The Week Ahead

Monday (4/6)
Imperialism in Africa:
Guns, Germs, and Steel 2
HW: Three paragraph essay

Tuesday (4/7)
Imperialism in the Middle East
--Discuss HW
Imperialism in India
--DBQ
HW: Textbook TBA

Wednesday (4/8)
Imperialism in Japan
--Notes
--Video
HW: Study for exam

Thursday (4/9)
Review Imperialism
Exam - Short Answer
HW: NONE

Friday (4/10)
Introduction to World War I
Current Events
HW: NONE!

Sleep may help clear brain for learning

ST. LOUIS, Apr 3, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Sleep, already recognized as a promoter of long-term memories, also helps clear room in the brain for new learning, U.S. researchers said.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said neurologists believe creation of new synapses is one key way the brain encodes memories and learning.

"There are a number of reasons why the brain can't indefinitely add synapses, including the finite spatial constraints of the skull," senior author Paul Shaw of Washington University School of Medicine said in a statement.

"We were able to track the creation of new synapses in fruit flies during learning experiences and to show that sleep pushed that number back down."

Many aspects of fly sleep are similar to human sleep. The study, published in the journal Science, used flies genetically altered to make it possible to track the development of new synapses -- the junctures at which brain cells communicate.

"The biggest surprise was that out of 200,000 fly brain cells, only 16 were required for the formation of new memories," first author Jeffrey Donlea, a graduate student, said. "These 16 cells are part of the circadian circuitry that let the fly brain perform certain behaviors at particular times of day."

Tough times add to panic, anxiety disorders

Simply picking up the paper or turning on the TV these days can make a person anxious.

The Dow is down, unemployment is up and major cities have neighborhoods full of empty, foreclosed-on houses.

Americans have so much anxiety about personal finances, the economy and job losses that the federal government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released this week online a "Guide to Getting Through Tough Economic Times."

For most, the collective anxiety causes a few moments of panic in the daily routine or the occasional sleepless night. For the 40 million U.S. adults who suffer from anxiety disorders, however, it can mean a daily routine of persistent panic.

And those who have Generalized Anxiety Disorder -- characterized by persistent, excessive, and unrealistic worry about everyday things -- may be in a constant state of panic, overly concerned about money, health, family, work, or other issues -- even when there is no apparent reason for concern, according to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder is treatable, and clinical trials have shown the best way to treat it is a combination of medicines and group or individual psychotherapy, said Craig Stevens. He's the chairman of the pharmacology and physiology department at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences. For decades, the most popular drugs prescribed to treat anxiety disorders were benzodiazepines -- drugs such as Valium and Xanax that relax

the brain and body in a way similar to alcohol, but carry a risk of dependency and potential for abuse.

Due to that risk and other side effects, doctors have started to move away from treating long-term anxiety disorders with benzo drugs -- and toward a class of medicines known as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or serotonin-norepinephrine re-uptake inhibitors (SNRIs), commonly used as antidepressants, Stevens said.

Because these medications are used to fix serotonin imbalances in the brain, they may be able to repair the misfiring neurons that are triggering anxiety attacks.

"Anxiety is normally an adaptive response in humans, one of the normal adaptive responses that help us survive in life," Stevens said. "For those with chronic anxiety, it's possible (their brain's neurons) are miswired or overactive."

People who have anxiety disorders can't just "snap out of it," so to speak.

"In the same way you can't just run a four-minute mile, they can't get out of the door because of agoraphobia or anxiety," he said. "They can't inhibit these ruminating thoughts -- their brain is wired differently."

That's why antidepressants are promising as a method of treating anxiety disorders, he said.

"The brain is very plastic, much more than we ever thought. There's some amazing brain data that shows new neurons being made with the use of antidepressants such as Prozac."

Fixing that imbalance could mean a more balanced, less panic-stricken life for those with anxiety disorders. And it may fix other medical problems, Stevens said, that can stem from chronic anxiety -- such as high blood pressure, stomach disorders, and substance abuse as a way of self-medicating.

But some with anxiety disorders are reluctant to seek treatment, either because of the stigma attached to seeing a doctor for mental health issues or because of fears of addiction, dependence or side effects of the medications.

"People shouldn't be afraid if they take them the right way, under a doctor's supervision," Stevens said. "We are making progress, and the stigma is going away. But quite frankly, it's also a matter of compassion."

Tough times: Possible health risks

Economic turmoil can result in a host of negative health e9ects --physical and mental. For some, it can substantially increase the risk for developing problems such as:

--Depression

--Anxiety

--Compulsive behaviors (overeating, excessive gambling, spending, etc.)

--Substance abuse

--Need help? Visit tulsaworld.com/economicanxiety.

More than just temporary anxiety?

Think you might su9er from Generalized Anxiety Disorder? Take the following self-test. If you answer "yes" to several of the following questions, talk to your doctor.

