Monday (6/1)
1. D-Day - Video
2. D-Day to Victory in Europe!
--Notes
HW: Reading: Hitler's suicide
Tuesday (6/2)
1. War in the Pacific: 1944-1945
--Notes
--Video clips
HW: NONE
Wednesday (6/3)
1. Video: Victory in the Pacific***KEY VIDEO
HW: Readings for debate
Thursday (6/4)
1. Socratic Seminar: The Atomic Bomb
HW: NONE
Friday (6/5)
Prep for Exam II
Current Events
HW: Study: EXAM MONDAY!
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
WWII: Extra Credit Movie Options
Watch ANY of the below movies and write an analysis of the theme and plot with respect to the greater context of WWII (1 page minimum in length - TYPED). In order to get credit YOU MUST have a PARENT OR GUARDIAN SIGN THE VIDEO CONSENT FORM ISSUED IN CLASS!!!!
OPTION 1: THE THIN RED LINE
OPTION 2: VALKYRIE
OPTION 3: SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
OPTION 1: THE THIN RED LINE
OPTION 2: VALKYRIE
OPTION 3: SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Girls Hit by Eating Disorders Up 47% ; Skinny Models to Blame for Rise
Sunday Mirror - May 24, 2009
SOARING numbers of young girls are being treated in hospital for eating disorders.
Cases of bulimia and anorexia among girls under 18 have leapt by 47 per cent from 562 in 2004 to 825 last year.
Worryingly, there has also been a 25 per cent rise in girls UNDER NINE being treated for eating disorders.
The new figures also show the number of women needing hospital treatment has risen by 25 per cent to 1,740 compared with 1,398 in 2004. The number of men being treated for eating disorders has also gone up, rising to 226 last year from 183 in 2004.
Health experts blame the increasing pressure on young people to stay thin for the rising number of anorexia and bulimia cases. In a recent poll of 3,000 teenagers 75 per cent said they felt they needed to lose weight after looking at pictures of skinny stars such as Kate Moss and Nicole Richie.
Susan Ringwood, chief executive of eating disorder charity Beat, said: "We are very concerned by these figures. We have heard of cases of people being told by doctors 'wait and see and come back later'. And these people get very, very ill before they get any help.
"Eating disorders are a serious psychiatric condition. It's worrying that young people who are suffering are not getting the appropriate treatment until they are dangerously ill."
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb, who obtained the figures, said: "Children shouldn't be getting to the stage where they are so ill they need to be hospitalised before they get help."
I WAS FIVE STONE AGED 15
ALI Valenzuela owes her life to treatment for anorexia - but says not enough is done for sufferers.
At the worst point, when she was 17, her weight fell to FIVE STONE and she only ate two bits of fruit a day.
Ali, 20, who says she is now a safe weight for her height, 5ft 7ins, said: "If I hadn't gone to hospital I wouldn't be here today.
"I knew I looked horrible and people used to stare. But I had no control over it."
She had to beg for funding for private care because no treatment was available on the NHS.
When she got a grant, she had to travel 100 miles from her home in Swansea to a clinic in Bristol.
Ali wants the Government to do more for anorexics and has written a book, Weighing It Up, about her illness.
More than 90,000 children and adults in the UK were diagnosed with an eating disorder last year. But campaigners estimate that 1.3million people are currently battling an eating disorder yet seek no help and choose to suffer in silence instead.
SOARING numbers of young girls are being treated in hospital for eating disorders.
Cases of bulimia and anorexia among girls under 18 have leapt by 47 per cent from 562 in 2004 to 825 last year.
Worryingly, there has also been a 25 per cent rise in girls UNDER NINE being treated for eating disorders.
The new figures also show the number of women needing hospital treatment has risen by 25 per cent to 1,740 compared with 1,398 in 2004. The number of men being treated for eating disorders has also gone up, rising to 226 last year from 183 in 2004.
Health experts blame the increasing pressure on young people to stay thin for the rising number of anorexia and bulimia cases. In a recent poll of 3,000 teenagers 75 per cent said they felt they needed to lose weight after looking at pictures of skinny stars such as Kate Moss and Nicole Richie.
Susan Ringwood, chief executive of eating disorder charity Beat, said: "We are very concerned by these figures. We have heard of cases of people being told by doctors 'wait and see and come back later'. And these people get very, very ill before they get any help.
"Eating disorders are a serious psychiatric condition. It's worrying that young people who are suffering are not getting the appropriate treatment until they are dangerously ill."
