Article
Fear and Why We Enjoy it
Fear. It’s something all humans share in their arsenal of emotions and reactions. It’s a survival mechanism that we’ve evolved to have, and it’s what has kept us alive for close to up to 200 millennia. It’s a feeling that we both dread and revel in nowadays, especially during every spooky Halloween season. But why […]
The Neuroscience Involving Habits
A habit is behavior that becomes automatic after regular repetition. The pervading thought used to be that habits are formed to free the brain, so it may perform other tasks, and to an extent, that is still true. However, a recent study conducted by MIT neuroscientists has found that a small region of the prefrontal […]
Neuroscience and the Greatest Minds
The Pyramids of Giza is one of “the Seven Wonders of the World,” which required Ancient Egypt to utilize complex knowledge in mathematics and architecture to figure out how to construct such landmark from the beginning. Some beholders are in such disbelief that they believe a greater force than the ancient civilizations built it for […]
How Dreams Are Shown Through Brain Activity
For the longest amount of time, sleep and dreams were a complete mystery. At best, only educated guesses could be made as to how and why we dream from scientists such as Sigmund Freud, who claimed that sleep was a “safety valve” for unconscious desires. Essentially, no concrete theory for the process of sleep could […]
Conformity
Conformity is determined by a variety of situational and individual difference factors. Situational factors tend to increase when subjects are in groups that have been previously successful, when subjects are asked to give public responses while facing an opposition, when the stimuli are ambiguous or difficult, or when members are interdependent or unanimously opposed. Individual […]
The Paradox of Cell Death
“Apoptosis” is Greek word that literally means “falling of the petals from a flower or leaves from a tree” [1]. This description contrasts with the typical textbook definition: apoptosis is programmed cell death, caused by the Diablo gene. The literal translation stresses the evolutionary significance and benefit of apoptosis. While apoptosis can be detrimental, it […]
Free Will
Most people believe that they have complete control over every conscious decision that they make. However, research shows that in some cases, conscious decision follows the onset of neural activity preceding a voluntary, self-initiated movement or task. In an experiment published in 1983, the recordable cerebral activity, or readiness-potential, that precedes voluntary motor acts was […]
One Step Closer: New Alzheimer’s Gene Discovered
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the most prevalent form of dementia, and sixth leading cause of death in the US, affecting 60-80% of individuals 65 and older. The hallmark symptom of Alzheimer’s Disease is serious memory loss attributed to widespread cell death and loss of cortical mass. Treatments are currently used to stop and slow the […]
Pay attention, Millennials!
It seems like today, there isn’t a single person without some type of smart phone. We look around, or more commonly, we look down at our screens, and everyone is either texting, tweeting, instagramming, or snap chatting. A short time ago, we had to actually have human interaction to give someone a message or to […]
Fear Conditioning and PTSD
Ivan Pavlov is a name familiar to most, whether scientific expert or budding psychology student. Pavlov founded the basis of classical, or Pavlovian, conditioning, in which an animal or person learns to associate an initially meaningless stimulus in their environment with a stimulus that produces an automatic response, therefore eliciting the response when the newly […]