Are you troubled by:

--Excessive worry, occurring more days than not, for at least six months

--Unreasonable worry about a number of events or activities, such as work or school and/or health

--The inability to control the worry

Are you bothered by at least three of the following?

--Restlessness, feeling keyed-up or on edge

--Being easily tired

--Problems concentrating

--Irritability

--Muscle tension

--Trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, or restless and unsatisfying sleep

--Anxiety interfering with daily life

Source: Anxiety Disorders Association of America

April Fools!

Fourth Period got me! Here is an interesting article on some more April fools gags!
Internet hoaxes launched for April Fool's gags

The Week Ahead: Welcome Back!

Monday (3/30)
European Imperialism: 1850 to 1914
-Notes
-Video: Guns, Germs, and Steel Episode II
HW: NONE

Tuesday (3/31)
Imperialism
-Finish Video: Guns, Germs, and Steel Episode II
-Discussion
-Notes
HW: Textbook Reading TBA

Wednesday (4/1)
Imperialism
-Discuss HW
-Imperialism Case Study: The Congo Free State
--Notes
--Readings
HW: Textbook Reading TBA

Thursday (4/2)
Imperialism
--Discuss HW
--Video: Guns, Germs, and Steel Episode III
HW: None

Friday (4/3)
Imperialism
-- Finish Video: Guns, Germs, and Steel Episode III
Current Events
HW: Three Paragraph Comparison Essay: Guns, Germs, and Steel: American vs. African Imperial Experiences

Brain differences mark those with depression risk

CHICAGO (Reuters) - People who have a high family risk of developing depression had less brain matter on the right side of their brains on par with losses seen in Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

Brain scans showed a 28-percent thinning in the right cortex -- the outer layer of the brain -- in people who had a family history of depression compared with people who did not.

"The difference was so great that at first we almost didn't believe it. But we checked and re-checked all of our data, and we looked for all possible alternative explanations, and still the difference was there," said Dr. Bradley Peterson of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

His study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings are based on imaging studies of 131 people aged 6 to 54 with and without a family history of depression.

The team was looking specifically for abnormalities in the brain that could signal a predisposition to depression, rather than changes that may be caused by the disease.

The thinning on the right side was only linked with a family predisposition to depression. People who actually were depressed also had thinning on the left side of cortex.

"Because previous biological studies only focused on a relatively small number of individuals who already suffered from depression, their findings were unable to tease out whether those differences represented the causes of depressive illness, or a consequence," Peterson said.

He said having a thinner right cortex may increase the risk of depression by disrupting a person's ability to decode and remember social and emotional cues from other people.

They did memory and attention tests on the study subjects and found the less brain material a person had in the right cortex, the worse they performed on attention and memory tests.

"Our findings suggest rather strongly that if you have thinning in the right hemisphere of the brain, you may be predisposed to depression and may also have some cognitive and inattention issues," he said.

Peterson said the findings suggest medications used to treat attention problems such as stimulants might be useful in the treatment of depression in some patients.

Keep children away from violent computer games: experts

VIENNA, Mar 20, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- It is necessary to keep children away from violence-related computer games, said three Austrian psychologists based on their latest research results.

According to Friday's reports of Austrian media, in their latest research titled "Violence and Violence Prevention," three scientists from the Psychology Department of Austria's University of Vienna suggested that a "zero-tolerance" attitude should be adopted in dealing with youths who play violent computer games. Youths should stay away from those violent games as they "do no good but only harm."

The research results proved that those youths who often play violence-related computer games tend to be more aggressive than those who only play games with less or no violence, for which the scientists explained that violent games not only tempt imitation, but the gaming environment also easily leads to a reactive or imaginary aggressive mentality.

"Children who play violence-related computer games will easily show aggression when irritated, unsatisfied or angry," so they are more aggressive than children who do not play such games. The research also found that especially among the 16-year-olds surveyed, boys who like to play computer games with brutality- related contents have even reached 60 percent.

Therefore, the scientists suggested that parents and teachers should begin related education in primary schools to keep children from violent computer games.

On March 11, a world-shocking campus shooting happened in Germany, leaving 17 people dead. The murderer was only a 17-year- old boy, who, according to investigation, is enthusiastic about violent computer games.

I hope everyone is having a great vacation or staycation!

Spring Break!

BREAKING NEWS

Due to constraints, the Industrial Revolution ID Exam will now be a 5 question short answer question test. Each worth 10 points, you have about 7 minutes per question.

Cheers!
Caro

To Work Your Brain, Work Your Body

The problem: I lost my car keys. What kind of training will make my brain work better?

The solution: Brain-boosting software programs are a booming business. And studies show that both computer exercises and old-fashioned mental activities-reading or crafting - can affect memory.

But the best thing you can do for your brain is to move your body.

"If I had to pick between fitness training and brain training, I'd go with fitness," said Sam Wang, an associate professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton University. So far, he said, exercise has been shown to have an effect several times larger than computer-brain exercise.