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb, who obtained the figures, said: "Children shouldn't be getting to the stage where they are so ill they need to be hospitalised before they get help."
I WAS FIVE STONE AGED 15
ALI Valenzuela owes her life to treatment for anorexia - but says not enough is done for sufferers.
At the worst point, when she was 17, her weight fell to FIVE STONE and she only ate two bits of fruit a day.
Ali, 20, who says she is now a safe weight for her height, 5ft 7ins, said: "If I hadn't gone to hospital I wouldn't be here today.
"I knew I looked horrible and people used to stare. But I had no control over it."
She had to beg for funding for private care because no treatment was available on the NHS.
When she got a grant, she had to travel 100 miles from her home in Swansea to a clinic in Bristol.
Ali wants the Government to do more for anorexics and has written a book, Weighing It Up, about her illness.
More than 90,000 children and adults in the UK were diagnosed with an eating disorder last year. But campaigners estimate that 1.3million people are currently battling an eating disorder yet seek no help and choose to suffer in silence instead.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Week Ahead w/Headlines
Tuesday (5/26)
Propaganda Posters!
--Examples
--Group work
HW: WWII Exam 1 Review: IDs: Appeasement, Blitzkrieg, Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa
Wednesday (5/27)
Dr. Sues Goes to War
WWII Review
HW: Study IDs
Thursday (5/28)
WWII Exam I
HW: NONE
Friday (5/29)
WWII: North Africa, Allied Bombing of Europe, and the Battle of Stalingrad
--Notes and Video clip
Current Events
HW: TBA
PSYCHOLOGY NEWS:
Arts appear to play role in brain development
May 18--For years, school systems across the nation dropped the arts to concentrate on getting struggling students to pass tests in reading and math. Yet now, a growing body of brain research suggests that teaching the arts may be good for students across all disciplines.
Scientists are now looking at, for instance, whether students at an arts high school who study music or drawing have brains that allow them to focus more intensely or do better in the classroom.
Washington County schools Superintendent Betty Morgan would have liked to have had some of that basic research in her hands when she began building a coalition for an arts high school in Hagerstown. The business community and school principals worked together, and the school will open this summer, but even at its groundbreaking a man objecting to the money spent on the school held up a sign of protest reading "Big Note$ Wrong Music."
Scientists and educators aware of the gap between basic research and the school systems are beginning to share findings, such as at this month's seminar on the brain and the arts held at Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum.
The event was sponsored by the new Neuro-Education Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University, a center designed to bridge that gap.
Brain research in the past several years is just beginning to uncover some startling ideas about how students learn. First came the proof, some years ago, that our brains do not lose brain cells as we get older, but are always capable of growing.
Now neuroscientists are investigating how training students in the arts may change the structure of their brains and the way they think. They are asking: Does putting a violin in the hands of an elementary school student help him to do math better? Will learning to dance or paint improve a child's spacial ability or ability to learn to read?
Research in those areas, Harvard professor Jerome Kagan said, is "as deserving of a clinical trial as a drug for cancer that has not yet been shown to be effective."
There aren't many conclusions yet that can be translated into the classroom, but there is an emerging interdisciplinary field between education and neuroscience. Like Hopkins, Harvard also has created a center to study learning and the brain.
Much of the research into the arts has centered on music and the brain. One researcher studying students who go to an arts high school found a correlation between those who were trained in music and their ability to do geometry. Yet another four-year study, being conducted by Ellen Winner of Boston College and Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard, is looking at the effects playing the piano or the violin has on students who are in elementary school.
Winner said she was quite skeptical of claims that schools that had introduced the arts had seen an increase in test scores and a generally better school climate. She had previously looked at those claims and found they couldn't be backed up by research.
However, she is in the midst of a four-year study of elementary students that has shown some effects: One group is learning an instrument and another is not. "It is the first study to demonstrate brain plasticity in young children related to music playing," Schlaug said.
The study Winner is working on has shown that children who receive a small amount of training -- as little as half an hour of lessons a week and 10 minutes of practice a day -- do have structural changes in their brains that can be measured. And those students, Winner said, were better at tests that required them to use their fingers with dexterity.
About 15 months after the study began, students who played the instrument were not better at math or reading, although the researchers are questioning whether they have assessments that are sensitive enough to measure the changes. They will continue the study for several more years.
Charles Limb, a Johns Hopkins doctor and a jazz musician, studied jazz musicians by using imaging technology to take pictures of their brains as they improvised. He found that they allowed their creativity to flow by shutting down areas that regulated inhibition and self-control. So are the most creative people able to shut down those areas of the brain?
