs. They were sneaky, the ants, and so were the boys I guess. After planted plum trees in the fall he wore his black shoes with neon green shoe laces in the winter to go sledding instead of his snow boots. This was not a good choice. School was chain wallets and cassette tapes. In third grade he was allowed to chew gum in class when he agreed to stop “talking so much.” Chewing gum was never allowed in class, he got special treatment to stop being bad. “That was when I was smart,” he used to say, years later.
Sorry Please.
Phrenology is a topic that I find very interesting because it seems very obscure to people in this day and age, but back in the late 1700’s it was considered to be very legitimate. This is related to psychology because phrenologists were doing the same thing psychologists try to do and figure out the human mind in order to help people with their problems. We now know that phrenology is incorrect and we have a better understanding of the brain and its functions.
Some of the different areas that phrenologists distinguished were very interesting. For instance Philoprogenitiveness located in the the lower back side of the head is for parental love and includes the love for pets. Another example is Continuity and in excess this would cause an individual to tell long stories. I found it very interesting how detailed these phrenology descriptions were. Some almost seemed like a horoscope, and saying what your future was. The different areas were very extensive and most traits seemed to fall within these categories.
Phrenology became a popular practice and it was used in some cases to select a marriage partner or decision for hiring an individual. People were serious about this practice, and had faith that the readings about a person were accurate. This is like psychoanalysis for an individual today, it was believed to tell a lot about an individual. Phrenologists also had to do a lot of studying to figure out how to read a persons head. There were charts with many different sections, and they would have to learn the issues that went along with too much or too little of something in this area of the head. This may seem like a joke today, but it was taken very seriously back then.
Now, with better technology and more knowledge of the brain, we know that phrenology is a pseudoscience and inaccurate. We know that the brain does have centralized areas for certain things such as sight being located in the occipital lobe, but not in the way that phrenologists mapped the brain. We know that the size or shape of the brain makes no difference to intelligence or anything. People with bigger heads are not smarter than people with smaller heads, and people with oddly shaped heads are no different than someone with a nice oval head. This “science” has been proven wrong, but phrenology was still important to psychology today. We are able to see the early attempts of helping people with problems and attempts to understand the human mind. I think it is important to know about the precursors to psychology, because it is where psychology came from.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQWn-QnEmEk
http://www.phrenology.org/intro.html
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/phrenology/phrenology_frames.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
The guillotine. What a brutal object of history. It’s amazing, though, that it offered opportunities for learning how the nervous system worked and the affect it had on consciousness.
Our book tells us that Theodor Bischoff investigated the claims that the severed heads – post-guillotine – were aware and the facial muscles would “quiver.” He used smelling salts, sudden movement toward the eyes, and the saying of “Pardon!” into a severed head’s ear. Since it elicited no reaction, Bischoff concluded that consciousness ended at the moment the body is decapitated.
But… it doesn’t seem as cut-and-dry as that. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wZIYP7ucHs - video covering the controversy of consciousness after beheading) There are reports of lucid decapitation that date back to the hay day of the guillotine.
I found a story about Dr. Beaurieux and his experiments on the head of the condemned Languille. http://www.guillotine.dk/Pages/30sek.html He said the eyes and mouth worked themselves in a rhythmic fashion for the first few seconds after decapitation, then the eyes half-closed and came to rest. This is what he then witnessed:
“It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: "Languille!" I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions – I insist advisedly on this peculiarity – but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts.
Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealing with the sort of vague dull look without any expression, that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me. "After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out.
It was at that point that I called out again and, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time. The there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete. I attempted the effect of a third call; there was no further movement – and the eyes took on the glazed look which they have in the dead.”
That seems to go against what Bischoff found (and I have to consider their motives… was Bischoff trying to verify that the guillotine was a safe method of execution? Was he motivated by science or compensation or fear of punishment? Was Beaurieux motivated by desire for notoriety or being subversive? Was he trying to make the people in power look like brutes?)
Clearly, it’s not a good idea to base assumptions on only unconfirmed anecdotal evidence, especially one severed head. Just because Bischoff’s subject didn’t react doesn’t mean that all heads won’t react or have consciousness.
My husband told me of a story he’d seen on TV of a professor (Lavoisier http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi728.htm) who’d been sentenced to death. The story goes: Lavoisier told his assistant to watch him after decapitation, and he promised to blink as many times as he could. The assistant supposedly watched him blink over a dozen times or for as many as 20 seconds.
While I could find mention of the story being used on a Discovery Channel program, I couldn’t verify that it was true (in fact, it seems that it is improbable since 28 people were scheduled to be executed within 35 minutes, leaving little time for observation and no room for courtesies such as having loyal assistants hovering around http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=36;t=000797;p=1). I DID find a few stories that seem to refute what Bischoff claimed.
One story came from a man in Korea in 1989 (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1172/does-the-head-remain-briefly-conscious-after-decapitation). He and his friend were allegedly in a traffic accident where the man was pinned in his car as his friend was decapitated. This is the quote:
“My friend's head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression … and he was dead.”
I cannot verify a second or original source on that story, but found it to have permeated the internet community enough to include it. I should also mention there had been several other noted attempts to get severed heads of prisoners to react to stimuli that were unsuccessful.
I’d never realized just how controversial this topic had been at the time, and how many viewed the guillotine as a brutal and humiliating form of punishment (so much so that the Nazis had a fascination with them and had several dozen built to execute prisoners). It seems logical that the brain would continue to function after decapitation, even if it’s only for a handful of moments. It absolutely relates to our subject matter since it investigates the connection between our bodies and consciousness.