But Wang noted that "fitness training only lasts as long as the benefit to your cardiovascular system." Brain exercise, on the other hand, "might last longer."

Why not combine mental and physical fitness? That's the idea behind Brain Center America's NeuroActive Bike, which allows people to select from 22 brain-stimulating exercises while they pedal.

Wang said he would never shell out $3,995 for the bike, which is available in the U.S. only in South Florida, but it could be a double workout for the brain.

What he would really like to see is a computer that works only if he's moving on an exercise bike or treadmill.

The Week Ahead

Monday (3/16)
1. Discuss HW and the defense of the factory system
2. DBQ: Assessing the Industrial Revolution's effects
3. Reforming the industrial world
--Notes
HW: Reading in Textbook - TBA

Tuesday (3/17)
1. Discuss HW
2. Review Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism
3. Prepare for Socratic Seminar I
HW: Soc. Sem. Readings

Wednesday (3/18)
1. Introduce Extra Credit Option
2. Socratic Seminar I:
Round 1: Child labor, minimum wage, labor rights, etc.
Round 2: Communism vs. Capitalism
Round 3: Technology and Today
HW: STUDY & Prep Journal

Thursday (3/19)
1. Review for Exam II
HW: Study

Friday (3/20)
1. Exam II
2. Journals DUE
HW: NONE!

HAPPY SPRING BREAK!

Scientists able to read people's minds

Brain scanner translates thoughts of participants in maze experiment

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

An MRI scan of a brain. By observing neural activity, scientists will be able to translate thoughts,

Having the ability to read someone's mind with a "thought machine" has come a step closer after scientists showed that they could guess a person's memory simply by looking at the electrical activity of their brain.

Scientists have found that spatial memories can be "read" by a brain scanner so that it is possible to predict automatically where someone imagines themselves to be (the exact location in a maze, for instance) without actually asking them.

"It's also a small step toward the idea of mind reading, because just by looking at neural activity, we are able to say what someone is thinking," said Demis Hassabis of University College London.

It may one day be possible to do the same with other types of memories and thoughts, although the possibility of using a mind-reading machine to solve crimes or to fight terrorism is still a distant prospect, Dr Hassabis said.

"It's at least 10 years, probably more, from getting anywhere near that kind of technology, where you could literally read someone's thoughts in a single short session when they don't want you to," he said. "We might be about 10 years away from doing that, so it might be useful to start having those ethical discussions in the near future in preparation for that – but we're still a long way from doing anything practical," Dr Hassabis said.

The study was led by UCL's Professor Eleanor Maguire who had already shown that a small area of the brain behind a region called the hippocampus is enlarged in male taxi drivers who had done "The Knowledge" – memorising the maze of London streets. Professor Maguire trained a different set of male volunteers to navigate themselves through a virtual maze on a computer while their brains were being scanned by a functional MRI machine. "We know that the hippocampus underpins our ability to navigate, to form and recollect memories and how to imagine the future. But how the activity across millions of hippocampal neurons supports the functions is a fundamental question in neuroscience," Professor Maguire said.

The scientists found that certain nerve cells in the brain's hippocampus, called "place cells", became stimulated in definite patterns of activity that the researchers could analyse to guess where in the maze each man imagined himself to be.

"Remarkably, using this technique we found that we could accurately predict the position of an individual within this virtual environment solely from the pattern of activity within their hippocampus," she said.

In contrast, previous research on animals suggested that there were no particular patterns of activity within the nerve cells of the hippocampus that could be used to predict spatial memory. "Our technique, which looks at the picture over many thousands of neurons, shows this cannot be the whole story," Professor Maguire said. "If we're able to predict spatial memories from brain activity, this means there must be a structure to how it is coded in the neurons."

The study, published in the journal Current Biology and funded by the Wellcome Trust, the world's biggest medical research charity, could help scientists to understand the fundamental memory problems behind some neurological diseases. "Understanding how we as humans record our memories is critical to helping us learn how information is processed in the hippocampus and how our memories are eroded by diseases such as Alzheimer's," Dr Hassabis said.

The future: Ethical questions

Being able to read someone's mind has been the stuff of science fiction, but how far are we away from the reality of visualising the secret thoughts of people without them knowing?

The latest research is strictly limited to a certain set of nerve cells in the brain – specifically the hippocampus region – that are known to be involved in memorising spatial awareness and navigation.

Professor Eleanor Maguire of University College London, who led the study, said that the finding opens up the possibility of understanding how other kinds of memories are encoded in the brain, although we are still a long way from seeing inside someone's head. "We can rest easy in terms of mind-reading. While technically in this study we were able to predict someone's spatial memory from their brain activity, there was nothing intrusive about what we did," Professor Maguire said.

"It's not that we can put somebody in a brain scanner and suddenly read their thoughts. It's quite an involved process that's at a very early stage."

But in science you can never say never, and the technique could be adapted for other kinds of memory infiltration. "It's probably quite far away from having social, ethical and probably forensic implications," Professor Maguire said.