Most of the new research is focusing on the networks of the brain that are involved in specific tasks, said Michael Posner, a researcher at the University of Oregon. Posner has studied the effects of music on attention. What he found, he said, was that in those students who showed motivation and creativity, training in the arts helped develop their attention and their intelligence. The next great focus in this area, he said, is on proving the connection that most scientists believe exists between the study of music and math ability.
The imaging is now so advanced that scientists can already see the difference in the brain networks of those who study a string instrument and those who study the piano intensely.
The brain research, while moving quickly by some measures, is still painfully slow for educators who would like answers today. Morgan, the Washington County schools chief, said some research did help her support the drive to build the Barbara Ingram School for the Arts in Hagerstown.
Mariale Hardiman, the former principal of Roland Park Elementary/Middle School, was once one of those principals who focused a lot of attention on reading and math scores. But she saw what integrating the arts into classrooms could do for students, she said, and she then began her own research into the subject.
She is now the co-director of the Hopkins Neuro-Education Initiative. She said there are a myriad of questions that could be answered in the research that is just starting, but there are two she would like to see approached: Do children who learn academic content through the arts tend to hold onto that knowledge longer? And are schools squeezing creativity out of children by controlling so much of their school day?
Even without research though, Kagan of Harvard said there is ample evidence of the value of an arts education because so many children who aren't good at academics can gain self-confidence through the arts.
"The argument for an arts education is based not on sentimentality but on pragmatism," he said. "If an arts program only helped the 7 million children in the bottom quartile, the dropout rate would drop."
Vitamin D in fish makes it 'brain food'
United Press International - May 22, 2009
WARSAW, England, May 22, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Mothers used to call fish "brain food," but researchers in Britain say fish and sunshine really do help cerebral cognitive function.
University of Manchester scientists, in collaboration with colleagues from other European facilities, compared the cognitive performance of more than 3,000 men ages 40-79 years at eight centers in Europe.
Dr. David Lee of Manchester's School of Translational Medicine found that men with higher levels of vitamin D -- synthesized in the skin following sun exposure but also found in certain foods such as oily fish -- performed consistently better in a simple and sensitive neuropsychological test that assesses an individual's attention and speed of information processing.
"Previous studies exploring the relationship between vitamin D and cognitive performance in adults have produced inconsistent findings but we observed a significant, independent association between a slower information processing speed and lower levels of vitamin D," Lee said in a statement.
"The main strengths of our study are that it is based on a large population sample and took into account potential interfering factors, such as depression, season and levels of physical activity."
The association between increased vitamin D and faster information processing was more significant in men age 60 and older although the biological reasons for this remain unclear, Lee said.
The findings are published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
Propaganda Posters!
--Examples
--Group work
HW: WWII Exam 1 Review: IDs: Appeasement, Blitzkrieg, Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa
Wednesday (5/27)
Dr. Sues Goes to War
WWII Review
HW: Study IDs
Thursday (5/28)
WWII Exam I
HW: NONE
Friday (5/29)
WWII: North Africa, Allied Bombing of Europe, and the Battle of Stalingrad
--Notes and Video clip
Current Events
HW: TBA
PSYCHOLOGY NEWS:
Arts appear to play role in brain development
May 18--For years, school systems across the nation dropped the arts to concentrate on getting struggling students to pass tests in reading and math. Yet now, a growing body of brain research suggests that teaching the arts may be good for students across all disciplines.
Scientists are now looking at, for instance, whether students at an arts high school who study music or drawing have brains that allow them to focus more intensely or do better in the classroom.
Washington County schools Superintendent Betty Morgan would have liked to have had some of that basic research in her hands when she began building a coalition for an arts high school in Hagerstown. The business community and school principals worked together, and the school will open this summer, but even at its groundbreaking a man objecting to the money spent on the school held up a sign of protest reading "Big Note$ Wrong Music."
Scientists and educators aware of the gap between basic research and the school systems are beginning to share findings, such as at this month's seminar on the brain and the arts held at Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum.
The event was sponsored by the new Neuro-Education Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University, a center designed to bridge that gap.
Brain research in the past several years is just beginning to uncover some startling ideas about how students learn. First came the proof, some years ago, that our brains do not lose brain cells as we get older, but are always capable of growing.
Now neuroscientists are investigating how training students in the arts may change the structure of their brains and the way they think. They are asking: Does putting a violin in the hands of an elementary school student help him to do math better? Will learning to dance or paint improve a child's spacial ability or ability to learn to read?
