background preloader

Psychology

Facebook Twitter

Science & Medicine - Podcasts Downloads. How willpower works - Health & wellness. Philographics on the Behance Network. Philosophy for Beginners - Download free content from Oxford University. Psychology | Education | Education Guardian. What will I learn? Psychology is the study of the human mind to better understand how andwhy people act the way they do. So, you might find yourself investigating how people become anorexic, how seemingly calm people turn violent, or why people prefer chocolate to sex (at least sometimes). You'll look at the way the brain perceives and uses information, and how these processes change as you get older.

Your first year should provide a general grounding in general psychology, which will introduce you to the wonderful world of psychological statistics (maths GCSE is a must, but you don't need A-level, so you can relax). From there you will look at child development, cognitive psychology, personality, memory, emotion and motivation, and modules that look at the social psychology of individuals and groups. Some applied psychology programmes will give you the chance to spend a year working with a chartered psychologist, perhaps in healthcare or education. What skills will I gain? Easter Island drug raises cognition throughout life span in mice. Cognitive skills such as learning and memory diminish with age in everyone, and the drop-off is steepest in Alzheimer's disease.

Texas scientists seeking a way to prevent this decline reported exciting results this week with a drug that has Polynesian roots. The researchers, appointed in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, added rapamycin to the diet of healthy mice throughout the rodents' life span. Rapamycin, a bacterial product first isolated from soil on Easter Island, enhanced learning and memory in young mice and improved these faculties in old mice, the study showed. "We made the young ones learn, and remember what they learned, better than what is normal," said Veronica Galvan, Ph.D., assistant professor of physiology at the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, part of the UT Health Science Center.

The drug also lowered anxiety and depressive-like behavior in the mice, Dr. Venturing into the open Dr. Psychopathic Traits Linked to Brain Reward System - NIH Research Matters. March 29, 2010 People who scored high on a test that measures impulsive and antisocial traits had exaggerated brain responses to certain “rewards,” like winning money or taking stimulant drugs. The new study provides evidence that a dysfunctional brain reward system may underlie vulnerability to a personality disorder known as psychopathy. Impulsive and antisocial personality traits correlate with amphetamine-induced dopamine release (red and yellow) in the brain.

Image by Buckholtz et al. Psychopathy is characterized by a combination of superficial charm, manipulative and antisocial behavior, impulsivity, blunted empathy and shallow emotional experiences. Many studies of psychopathy have focused on the emotional and interpersonal aspects of the disorder, like lack of fear and empathy. In one experiment, the researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) to image the brain’s dopamine response when participants received a low oral dose of amphetamine. Your Amazing Brain. How to Hack Your Brain. A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder. Logic and perception - topical index -The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com. Last updated 20-Nov-2015 Recommended Reading Critical Thinking Mini-Lessons Adams, James L.

Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas 3rd ed. (Perseus Press, 1990). Ariely, Dan. (2008). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (HarperCollins). Dawes, Robyn M. Gardner, Martin. Gardner, Martin. Gilovich, Thomas. Groopman, Jerome. Kahneman, Daniel. Kida, Thomas. 2006. Kourany, Janet A. Levine, Robert. 2003. Sagan, Carl. Seckel, Al. (2006). Sternberg, Robert J. ed. Sutherland, Stuart. (2007). Mental Heuristics Page.

A heuristic is a "rule-of-thumb", advice that helps an AI program or human think and act more efficiently by directing thinking in an useful direction. Some of these heuristics are age-old wisdom, bordering on cliche, but most are actually helpful. If you want something done, do it yourself Comment: Obviously true, and doing it is usually very good for your self esteem. A surprising amount of work can be done this way, and experts are not always necessary. However, there is a risk of becoming overworked if you try to do everything yourself - we all need other people after all. Never procrastinate anything you can do right now Comment: Very powerful.

When you have several things you could be doing and don't know which to do: Just do any one of them! Comments: If you cannot decide between two or more possibilities, then there is a good chance that the differences don't matter. Always assume that you will succeed If you can't find a solution, change the rules. Up to the Mental Enhancement Page. Research Shows That the Smarter People Are, the More Susceptible They Are to Cognitive Bias. Editors’ Note: The introductory paragraphs of this post appeared in similar form in an October, 2011, column by Jonah Lehrer for the Wall Street Journal.

We regret the duplication of material. Here’s a simple arithmetic question: A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The vast majority of people respond quickly and confidently, insisting the ball costs ten cents. This answer is both obvious and wrong. (The correct answer is five cents for the ball and a dollar and five cents for the bat.) For more than five decades, Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Laureate and professor of psychology at Princeton, has been asking questions like this and analyzing our answers. When people face an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics.

The philosopher, it turns out, got it backward. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. The results were quite disturbing. Freud's *The Interpretation of Dreams* Chapter 1, Section D. Back to Psych Web Home Page Back to The Interpretation of Dreams Table of Contents D. Why Dreams Are Forgotten After Waking That a dream fades away in the morning is proverbial. It is, indeed, possible to recall it. For we know the dream, of course, only by recalling it after waking; but we very often believe that we remember it incompletely, that during the night there was more of it than we remember. The forgetting of dreams is treated in the most detailed manner by Strumpell.

In the first place, all those factors which induce forgetfulness in the waking state determine also the forgetting of dreams. . * Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly. According to Strumpell, other factors, deriving from the relation of the dream to the waking state, are even more effective in causing us to forget our dreams.

Finally, we should remember that the fact that most people take but little interest in their dreams is conducive to the forgetting of dreams. The observations of V. Psychological ("personality") Types. Psychological ("personality") Types According to Jung's theory of Psychological Types we are all different in fundamental ways. One's ability to process different information is limited by their particular type. These types are sixteen. People can be either Extroverts or Introverts, depending on the direction of their activity ; Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, Intuitive, according to their own information pathways; Judging or Perceiving, depending on the method in which they process received information.

Extroverts vs. Extroverts are directed towards the objective world whereas Introverts are directed towards the subjective world. Sensing vs. Sensing is an ability to deal with information on the basis of its physical qualities and its affection by other information. Thinking vs. Thinking is an ability to deal with information on the basis of its structure and its function. Perceiving vs. Perceiving types are motivated into activity by the changes in a situation. ENTp , ISFp , ESFj , INTj , ENFj. Psychology studies relevant to everyday life from PsyBlog. How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs.

The illustrated guide to a Ph.D. Imagine a circle that contains all of human knowledge: By the time you finish elementary school, you know a little: By the time you finish high school, you know a bit more: With a bachelor's degree, you gain a specialty: A master's degree deepens that specialty: Reading research papers takes you to the edge of human knowledge: Once you're at the boundary, you focus: You push at the boundary for a few years: Until one day, the boundary gives way: And, that dent you've made is called a Ph.D Of course, the world looks different to you now: So, don't forget the bigger picture: Keep pushing.

There's a bit more below, but I also wrote a follow-up 5 years after the illustrated guide which may be of interest -- HOWTO: Get tenure. Related posts If you like these posts, then I recommend the book A PhD Is Not Enough Get it in print; fund students; save lives By request, a print version of The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. is on sale. Click here to preview or buy it. Why biology? License: Creative Commons Resources.

Psychology of Color « Miss Centsible. Psychology 140, 001|Spring 2010|UC Berkeley - Download free content from UC Berkeley.