YES! Radiohead does New Order!

I am working on Pippin doing this...

The Week Ahead: 3/9 - 3/12

This Week: The Industrial Revolution

Monday (3/9)
1. Discuss HW from textbook - (assigned last Wednesday and stamped last Thursday)
2. Lecture and Notes
3. Video clip: Metropolis
HW: Primary Source Packet with Questions in Journal

Tuesday (3/10)
1. Discuss HW
2. Video Clips
3. Class reading and discussion
HW: NONE

Wednesday (3/11)
1. Class Reading 2
2. Finish Notes
HW: DBQ

Thursday (3/12)
1. Discuss DBQ
2. Child Labor and working conditions debate
3. Current Events!
HW: TBA

Friday (3/13)
NO SCHOOL - Conferences

Congratulations Bre!!!

Taken From:
Saturday, March 07, 2009 YUXING ZHENG
The Oregonian

Portland Rose Festival names its first suburban princess Tigard High senior Breanna Rose Burnett will represent the metro area Tigard High's Breanna Rose Burnett is the first metro princess

A girl whose middle name is Rose will be the first princess on the Court of Rosaria who represents a Portland suburb.

Breanna Rose Burnett, a senior at Tigard High School, was selected as the first metro princess Friday.

"I didn't believe it at first," Burnett, 17, said after hearing her name announced. "I'm surprised I even made it this far. I'm extremely excited."

Burnett was the fifth princess named to the 15-member court. The princesses will travel throughout Oregon in the next few months representing the court at public events and volunteer gigs.

In an effort to reach a wider audience, Rose Festival organizers this year opened up one spot on the court to suburban students. Seventy-one applicants representing 18 metro area schools began the process. Judges then narrowed the field to five finalists, who attended Friday's announcement at the Lakewood Center for the Arts in Lake Oswego.

Burnett, who has been dancing since she was 5, is a captain of the varsity dance team. She is also active in student government, humanitarian clubs, and speech and debate. She is a member of Solid Rock Jesus Church in Tigard and spent two weeks in Uganda last June through a local ministry.

Family: Parents Sandy and Brian Burnett, brothers Tyler, 21, and Daniel, 24

Favorite song: "The Fear" by Lily Allen

Perfect day: "Being able to go back to Uganda, where I have a lot of friends."

Bookmarked Web site: mrcaro.com, her psychology teacher's site

Favorite class: International Baccalaureate psychology and chemistry 2

Where her money goes: Clothes. "I love shopping."

Dream holiday: To travel around the world, possibly through Europe

Little-known fact: "I'm extremely flexible."

Favorite book: The Bible and "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

University plans: Gonzaga University in Spokane to study psychology or the humanities. Also hopes to be on the dance team.

PRIVACY

Hey bloggers! It is recommended that when you post to this blog (or others for that matter) you avoid using your full name. Your first name with last initial is fine. Using your full name may put you at risk of losing your privacy.

Cheers!
Caro

It's The Weekend...

BRUSSELS, March 5 (Reuters) - A Canadian filmmaker plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye to make documentaries and raise awareness about surveillance in society.

Rob Spence, 36, who lost an eye in an accident as a teenager, said his so-called Project Eyeborg is to have the camera, a battery and a wireless transmitter mounted on a tiny circuit board. www.eyeborgblog.com/

"Originally the whole idea was to do a documentary about surveillance. I thought I would become a sort of super hero ... fighting for justice against surveillance," Spence said.

"In Toronto there are 12,000 cameras. But the strange thing I discovered was that people don't care about the surveillance cameras, they were more concerned about me and my secret camera eye because they feel that is a worse invasion of their privacy."

Spence, in Brussels to appear at a media conference, said no part of the camera would be connected to his nerves or brain.

He does not intend to create a reality TV show and the camera will be switched off when not needed, he said.

"I don't want to go into a locker room. I don't want to show the world me going to the bathroom either ... I'm not a life-caster and I don't plan to be one," he said. (Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Revolutionary OR Just Cool?

The Week Ahead

Monday (3/2)
Unit Exam I Review
--Responding to IDs
--Practice Exam
HW: Study

Tuesday (3/3)
Unit I Exam
HW: NONE

Wednesday (3/4)
Industrial Revolution
--Introduction
--Revolutionary Invention
HW: Textbook Reading - TBA

Thursday (3/5)
Industrial Revolution
--Lecture
--Reading
HW: Primary Source Packet Readings and Questions

Friday (3/6)
NO SCHOOL



Face of moral disgust has primitive roots

University of Toronto researchers say they've found a link between moral disgust and disgust related to unpleasant tastes.

While morality is considered a pinnacle of human evolution, disgust is a primitive emotion that played a key role in evolutionary survival, researchers said.

"Our research shows the involvement of disgust in morality, suggesting that moral judgment may depend as much on simple emotional processes as on complex thought," lead author Hanah Chapman, a graduate student in psychology, said Thursday in a release.