Research in those areas, Harvard professor Jerome Kagan said, is "as deserving of a clinical trial as a drug for cancer that has not yet been shown to be effective."
There aren't many conclusions yet that can be translated into the classroom, but there is an emerging interdisciplinary field between education and neuroscience. Like Hopkins, Harvard also has created a center to study learning and the brain.
Much of the research into the arts has centered on music and the brain. One researcher studying students who go to an arts high school found a correlation between those who were trained in music and their ability to do geometry. Yet another four-year study, being conducted by Ellen Winner of Boston College and Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard, is looking at the effects playing the piano or the violin has on students who are in elementary school.
Winner said she was quite skeptical of claims that schools that had introduced the arts had seen an increase in test scores and a generally better school climate. She had previously looked at those claims and found they couldn't be backed up by research.
However, she is in the midst of a four-year study of elementary students that has shown some effects: One group is learning an instrument and another is not. "It is the first study to demonstrate brain plasticity in young children related to music playing," Schlaug said.
The study Winner is working on has shown that children who receive a small amount of training -- as little as half an hour of lessons a week and 10 minutes of practice a day -- do have structural changes in their brains that can be measured. And those students, Winner said, were better at tests that required them to use their fingers with dexterity.
About 15 months after the study began, students who played the instrument were not better at math or reading, although the researchers are questioning whether they have assessments that are sensitive enough to measure the changes. They will continue the study for several more years.
Charles Limb, a Johns Hopkins doctor and a jazz musician, studied jazz musicians by using imaging technology to take pictures of their brains as they improvised. He found that they allowed their creativity to flow by shutting down areas that regulated inhibition and self-control. So are the most creative people able to shut down those areas of the brain?
Most of the new research is focusing on the networks of the brain that are involved in specific tasks, said Michael Posner, a researcher at the University of Oregon. Posner has studied the effects of music on attention. What he found, he said, was that in those students who showed motivation and creativity, training in the arts helped develop their attention and their intelligence. The next great focus in this area, he said, is on proving the connection that most scientists believe exists between the study of music and math ability.
The imaging is now so advanced that scientists can already see the difference in the brain networks of those who study a string instrument and those who study the piano intensely.
The brain research, while moving quickly by some measures, is still painfully slow for educators who would like answers today. Morgan, the Washington County schools chief, said some research did help her support the drive to build the Barbara Ingram School for the Arts in Hagerstown.
Mariale Hardiman, the former principal of Roland Park Elementary/Middle School, was once one of those principals who focused a lot of attention on reading and math scores. But she saw what integrating the arts into classrooms could do for students, she said, and she then began her own research into the subject.
She is now the co-director of the Hopkins Neuro-Education Initiative. She said there are a myriad of questions that could be answered in the research that is just starting, but there are two she would like to see approached: Do children who learn academic content through the arts tend to hold onto that knowledge longer? And are schools squeezing creativity out of children by controlling so much of their school day?
Even without research though, Kagan of Harvard said there is ample evidence of the value of an arts education because so many children who aren't good at academics can gain self-confidence through the arts.
"The argument for an arts education is based not on sentimentality but on pragmatism," he said. "If an arts program only helped the 7 million children in the bottom quartile, the dropout rate would drop."
Vitamin D in fish makes it 'brain food'
United Press International - May 22, 2009
WARSAW, England, May 22, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Mothers used to call fish "brain food," but researchers in Britain say fish and sunshine really do help cerebral cognitive function.
University of Manchester scientists, in collaboration with colleagues from other European facilities, compared the cognitive performance of more than 3,000 men ages 40-79 years at eight centers in Europe.
Dr. David Lee of Manchester's School of Translational Medicine found that men with higher levels of vitamin D -- synthesized in the skin following sun exposure but also found in certain foods such as oily fish -- performed consistently better in a simple and sensitive neuropsychological test that assesses an individual's attention and speed of information processing.
"Previous studies exploring the relationship between vitamin D and cognitive performance in adults have produced inconsistent findings but we observed a significant, independent association between a slower information processing speed and lower levels of vitamin D," Lee said in a statement.
"The main strengths of our study are that it is based on a large population sample and took into account potential interfering factors, such as depression, season and levels of physical activity."
The association between increased vitamin D and faster information processing was more significant in men age 60 and older although the biological reasons for this remain unclear, Lee said.
