Who This Course Is For:
- Anybody who is interested in psychology
- People who want to understand how the human mind works
- People who are looking for interesting conversation starters and topics
- People who are considering to study psychology
- Beginning psychology students who want a fun introduction to the field
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I am a Psychology/ Neuroscience researcher and best-selling instructor with more than 10+ years of training and experience. Learning how our mind and brain work and conducting research on these topics has been incredibly fascinating for me and it definitely enriched my life. My mission is to share my experience with other people and help them to get the most out of themselves. I have courses on Research, Psychology, and Neuroscience. Why learn from me?
– 2000+ enthusiastic reviews .
– Short and concise lectures – straight to the point without any unnecessary information.
– Its fun. I love the topics I teach and want you to fall in love with them, too.
Join 10000+ students and see for yourself what my courses have in store for you.
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How Is Memory Stored In The Brain
Memory involves changes to the brains neural networks. Neurons in the brain are connected by synapses, which are bound together by chemical messengers to form larger networks. Memory storage is thought to involve changes in the strength of these connections in the areas of the brain that have been linked to memory.
How Does The Brain Work
The brain works like a big computer. It processes information that it receives from the senses and body, and sends messages back to the body. But the brain can do much more than a machine can: humans think and experience emotions with their brain, and it is the root of human intelligence.
The human brain is roughly the size of two clenched fists and weighs about 1.5 kilograms. From the outside it looks a bit like a large walnut, with folds and crevices. Brain tissue is made up of about 100 billion nerve cells and one trillion supporting cells which stabilize the tissue.
There are various sections of the brain, each with their own functions:
- the cerebrum
- the diencephalon including the thalamus, hypothalamus and pituitary gland
- the brain stem including the midbrain, pons and medulla
- the cerebellum
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The Better Angels Of Our Nature
Das Mittelalterliche HausbuchHousebook
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, published in 2011, Pinker argues that violence, including tribal warfare, homicide, cruel punishments, child abuse, animal cruelty, domestic violence, lynching, pogroms, and international and civil wars, has decreased over multiple scales of time and magnitude. Pinker considers it unlikely that human nature has changed. In his view, it is more likely that human nature comprises inclinations toward violence and those that counteract them, the “better angels of our nature”. He outlines six “major historical declines of violence” that all have their own socio/cultural/economic causes:
Best Psychology Podcasts To Expand Your Mind In 2022
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Looking for a new way tounderstand the human mind without doing too much reading?
Podcasts have become a very popular way to learn. Evenhealth professionals are now using them as a medium to share their knowledgewith the world. Thus, it is no surprise that many psychology and scienceexperts have flourished online.
But when it comes to psychology podcasts, how do you know which ones provide the best information? How do you choose the ones that can help you understand yourself and other people better?
In this article, we have gathered the seven best psychology podcasts for the coming year. If you want to expand your knowledge of how the human mind works, tune in and start learning!
What You Will Learn
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How Are False Memories Created
False memories can be as simple as concluding that you were shown a word that you actually werent, but it may also include believing you experienced a dramatic event that you didnt. People may produce such false recollections by unwittingly drawing on the details of actual, related experiences, or in some cases, as a response to another persons detailed suggestions about an imaginary event that is purported to be real.
All In The Mind With Lynne Malcolm
Hosted by Lynne Malcolmand broadcasted by the Australian Broadcast Company , this podcastexplores the mind in its entiretythe brain and how its activities affect ourattitudes and personalities. It unravels the truth behind human behavior andexplains the different sides of human psychology.
As the titlecommunicates, things appear to us as our brains perceive them. It really is allin the mindyour social interactions, unexplained obsessions, changingrelationships, etc. There is a scientific explanation for just about everything.
Lynne Malcolm is an ABCRadio broadcaster with a background in science and psychology. She believes inthe power of radio broadcasting to help people understand life better, andhopes that her podcast will do just that for you.
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Careers In Cognitive Psychology
While many cognitive psychologists specialize in research and are employed by universities or government agencies, others take a clinical focus and work directly with people who are experiencing challenges related to different mental processes. They may work in hospitals, mental health clinics, or private practices.
Research psychologists who work in this area often focus on a particular area of interest, such as memory. Others might work directly on specific health concerns related to cognition, such as degenerative brain disorders or brain injuries.