The research team found that people make similar facial movements when tasting unpleasant liquids or viewing disgusting objects as they did when they were subjected to unfair treatment in a laboratory game.

"These results shed new light on the origins of morality, suggesting that not only do complex thoughts guide our moral compass, but also more primitive instincts related to avoiding potential toxins," psychology professor and principal investigator Adam Anderson said. "Surprisingly, our sophisticated moral sense of what is right and wrong may develop from a newborn's innate preference for what tastes good and bad, what is potentially nutritious versus poisonous."

The findings are published in the journal Science.

Beauty and the brain, women use more than men

WASHINGTON - Beauty is in the brain of the beholder. Go to any museum and there will be men and women admiring paintings and sculpture. But it turns out they are thinking about the sight differently. Men process beauty on the right side of their brains, while women use their whole brain to do the job, researchers report in Tuesday's electronic edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

They even explain it differently.

Novelist Margaret Wolfe Hungerford: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

Essayist David Hume: "Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them."

Researchers were surprised by the finding.

"It is well known that there are differences between brain activity in women and men in cognitive tasks," said researcher Camilo J. Cela-Conde of the University of Baleares in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. "However, why should this kind of difference appear in the case of appreciation of beauty?"

The answer seems to be that when women consider a visual object they link it to language while men concentrate on the spatial aspects of the object, Cela-Conde said in an interview by e-mail.

He noted, however, that this doesn't explain why - and how - the human capacity to appreciate beauty evolved.

"The differences that we have found might relate to the different social roles that, hypothetically, men and women had during human evolution." he said.

The researchers tested 10 men and 10 women, showing them paintings and photos of urban scenes and landscapes, asking them to rate each scene as either "beautiful" or "not beautiful."

At the same time the scientists looked at images of the magnetic fields produced by electrical currents in the brains of the men and women.

For the first 300 milliseconds, there was no difference between male and female brains, and from 300 to 700 milliseconds activity was greater for objects that were rated as beautiful than for those that were not beautiful.

For both sexes the most active region was the parietal lobe that deals with visual perception, spatial orientation and information processing, but it was focused on the right side of the brain in men while both sides participated in women.

While there are differences between people as to what is beautiful and what isn't, Cela-Conde said they did not find identifiable differences related to sex.

"Any person can find beautiful a landscape, a building or a canvas that some others will find awful. But sex has little to do with those differences. Perhaps they relate with other variables, such as age or education." he said.

"It is curious that, using different neural networks, the final result is very similar in women and men. But this seems to be the case," Cela-Conde said.

He added: "Human nature is complex and difficult to study and understand. Nevertheless, thanks to scientific tools we are starting to know a bit more about some very important aspects of our nature."

Napoleon!

Here are some clips from the documentary on Napoleon by request. Enjoy!

Social websites harm children's brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist

Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.

Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.

The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day.

But they will strike a chord with parents and teachers who complain that many youngsters lack the ability to communicate or concentrate away from their screens.

More than 150million use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, share photographs and videos and post regular updates of their movements and thoughts.

A further six million have signed up to Twitter, the 'micro-blogging' service that lets users circulate text messages about themselves.

But while the sites are popular - and extremely profitable - a growing number of psychologists and neuroscientists believe they may be doing more harm than good.

Baroness Greenfield, an Oxford University neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, believes repeated exposure could effectively 'rewire' the brain.

Computer games and fast-paced TV shows were also a factor, she said.

'We know how small babies need constant reassurance that they exist,' she told the Mail yesterday.

'My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.'
Professor Susan Greenfield

Her comments echoed those she made during a House of Lords debate earlier this month. Then she argued that exposure to computer games, instant messaging, chat rooms and social networking sites could leave a generation with poor attention spans.

I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf,' she said.

Lady Greenfield told the Lords a teacher of 30 years had told her she had noticed a sharp decline in the ability of her pupils to understand others.

'It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations,' she said.

She pointed out that autistic people, who usually find it hard to communicate, were particularly comfortable using computers.

'Of course, we do not know whether the current increase in autism is due more to increased awareness and diagnosis of autism, or whether it can - if there is a true increase - be in any way linked to an increased prevalence among people of spending time in screen relationships. Surely it is a point worth considering,' she added.

Psychologists have also argued that digital technology is changing the way we think. They point out that students no longer need to plan essays before starting to write - thanks to word processors they can edit as they go along. Satellite navigation systems have negated the need to decipher maps.

A study by the Broadcaster Audience Research Board found teenagers now spend seven-and-a-half hours a day in front of a screen.

Educational psychologist Jane Healy believes children should be kept away from computer games until they are seven. Most games only trigger the 'flight or fight' region of the brain, rather than the vital areas responsible for reasoning.

Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, said: 'We are seeing children's brain development damaged because they don't engage in the activity they have engaged in for millennia.