The findings are published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Week Ahead
Monday (5/18)
1. Pearl Harbor - December 7th, 1941
2. The Final Solution
--Readings
HW: Complete Reading
Tuesday (5/19)
1. The Final Solution
--Share readings - group
2. Discuss Readings - class
HW: Socratic Seminar Readings
Wednesday (5/20)
1. The Final Solution
--Video
2. Prep for Socratic Seminar
HW: Prep for Seminar
Thursday (5/21)
The Final Solution
--Socratic Seminar
HW: None
Friday (5/22)
The Final Solution
--Memories of the Camps - Video (WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC)
Current Events
HW: TBA
1. Pearl Harbor - December 7th, 1941
2. The Final Solution
--Readings
HW: Complete Reading
Tuesday (5/19)
1. The Final Solution
--Share readings - group
2. Discuss Readings - class
HW: Socratic Seminar Readings
Wednesday (5/20)
1. The Final Solution
--Video
2. Prep for Socratic Seminar
HW: Prep for Seminar
Thursday (5/21)
The Final Solution
--Socratic Seminar
HW: None
Friday (5/22)
The Final Solution
--Memories of the Camps - Video (WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC)
Current Events
HW: TBA
Sunday, May 17, 2009
IB Psychology Exam
Here is a link to the documentary about medicating children: The Medicated Child.
To aid you, I wrote a brief summary of the video while trying to integrate some of what we went over in class. I wrote the review as if I was arguing from the standpoint of the documentary's authors.
CAUTION: 1. This has not been edited/proofed, I simply wrote it on the quick so don't hold typos against me! 2. This essay is an argument (as basically offered in the video), therefore you can most readily disagree with all or parts of it! Integrate your own analysis and ideas!
I hope it helps some!
Click here for the Documentary Summary and Review
To aid you, I wrote a brief summary of the video while trying to integrate some of what we went over in class. I wrote the review as if I was arguing from the standpoint of the documentary's authors.
CAUTION: 1. This has not been edited/proofed, I simply wrote it on the quick so don't hold typos against me! 2. This essay is an argument (as basically offered in the video), therefore you can most readily disagree with all or parts of it! Integrate your own analysis and ideas!
I hope it helps some!
Click here for the Documentary Summary and Review
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Focused, social kids, better adult health
BOSTON, May 7, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Children, especially girls, who can stay focused and don't sweat the small stuff have a better shot at good health in adulthood, U.S. researchers said.
The study, published in the journal Health Psychology, found that for all the participants, superior attention spans and having a more positive outlook in youth affected health the most.
"Certain characteristics already evident early in life are likely to spark positive or negative emotions, and also influence biological and behavioral responses to stress," lead author Laura D. Kubzansky of the Harvard School of Public Health said in a statement. "Supporting this idea, we found that children who were able to stay focused on a task and react less negatively to situations at age 7 reported better general health and fewer illnesses 30 years later."
Kubzansky and co-authors tracked 569 individuals from the National Collaborative Perinatal Project from age 7 to their mid-30s. Trained observers rated the 7-year-olds on 15 different behaviors and these behaviors were assigned to three different personality attributes: the ability to stay focused on a task and persist in solving a problem, the tendency to react negatively to situations and the tendency toward shyness, acting withdrawn and having difficulty communicating.
The study, published in the journal Health Psychology, found that for all the participants, superior attention spans and having a more positive outlook in youth affected health the most.
"Certain characteristics already evident early in life are likely to spark positive or negative emotions, and also influence biological and behavioral responses to stress," lead author Laura D. Kubzansky of the Harvard School of Public Health said in a statement. "Supporting this idea, we found that children who were able to stay focused on a task and react less negatively to situations at age 7 reported better general health and fewer illnesses 30 years later."
Kubzansky and co-authors tracked 569 individuals from the National Collaborative Perinatal Project from age 7 to their mid-30s. Trained observers rated the 7-year-olds on 15 different behaviors and these behaviors were assigned to three different personality attributes: the ability to stay focused on a task and persist in solving a problem, the tendency to react negatively to situations and the tendency toward shyness, acting withdrawn and having difficulty communicating.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
The Week Ahead
Monday (5/11)
World War II
--September 1st, 1939
---NOTES
Evacuation of the British School Children
---AUDIO Clips
The Phony War and the Fall of France
---NOTES
---VIDEO
HW: TBA
Tuesday (5/12)
World War II
The Battle of Britain
--NOTES w/Audio
--Readings
--VIDEO
HW: TBA
Wednesday (5/13)
World War II
The Blitz!