Development Of Theory Of Mind
The greatest growth of this ability to attribute mental states is believed to take place primarily during the preschool years between the ages of 3 and 5. However, a number of different factors are believed to exert some influence on the development of a theory of mind. Some researchers have suggested that gender and the number of siblings in the home can affect how the theory of mind emerges.
Theory of mind develops as children gain greater experience with social interactions. Play, pretend, stories, and relationships with parents and peers allow children to develop stronger insight into how other people’s thinking may differ from their own. Social experiences also help children learn more about how thinking influences actions.
The growth of theory of mind skills tends to improve progressively and sequentially with age. While many theory of mind abilities emerge during the preschool years, research has shown that kids between the ages of 6 and 8 are still developing these skills. In studies, children at this age were still not completely proficient at all theory of mind tasks.
Researchers have also found that children under the age of 3 typically answer questions on the theory of mind tasks incorrectly. By age 4, children usually demonstrate a better theory of mind comprehension. For example, by age 4, most children are able to understand that others may hold false beliefs about objects, people, or situations.
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The Mind Through Literature
One approach to understanding language and how it shapes by the mind is through the study of literature. Dubreuils current research rests at the intersection of cognitive science and poetry, what he calls the mental experience of poetry: how poetry is read and understood in the mind and how literature goes beyond simple cognition. Literary text is a complex dynamic system and we dont have tools in experimental science to fully address that right now, he says.
As Dubreuil writes in an article in diacritics, What is happening to us with poems challenges what we believe we know about cognition. It eloquently shows that there are more than rules and operations in thinking, but also that such excess can only deriveand derailfrom routines, patterns, and automation.
Christiansen and Dubreuil are planning to co-teach a seminar looking at the mind, cultural evolution and manifestations of mind in poetry and literature, as an outcome of and also as a reaction to cultural evolution.
One Of The Underlying Concepts In Your Book Is What You Call The Cerebral Mystique Can You Explain What It Means And Why This View Of The Brain Is Distorting Our Real Natures
This book is largely about two opposite ideas: the biological mind centered on the brain, in which influences from the rest of the body and outside the body shape what we think and do, and the cerebral mystique, a complex of stereotypes and ideals about the brain, which tend to treat it as an isolated and all-powerful entity, almost like a modern version of the soul.
The problem with having a dualistic view of the brain and its relationship to the physical body, and the physical world, is that it makes us see ourselves as unnaturally self-contained, both as minds and as autonomous agents. In other words, we view ourselves as things that operate from within, so were less sensitive to things that influence us on the outside. The idea that the brain is a machine, an abstract entity like a giant supercomputer, has been around for a while, basically since computers. Other people have used a quantum analogy for the brain. But the idea of the brain as a computer is the most common in this day and age.
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The Need For Compromise
To the extent that researchers have waded into these controversies, they have often defended extreme positions. Either symbol-manipulation is the essence of human cognition or it is scarcely relevant . Either the mind is massively modular , or modularization is, at best, an end product of development , perhaps a consequence of the way the world itself is organized, rather than an intrinsic part of cognitive architecture . Either the mind, at least in its core computations, is an engine for deriving optimal statistical inference , or the mind is riddled with imperfections . Either the basic architecture of the mind is specified genetically, largely in advance of experience , or its just an acquired response to the nature of the world .
Extremes often make for entertaining reading, yet they may also be a sign: To the extent that intelligent people differ on each of these debates, one must ask why. Could it be, for example, that bright people disagree because they focus on different elements of the evidence, a la classical debates about whether light is a wave or a particle? Is any sort of compromise possible?
Not all compromise, to be sure, is desirable. As Richard Dawkins once remarked, creationism and evolution cannot both be right, and bland pronouncements like its not nature or nurture, but both, while plausible, tell us little. If nature and nurture work together , how do they work together? Compromise for compromises sake is of no value.
Be Mindful Of Your Social Realities
Your brain actively and willingly participates in a socially made-up world each day. For example, certain small pieces of paper are only valuable because we have socially agreed it will represent money or we agree that a certain person is a leader and give them a title like CEO to bestow social power. To the best of our knowledge, only human brains co-create social realities in this way because of the brains abilities:
- Creativitythe same creativity that enables you to create art and music enables you to decide that certain small pieces of paper will represent money.