'I'm not against technology and computers. But before they start social networking, they need to learn to make real relationships with people.'

The Week Ahead: 2/23 - 2/27

Monday (2/23)
Essay 1: Class Work
GOAL: I will want to see everyone's outline and thesis statement by the end of class
HW: Work on Essay 1

Tuesday (2/24)
The Reign of Terror and Napoleon
-The Reign of Terror
--Reading
-Napoleon
--Notes & J/Es
HW: Textbook Reading, TBA

Wednesday (2/25)
-Napoleon
--Notes
--Congress of Vienna - HW
HW: Work on Essay 1

Thursday (2/26)
UNIT Review: 1492: Napoleon
--Handout/Worksheet
HW: FINAL draft of Essay 1

Friday (2/27)
DUE: Essay 1 (100pts), DBQ (10pts), Outline (10pts)
Exam Review
Introduction to writing IDs
--Practice
HW: Study for Exam 1


Eating disorders are a silent epidemic - and the epidemic is spreading.

At one extreme, nearly a third of America is considered to be obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control. As recently as 1990, in no state was more than 15 percent of the population obese. By 2006, at least 20 percent of the population was considered obese in all but four states.

While millions of Americans are eating themselves to death, millions more are starving themselves to death. Anorexia is not just for models and celebrities. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 1 percent of women and adolescent girls have this debilitating, potentially deadly disease. Males account for just 10 percent of all cases, but their numbers are growing.

Bulimia is even more common. Those with bulimia purge their food, abuse laxatives or exercise obsessively to control their weight. Although research suggests that up to 4 percent of college-aged women have bulimia, it is increasingly common among women and men of all ages.

Eating disorders are serious illnesses. If left untreated, an estimated 20 percent of those with anorexia will die from malnutrition and other factors. Obesity, conversely, can double a person's susceptibility to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

In spite of these startling statistics, surprisingly little has been done to address this epidemic. National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, which begins tomorrow, is a start, but eating disorders are a serious problem 52 weeks a year.

It would be hard to argue that eating disorders have not received their fair share of media attention. The problem is that media portrayals have left the impression that eating disorders mostly affect the rich and famous, and are the result of character deficiency and poor upbringing.

The number of afflicted individuals strongly suggests that these popular beliefs fall far short of explaining eating disorders. More critically, these stereotypes obscure reality and leave us all spectacularly vulnerable to the severe human suffering and excessive societal cost these conditions create.

So how can we do better?

The first step is to increase awareness of the seriousness of eating disorders and to accept, as we do with other major diseases, that there are many types of eating disorders and likely many causes.

We need to be wary of the quick fix. The science of eating turns out to be a complex subject involving the interplay of genetics, biochemistry, nutrition and psychology. There will be no "one size fits all" solution.

Lack of research funding is a major problem. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, research funding works out to $1.20 a year for each person with an eating disorder, compared with $159 for each person with schizophrenia.

As adults, we need to model healthy attitudes and habits, ignore fad diets and educate our children better. Most people can maintain a healthy weight through nutrition and exercise. It's not just about willpower, though. Some need professional assistance.

Insurers are uncertain about how best to cover eating disorders. They cover some eating disorders as mental health problems, others as medical problems and still others as both. Regardless of how eating disorders are covered, they pose a challenge, because the medical impact is so costly.

The good news is that with proper treatment, many people fully recover. If we begin to recognize eating disorders as the national epidemic that they are, a far greater percentage of patients can recover fully and enjoy happy and healthier lives.

Stuart Koman is president and CEO of Walden Behavioral Care Inc. of Waltham and Northampton.

HAPPY FRIDAY

Experts Warn of 'Terminator'-Style Military-Robot Rebellion

Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code, or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands.

The stark warning — which includes discussion of a "Terminator"-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters — is part of a hefty report funded by and prepared for the U.S. Navy's high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research.

The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans.

Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.

"There is a common misconception that robots will do only what we have programmed them to do," Patrick Lin, the chief compiler of the report, said. "Unfortunately, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to a time when ... programs could be written and understood by a single person."

The reality, Dr. Lin said, was that modern programs included millions of lines of code and were written by teams of programmers, none of whom knew the entire program.

Accordingly, no individual could accurately predict how the various portions of large programs would interact without extensive testing in the field — an option that may either be unavailable or deliberately sidestepped by the designers of fighting robots.

Stanford Prison Experiment

We were talking about this study in third block World History today. Here are a few clips of what the experiment was about. There are clear connections to world history in how people place themselves into roles that can influence their behavior in dramatic and unexpected ways.

Watch these below clips and post your reaction here! What is significant about Zimbardo's findings with respect to society and history?

Introduction to the study:

The Week Ahead

Tuesday (2/17)
The Enlightenment
--Work on Utopias
HW: FINISH Utopias

Wednesday (2/18)
The Enlightenment
--Present Utopias
The French Revolution
--Notes
HW: Textbook reading with questions

Thursday (2/19)
The French Revolution
--Discuss HW
--The 5 Paragraph History Essay
--DBQ: Causes of The French Revolution
HW: NONE!