---NOTES w/AUDIO clips
---VIDEO
HW: TBA
Thursday (5/14)
World War II
Operation Barbarossa
--NOTES
--VIDEO
HW: TBA
Friday (5/15)
World War II
The Final Solution
--Readings
CURRENT EVENTS
HW: Finish Readings re: The Final Solution
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Friday, May 08, 2009
Grades
Look for UPDATES this weekend!
Brain activity linked with junk food cravings: study
LOS ANGELES, May 02, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Level of willpower can be attributed to people's cravings for junk food, a new study found.
Self-control to reject unhealthy foods is related with two areas of the brain, researchers at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) said in the study published in the May issue of Science.
The researchers used MRI to scan the brains of volunteers as they looked at photos of dozens of types of foods and decided which ones they'd like to eat. They found significant differences in the brain activity between people who had self-control in terms of making food choices and those with no self-control.
Previous research has shown that an area of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is involved in all value-based decisions. When vmPFC activity decreases, a person will probably reject an item, whereas increased activity means they'll probably choose it.
In people with no self-control, the vmPFC seemed to take into consideration only the taste of a food, according to the study.
"In the case of good self-controllers, however, another area of the brain -- called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) -- becomes active and modulates the basic value signals so that the self-controllers can also incorporate health considerations into their decisions," principal investigator Antonio Rangel, an associate professor of economics, said in a news release.
The vmPFC is active during every decision and that the DLPFC is more active when a person is using self-control, according to the study.
"This, ultimately, is one reason why self-controllers can make better choices," Rangel said.
Brain activity linked with junk food cravings: study
LOS ANGELES, May 02, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Level of willpower can be attributed to people's cravings for junk food, a new study found.
Self-control to reject unhealthy foods is related with two areas of the brain, researchers at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) said in the study published in the May issue of Science.
The researchers used MRI to scan the brains of volunteers as they looked at photos of dozens of types of foods and decided which ones they'd like to eat. They found significant differences in the brain activity between people who had self-control in terms of making food choices and those with no self-control.
Previous research has shown that an area of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is involved in all value-based decisions. When vmPFC activity decreases, a person will probably reject an item, whereas increased activity means they'll probably choose it.
In people with no self-control, the vmPFC seemed to take into consideration only the taste of a food, according to the study.
"In the case of good self-controllers, however, another area of the brain -- called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) -- becomes active and modulates the basic value signals so that the self-controllers can also incorporate health considerations into their decisions," principal investigator Antonio Rangel, an associate professor of economics, said in a news release.
The vmPFC is active during every decision and that the DLPFC is more active when a person is using self-control, according to the study.
"This, ultimately, is one reason why self-controllers can make better choices," Rangel said.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Sunday, May 03, 2009
The Week Ahead
Sorry about the delay! Tomorrow morning I will publish this week's agenda! Until then, here is another psych headline!
Autism researchers announce breakthrough in identifying gene: Autism researchers at UM and other universities announced a genetic breakthrough that could lead to improved treatment and prevention of the disorder.
The Miami Herald - April 29, 2009
Apr. 29--Researchers say they have found the first piece of the genetic puzzle that could lead to greatly improved diagnosis, treatment and even prevention of autism.
A multi-university team, which included the University of Miami School of Medicine, has identified a gene associated with autism, according to a report published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed medical journal Nature.
It may be only one of as many as 50 genes involved, and environmental factors are also involved, but Margaret Pericak-Vance, director of UM's Institute for Human Genomics, says the discovery could lead to practical results within a decade.
"Things are moving so fast, in the next five years or so you can see some of this information being translated maybe into prediction, even therapies," she said.
Therapies that would prevent autism are "farther down the pike," she said.
Autism researchers announce breakthrough in identifying gene: Autism researchers at UM and other universities announced a genetic breakthrough that could lead to improved treatment and prevention of the disorder.
The Miami Herald - April 29, 2009
Apr. 29--Researchers say they have found the first piece of the genetic puzzle that could lead to greatly improved diagnosis, treatment and even prevention of autism.
A multi-university team, which included the University of Miami School of Medicine, has identified a gene associated with autism, according to a report published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed medical journal Nature.
It may be only one of as many as 50 genes involved, and environmental factors are also involved, but Margaret Pericak-Vance, director of UM's Institute for Human Genomics, says the discovery could lead to practical results within a decade.
"Things are moving so fast, in the next five years or so you can see some of this information being translated maybe into prediction, even therapies," she said.
Therapies that would prevent autism are "farther down the pike," she said.
Friday, May 01, 2009
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