- Communicateyour ability to learn and share language enables us to efficiently communicate with each other and create a shared social reality.
- Copyingyour ability to reliably copy others is how social norms and rules are passed from one person to the next.
- Cooperateyour ability to work alongside others to have a bigger impact than you can alone, makes a shared social reality desirable.
- Compressionyour ability to think abstractly and draw on past experiences to create shared meaning with others.
We are often unaware of the shared realities we have created, and yet we uphold these social realities every day through our behaviors. Be mindful of where the social realities in which you are invested are serving you and others well. On the flip side, pay attention to where these social realities are unintentionally creating a workplace and a world that is not good for you or for others.
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Be Clear On Who You Want To Be
Because we are a social species, we are the caretakers of each others brains. For example, the brain regions that are most important for processing languageyour ability to speak and understand wordsare exactly the same regions that regulate your body, heart, lungs, metabolism, and immune system. This means what you say and how you say it impacts the nervous systems of the people around you.
So, what kind of person do you want to be? For example, do you want to be somebody who energizes or drains other peoples body budgets?
What Is The Mind
As I sit here pondering what to write, what is it, exactly, that is doing the pondering? Where do the thoughts come from? How does the three-pound mass of grey matter that is my brain give rise to the felt experience of sensations and thoughts? It sometimes seems essentially inconceivable that the water of material processes could give rise to the wine of consciousness. Indeed, it is so famous a conundrum that it has a name … the famous mind-brain problem. Failure to have consensual resolution to the mind-body problem remains at the heart of psychology and its difficulties as a fragmented discipline. My goal here is to briefly explain how the unified theory of psychology resolves the MB problem.
We need to first get clear about what most folks mean when they use the term “mind.” What, exactly, are they referring to? In common parlance, the mind most often refers to the seat of human consciousness, the thinking-feeling ‘I’ that seems to be an agentic causal force that is somehow related, but is also seemingly separable from the body. The idea of life after death is intuitively plausible to so many, because our mental life seems so different from our bodies that we could imagine our souls existing long after our bodies decompose. This leads to a common sense dualism that is part and parcel to many religious worldviews.
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How Do Memories Become Distorted
Memories may be rendered less accurate based on conditions when they are first formed, such as how much attention is paid during the experience. And the malleability of memories over time means internal and external factors can introduce errors. These may include a persons knowledge and expectations about the world and misleading suggestions by other people about what occurred.
What Is Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology involves the study of internal mental processesall of the things that go on inside your brain, including perception, thinking, memory, attention, language, problem-solving, and learning.
Learning more about how people think and process information helps researchers gain a deeper understanding of how the human brain works. It also allows psychologists to develop new ways of helping people deal with psychological difficulties.
For example, by recognizing that attention is both a selective and limited resource, psychologists are able to come up with solutions that make it easier for people with attentional difficulties to improve their focus and concentration.
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What Is An Engram
A memory engram, or memory trace, is a term for the set of changes in the brain on which a memory is based. These are thought to include changes at the level of the synapses that connect brain cells. Research suggests an engram is not located in one specific location in the brain, but in multiple, interconnected locations. Engram cells are groups of cells that support a memory: They are activated and altered during learning and reactivated during remembering.
How Is The Brain Supplied With Blood
The brain needs a steady flow of enough oxygen, glucose, and other nutrients. For that reason, it has a particularly good blood supply. Each side of the brain receives blood through three arteries:
- In the front, the anterior cerebral artery supplies the tissue behind the forehead and under the crown .
- The middle cerebral artery is important for the sides and areas that are further inside the brain. The anterior and middle cerebral artery split off from the internal carotid artery, a major blood vessel in the neck.
- The posterior cerebral artery supplies the back of the head, the lower part of the brain, and the cerebellum. It is supplied with blood from the vertebral arteries, which are also major arteries of the neck.
Before the three arteries reach their brain region, where they split into smaller branches, they are close together below the brain. In this area, they are connected to each other by smaller blood vessels forming a structure similar to a traffic circle. The arteries are connected to each other in other areas as well. The advantage of these connections is that blood supply problems in the brain can be compensated for to some extent: For example, if a branch of an artery gradually becomes narrower, blood can still flow to the part of the brain it supplies through these alternative routes .
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