Friday (2/20)
The French Revolution
--Essay work
--Current Events!
HW: Work on Essay: Outline due Monday

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

The science of romance: Brains have a love circuit

WASHINGTON - Like any young woman in love, Bianca Acevedo has exchanged valentine hearts with her fiance.

But the New York neuroscientist knows better. The source of love is in the head, not the heart.

She is one of the researchers in a relatively new field focused on explaining the biology of romantic love. And the unpoetic explanation is that love mostly can be understood through brain images, hormones and genetics.

That seems to be the case for the newly in love, the long in love and the brokenhearted.

"It has a biological basis. We know some of the key players," said Larry Young of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta. There, he studies the brains of an unusual monogamous rodent to get a better clue about what goes on in the minds of people in love.

In humans, there are four tiny areas of the brain that some researchers say form a circuit of love. Acevedo, who works at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, is part of a team that has isolated those regions with the unromantic names of ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens, the ventral pallidum and raphe nucleus.

The hot spot is the teardrop-shaped VTA. When people newly in love were put in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine and shown pictures of their beloved, the VTA lit up. Same for people still madly in love after 20 years.

The VTA is part of a key reward system in the brain.

"These are cells that make dopamine and send it to different brain regions," said Helen Fisher, a researcher and professor at Rutgers University. "This part of the system becomes activated because you're trying to win life's greatest prize - a mating partner."

One of the research findings isn't so complimentary: Love works chemically in the brain like a drug addiction.

"Romantic love is an addiction; a wonderful addiction when it is going well, a horrible one when it is going poorly," Fisher said. "People kill for love. They die for love."

The connection to addiction "sounds terrible," Acevedo acknowledged. "Love is supposed to be something wonderful and grand, but it has its reasons. The reason I think is to keep us together."

But sometimes love does not keep us together. So the scientists studied the brains of the recently heartbroken and found additional activity in the nucleus accumbens, which is even more strongly associated with addiction.

"The brokenhearted show more evidence of what I'll call craving," said Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist also at Einstein medical college. "Similar to craving the drug cocaine."

The team's most recent brain scans were aimed at people married about 20 years who say they are still holding hands, lovey-dovey as newlyweds, a group that is a minority of married people. In these men and women, two more areas of the brain lit up, along with the VTA: the ventral pallidum and raphe nucleus.

The ventral pallidum is associated with attachment and hormones that decrease stress; the raphe nucleus pumps out serotonin, which "gives you a sense of calm," Fisher said.

Those areas produce "a feeling of nothing wrong. It's a lower-level happiness and it's certainly rewarding," Brown said.

The scientists say they study the brain in love just to understand how it works, as well as for more potentially practical uses.

The research could eventually lead to pills based on the brain hormones which, with therapy, might help troubled relationships, although there are ethical issues, Young said. His bonding research is primarily part of a larger effort aimed at understanding and possibly treating social-interaction conditions such as autism. And Fisher is studying brain chemistry that could explain why certain people are attracted to each other. She's using it as part of a popular Internet matchmaking service for which she is the scientific adviser.

While the recent brain research is promising, University of Hawaii psychology professor Elaine Hatfield cautions that too much can be made of these studies alone. She said they need to be meshed with other work from traditional psychologists.

Brain researchers are limited because there is only so much they can do to humans without hurting them. That's where the prairie vole - a chubby, short-tailed mouselike creature - comes in handy. Only 5 percent of mammals more or less bond for life, but prairie voles do, Young said.

Scientists studied voles to figure out what makes bonding possible. In females, the key bonding hormone is oxytocin, also produced in both voles and humans during childbirth, Young said. When scientists blocked oxytocin receptors, the female prairie voles didn't bond.

In males, it's vasopressin. Young put vasopressin receptors into the brains of meadow voles - a promiscuous cousin of the prairie voles - and "those guys who should never, ever bond with a female, bonded with a female."

Researchers also uncovered a genetic variation in a few male prairie voles that are not monogamous - and found it in some human males, too.

Those men with the variation ranked lower on an emotional bonding scale, reported more marital problems, and their wives had more concerns about their level of attachment, said Hasse Walum, a biology researcher in Sweden. It was a small but noticeable difference, Walum said.

Scientists figure they now know better how to keep those love circuits lit and the chemicals flowing.

Young said that romantic love theoretically can be simulated with chemicals, but "if you really want, you know, to get the relationship spark back, then engage in the behavior that stimulates the release of these molecules and allow them to stimulate the emotions," he said. That would be hugging, kissing, intimate contact.

"My wife tells me that flowers work as well. I don't know for sure," Young said. "As a scientist it's hard to see how it stimulates the circuits, but I do know they seem to have an effect. And the absence of them seems to have an effect as well."