I had a funny moment while looking up this topic. I stumbled upon what seemed like a textbook, and as I read it, it sounded eerily familiar. http://www.wiley.com/college/goodwin/0471128058/ch03.pdf It was a previous (?) version of our current textbook by Godwin.
When deciding what I wanted to have more information about, I choose to look into information about Phineas Gage and his accident. I did not care to know more about what he did but in general his accident. Gage was involved in an accident that could have ended his life at the sense. Phineas was foreman of a work gang blasting rock while preparing the railroad for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad outside the town of Cavendish, Vermont. Once a hold was bred into a body of rocks, Gage was responsible for adding blasting powder, a fuse, and sand, then compact the charge into the hole using a large iron rod. The gun powder caused a premature explosion` carrying the iron rod through his head an inch and a forth in diameter, then it was three feet and seven inches in length. This was a very long object that was being projected through his head.
I found that it was very interesting that after the incident happened Phineas spoke a few minutes after and then with little to no assistance he then walked to the cart that was going to bring his into town and sat upright and waited to get brought into town. I found out that at one point Gage vomited and part of his brain came out of his head and fell on to the floor. Gage’s injury bleed for two days and then later caused an infection which caused semicousiosness. His condition became so bad that they had a coffin prepared for him. I felt that the medical options that they have now could of saved him awhile longer, compared to the medical they had back in the days when this accident happened. Gabe throughout the time got better, but at times he would get sick again. Phineas was blind in the left eye and his left side of his face was very weak.
All that he wanted was to go home to his parents’ home. Gage’s accident made his personality and behavior different from how he was before. Gage was told by others that he was no longer Gage. Phineas made is way to travel a little before his death. When he traveled he brought his tampered throughout New England. He did work for a while in Vermont and then Chile. When he noticed that his health was getting worse, he went home to be under the care of his mother and sister. There was about twelve years after the incident before he died. It is stated in some sources that Phineas died of epilepsy. Gage was able to enjoy the last parts of his live before he passed away.
Overall I found it very interesting about what had happened to him. In further reading I was just so interested about that the damage that was done to his brain was in the frontal cortex. Which could have damaged the short term memory, motor attention, and inhibitory control. This would have caused his change in personality
This reading that I did was so interesting and I was able to get a better idea , along with more information about what happened and how it affected Phineas. I felt like I was able to learn more about the mind and the body. I was so shocked that he spoke afterwards and was able to walk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
This website gave me more information on Phineas and I was able to read more information about his accident as well.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114479/
This is a journal article which I thought would be great to add to my resources.
http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/04/the-incredible-case-of-phineas-gage/
This site is also informal but I wanted to get a deeper in site on his accident.
http://www.deakin.edu.au/hmnbs/psychology/gagepage/Pgdamage.htm
This last website allowed me to look more about the injury to his skull!
There were a lot of topics in this chapter that I found interesting but the topic in that I found most interesting in this chapter was the phrenology. I found this topic interesting because of the fact that this theory proposed by Gall and Spurzhiem seemed to be relevant and popular for a while and suddenly lost its popularity and its relevance, also the possible motivations behind this theory. This topic is relevant to the chapter as this chapter is about the time physiological theories started developing and this theory proposed by Gall was one of the most known proposed during that time period.
Franz Joseph Gall basically found the theory of phrenology. Gall lead to discover this theory because of his interest in finding about a person’s characteristics through examining the outwardly appearance of the person. Galls’s theory was basically about the localization of brain function .He proposed that the brain was divided into 27 organs or separate parts each of which had or was responsible for a specialized function. Gall proposed that by examining a person’s brain we could come to the conclusion about the personality, abilities and characteristics of that person.
While reading various articles and the biography of Gall the thing that I really got interested in was the reason how Galls theory gained popularity. One such reason that I read about was the how the upper class British supported Galls theory and made it a tool to support their actions of colonization as it gave them a reason to rule the weaker section of the society.
http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2004/phrenology.htm
http://www.victorianweb.org/science/phrenology/intro.html
http://www.phrenology.com/franzjosephgall.html
Sorry for being late on this, my my wireless adapter wasn’t working on my comp & couldn’t get on the internet, however, it is fixed now & I am back!
ONe of the things I found interesting in this chapter was the Bell-Magendie law. The thing I found interesting about it first was that Bell was first credited with this discovery and after a nasty fight that went on for years, Magendie was also finally credited for the same discovery, only to find out that Bell was wrong and Magendie was right. In addition to the discovery of the law, I also found it kinda neat how he found out that when destroying the posterior fibers of the spinal cord, that the animal could still move the limb, just not feel it or have sensations. To find out that the anterior spinal cord roots carry only motor fibers just amazes me. When looking this up online, I couldn’t find a lot of info surprisingly. I did find it interesting though how it seems Bell always got the short end of the stick. He also hand an argument that different sensory nerves had different qualities and this idea eventually became the credit of someone else's too. Poor guy. I chose to find some more info on him after feeling kinda bad for the guy and found out some interesting things on him. I have heard of him before not knowing it, that Bell's Palsey is named after him. He was also very skilled in art and could sketch the anatomical parts accurately contributed to elegant books of anatomy published from 1798 onward. In addition to being a surgeon and an artist, Bell’s book Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain (1811) has been called the “Magna Carta of neurology." his discovery that lesion of the seventh facial nerve causes facial paralysis is what was termed as Bell's Palsey,
Brief bio of Sir Charles Bell
http://crev.info/content/bell_charles
Here is one of his drawings of the facial nerve endings
http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcne/founders/page0007.html
Some brief info on Bell's Palsey
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/bells/detail_bells.htm