Placebo...Effect or Defect

The placebo effect is mostly known scam made by several people basically done to prove natural cure and that most problems are mental, using no treatment at all. Some examples are when doctors use non-medical pills (usually made of sugar) and makes the patients take them as if they were real ones; these pills are usually given as anti-depressants. Another example is fake surgeries where the subject is treated as if it was having a surgery but is actually not being done anything.

Henry K. Beecher was the first person to present this idea in the year 1955. He made around 800 different studies; one of the most outstanding experiments was one about colds where the patients felt better within six days of taking the placebo. Still 40% of the patients’ condition grew worse after taking the placebo pill. Beecher did not always expose all the data, he showed how 2/3 of the times placebo worked but did not mention how 1/3 worsened the condition. Beecher felt the urge to create another experiment to really prove his theory right. This consisted on three different groups of patients: the first didn’t get medicine, the second one got a placebo, and the last group got no treatment at all. The results favored Beecher when they revealed that the patients with the placebo and no treatment matched 100% proving that the placebo connects with mental.

Although placebo effects have been studied very well and proven to be right, a percentage of people continue doubting the evidence these studies provide about the effectiveness of the placebos. Placebo studies can result to be difficult because of many reasons; for example, the patients can react differently to please the experimenter or relating to the patients conditions itself seen as there are many levels of sickness. Also, the different treatments and its effects and also our perspective on what are improvements. Another point that is discussed is that sometimes in the fake surgeries, medicine or surgery is not necessary this contradicts if the placebo effect is indeed successful.

I believe that even though placebos are sometimes proven to be unsuccessful, truth is most of the times they work. Everything is in our heads: pain, love, depression, etc. unless the pain is caused by a fractured bone, I believe placebos would definitely work due to the brain and minds power over the rest of our whole body; tell your brain you feel sick when you’re perfectly fine and eventually you’ll start to feel sick, tell your mind you feel swell when you’re feeling sick and you’ll get better.

Alike Memories???

Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman thought about the theory of sex affecting on memory. They made many tests lead to prove that sex interferes with episodic memory, these tests also proved to favor females. Results also confirmed woman are better when relating to verbal episodic memory this is because women are better in remembering words or pictures.
Another test consisted in presenting faces to three groups. This resulted in finding how women are able to remember female faces much better. Other studies also verified women are better when there is no verbal processing. The outcomes show how memories between sexes aren’t the same.
Cultural background also influences a lot in terms of memory. Studies made found the average age of distinction in memory has to do with the different cultures. A psychologist at the University of New Hampshire called Michelle Leichtman, studied childhood memory says that culture influences deeply when dealing with memory.

Memories passed on from parents to their children manipulate how children will then recall these. Kids who grow up in a culture that talks little about autobiographical history will probably forget their childhood memories; rather than the ones whose cultures appreciate their history or memories and events that would actually remember them and pass them on with the same eagerness.

In 1994 a psychologist called Mary Mullen made the first researches that relate the ages of first memories between cultures. This study consisted of questions to caucasians and asians to illustrate their earliest memories. The average of asian students’ events was six months apart from the Caucasian students'. This probably means that caucasians have a better relation with their past.

Ones sex and its cultural and environmental traditions definitely influences ones memory.

Alzheimer's Disease

Through the video seen in class, I learned many things about the Alzheimer’s disease. What I saw most in each of the different patients who suffered from this dreadful disease was that not only did it mess with their memory but it also had a negative effect on their everyday life styles. It was sad to see how the families and their loved ones suffered along with them seeing they struggle with their life. There were cases in which these patients did not recognize or did not claim their family to be one of them. For example the lady in the nursing home, she didn’t recognize her son, he insisted of his relation to her but she did not believe any of his words. She also had illusions which are a side effect; she imagined snakes on her wheel chair when there were none there. It’s also sad to see the man in the nursing home who has a wife but barely remembers her when she is not around. Upon her disappearance, he looks for another woman in the home which he recalls as his wife. The interesting thing with this patient is how he forgets his real wife and kids but he still knows the letters to the songs he used to sing. Despite all the sad and heartfelt feelings I had watching the documentary of each of these persons lives, this video made me realize how difficult it is not only being a victim of this disease but also being the people that surround one of these patients.

3 ARTICLES

1. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429091806.htm

I chose to write a summary on this article because it is based on the theory that short-term memory isn’t less precise over time, instead it just shuts down completely. Weiwew Zhang with Steve Luck had this idea because of tests they made; these tests consisted in measuring two things and the accuracy of short-term memory with the possibility that the memory still existed. Twelve different adults took this test; the first showed three squares of different colors on a computer, then a wheel showing all spectrums of colors and later the three squares appeared again. Once the squares reappeared they had no color and only one was highlighted. The adults being tested had to remember and click on the part of the wheel that matched the color of the highlighted square; they repeated the test 150 times. The results were: when the adults remembered the color, it was because the matching color was very close. This made Zhang and Luck identify how the accuracy had to do with the distance between the click and the actual color. But, in other cases when color was not remembered, these chose a random color in the wheel. Then there was a second test; this test was mimicked the first but it had to do with shapes instead of colors. The conclusion from these two tests was final; people either have a memory or don’t. These results point out how memories don't actually fade away, they shut down completely.

2. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081028103111.htm

The University of Queensland’s Neuroscientists conducted an experiment that discovered why very poignant events usually cause trauma on our long-term memory. This experiment states that the brain tends to remember fear or trauma for a long time. This has been crucial to our long-term survival causing a negative reaction rather than a learning experience. It is said that in the back part of the brain in a so-called “amygdale” releases a stress hormone when we encounter another traumatic event like the ones that we had before. A paper by Dr Louise Faber and part of her co-workers published in The Journal of Neuroscience shows how the brain's "adrenaline” negatively affects the amygdale because of the influence of chemical and electrical pathways to the parts of the brain that are linked to the formation of memory. These results help us by informing about the effects of a traumatic event can affect memory and deeply understand the treatment patients with post-traumatic stress or anxiety disorders should have to really and thoroughly help them.

3. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070815105026.htm

This article issues on how memories linked to any visual aids or emotional ones are very hard to forget. Keith Payne and Elizabeth Corrigan found that many negative or mild emotional events are really difficult to leave behind. This article argues what people do to try to forget information. First of all they mentally isolate the event or thing and after they completely block off the info; emotion kicks-in in this because it makes these simple two steps hard to make because the memories become hard to isolate even worse, erase. The UNC made a study, which consisted in 218 participants remembering pictures instead of texts; this study says how a violent word can probably create fear while a violent picture will creates a more fearful emotion. One of the conclusions of this study was that people could not forget memories that were emotionally involved in contrast to ordinary events that are erased easily. These results help understand the important role emotion has on memory.

What is Memory?

1. Sensory memory is known to take a 'snapshot' of what surrounds us to store this information for a short period. But only information that goes to another level of memory will be stored for more time.
2. An example of sensory memory is when you lose concentration in class and then you hear an important word and return your focus, you should be able to remember what the teacher said just before this word because it is in your sensory register.
3. Our sensory memory capacity is usually 12 items.
4. Short-term memory is a system that temporarily stores and manages information that is required to do difficult tasks like learning, reasoning, and comprehending, also the selection of information-processing (ex. encoding, storing, and retrieving data)
5. The "magic number" conducted and established by George A. Miller, argues that the number of objects an average human can hold in is 7 ± 2.
6. Chunking is a strategy that individuals store and code important information to remember and use short-term memory.
7. The ideal size of "chunks" for both letters and numbers are 2 3 and 6
8. The mode of encoding that short-term memory mostly relies on is acoustic.
9. The duration and capacity of long-term memory is thought to store large quantities of information for a large amount of time.
10. The Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of memory is a psychological model made by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968. This model was based on how the human memory goes through three main stages: 1) Sensory memory: retain information in a sort of unprocessed way through a stimulus for less than a second. 2) Short-term memory: retaining information long enough to use it. 3) Long-term memory: information retained for a longer period.
11. A criticism or limitation of the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of memory is that it’s considered to be to linear in structure and doesn’t include subdivisions the levels of memory may include. An example of this is when we use sensory memory for physical processes and once something is done it’s remembered for three seconds and then forgotten.
12. Levels of Processing Model of memory are a theory made by Craik and Lockhart in 1972. Rejecting the idea of dual store model memory and that the memory and its characteristics depend on its location, Craik and Lockart stated information could be processed and remembered in many different ways. They said that the durability of the memory depended on the level or depth of processing involve.
13. Maintenance rehearsal is a process involving repeating something several times. This makes your short-term memory increase from about 20 seconds to 3. An example is when you read a poem for a class, you will repeat the poem long enough to remember it until you present it to the class but it won’t be stored into long term memory.
14. Elaborative rehearsal is a technique that is more about analyzing the significance of a term to remember it instead of using repetition. It is proven to be more efficient and stores information in the long term memory. For example when studying vocabulary words it seems easier to comprehend the meaning than just memorizing it.
15. The Levels of Processing Model were made by Fergus Craik and Robert Lockart in 1972.

http://library.thinkquest.org/26618/en-5.2.2=sensory%20memory.htm
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=7142

Memory

The film we watched in class made me realize a lot of interesting facts about memory and its functions and why it was so important. Memory plays a really important part not only to remember events or things but also in our everyday life. We usually believe that memory’s only use is to remember things but we are wrong, memory also contributes to our personality as a whole. Remembering is a simple thing we do without even thinking about it, it’s like breathing; we don’t even realize this shapes who we are. For example, our memory affects the decisions we take by taking past experiences and placing them in our lives. Brain cells are connected and respond to the situations we are in. Another example of how memory shapes identity is in the video. John’s lifestyle, a sad lonely life, which explains how premature births are dangerous to the memory circuit. It can be damaged causing the individual to have amnesia. Amnesia makes the person forget about the past, this also makes them unable to create new experiences and imagine a future. Memory is very important for us to function daily depending on the ability to remember and retain things.

Stroop Effect

Background: The Stroop effect is an exhibition of intrusion. In this experiment, the brain slows down its processing time because it is thinking and observing through conflicting and confusing information that tricks our mind and makes us believe different things.

Procedures: In the Stroop Effect, a person is handed a list of words with the name of different colors printed in varicolored ink of the same colors but placed differently. They are later asked to name the color of the ink used on each word. They are timed to see how long they take to do this.

Results: Because of the minds trick on the person’s reactions, this individual’s time of reaction is delayed. This is because the person's brain is trying to hold back the input from the printed words in order to focus on the color of the words; this is considered the “trick” our brains usually fall in to creating a confusion that causes us to say the wrong color by saying the word.

For example: Look at the following list of words: yellow, red, green, purple, brown, blue. Try to name the colors each word is written in as fast as you can do it. You may find that you are continually hesitating or stumbling on the words or go back to it and saying them again. This is because your brain is attempting to process two conflicting pieces of information: a color, and a word naming a color, which confuses us greatly. The Stroop effect is confusing but still a good exercise for our brains. Try the one bellow!!