Diet could cut risk of dementia

A new study suggests a diet laden with fish, olive oil, vegetables and other foods common in Mediterranean-style cuisine may help ward off mild cognitive impairment, sometimes called borderline dementia. The study also suggests that such a diet reduces the chance of the transition from mild cognitive decline to Alzheimer's disease.

"We know from previous research that a healthy diet like this is protective for cardiovascular risk factors like cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. Now this current study shows it may help brain function, too," says Nikolaos Scarmeas, assistant professor of clinical neurology at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center.

Scarmeas and other researchers at Columbia examined, interviewed and screened 1,393 people with healthy brains and 482 patients with mild cognitive impairment. Study participants were questioned about their eating habits.

The study, which is published in this month's Archives of Neurology, reports that over an average of 4 1/2 years of follow-up, 275 of the 1,393 study participants who did not have mild cognitive impairment developed the condition. Those who had the highest adherence to a Mediterranean diet -- a menu rich in vegetables, legumes and fish, low in fat, meat and dairy, and high in monounsaturated fats like those in olive oil -- had a 28% lower risk of developing mild cognitive impairment than the one-third of participants who had the lowest scores for Mediterranean diet adherence. The middle one-third group had a 17% lower risk of developing mild cognitive impairment than those who ate the fewest Mediterranean foods.

Of the 482 study participants who had mild cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, 106 developed Alzheimer's disease roughly four years later. The one-third of participants with the highest scores for Mediterranean diet adherence had a 48% less risk of developing Alzheimer's than the one-third with the lowest diet scores.

The Week Ahead

Monday (2/9)
Journal Entry - What is reality?
Scientific Revolution
-Discuss HW
The Enlightenment
-Lecture & Notes
HW: Read pages 195-200 w/Handout

Tuesday (2/10)
The Enlightenment
-Journal Entry: The Sleep of Reason
-Lecture
-Debate/Discussion
-Reading: Locke
HW: NONE

Wednesday (2/11)
The Enlightenment
-Document Analysis: French and American revolutionary documents
-Utopia
HW: Read pages 202-205 in textbook and take notes on influences of the Enlightenment

Thursday (2/12)
The Enlightenment
-Discuss HW
-Utopia Project
HW: Read pages 206-211 in textbook and take notes on influences of the Enlightenment

Friday (2/13)
The Enlightenment
-Utopias
-Current Events
HW: NONE!

EXTRA CREDIT OPTION

Are you bias?

We have been talking about race in class. What is the psychology of racism? Are only some people racist? Are we ALL racist in some way? Visit the below links and participate in the demonstrations. Post your findings here! The deadline is Sunday at Midnight!

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect/

Psychologist looks to monks for keys to happiness

Feb. 6--Evolution has given the human brain a vast prefrontal cortex, a ball of neural tissue that enables us to engage in abstract reasoning, reflect on the past, and make predictions about the future.

It also allows us to wander a mental landscape filled with emotional minefields, says Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.

"It allows us to screw up our emotions far more than other animals," he said during a visit to the University of Utah this week. "It allows us to persist in emotional responses beyond which they are still useful."

The answer to that disordered brain function may lie in mental training perfected by Buddhist monks over the centuries in Tibet, Davidson told a crowd of at least 600 who overflowed the Utah Museum of Fine Arts auditorium Wednesday for the Tanner Lecture on Human Values.

Davidson has become famous for using high-tech imaging to document the startling control the monks demonstrate over their emotional states. His resulting ideas about "neuroplasticity" -- the notion that we can enhance brain function through purposeful mental training -- threaten to upend conventional psychotherapy, which has little scientific basis.

"We were all taught that the brain is different from other organs in the way it changes over time. We thought the process was one of irrevocable death," Davidson said. "We now know that view is definitively wrong. The brain is capable of generating 7,000

to 9,000 cells a day."

Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, allows researchers like Davidson to observe brain function with unprecedented precision, bringing new scientific rigor to social science, experts said Thursday morning at a follow-up panel discussion. Davidson's findings hold potential for developing mental training techniques to improve people's health and quality of life, said psychiatrist Daniel Siegel.

"These are not just weird ideas. These are research-based interventions that can be applied in the real world," said Siegel, an expert in the field of interpersonal neurobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "When you teach these reflective skills to kids, they not only do better emotionally and socially, they also do better academically."

Davidson's work with monks was triggered by a visit with the Dalai Lama. The exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism recruited masters of the faith, monks who had spent an average of 34,000 hours in intense meditation, for Davidson's studies.

Using scans that track brain function, the psychologist recorded high levels of activity in the parts of the monks' brains associated with emotional well-being. In further studies on other people, Davidson documented measurable changes in brain activity after two-week periods of mental training.

"The brain is the only organ designed to change in response to experience. Musical training changes the structure of the brain and when it begins earlier in life the greater the influence," he said.

Need a Creative Boost? Find the Blue Room.

Trying to improve your performance at work or write that novel? Maybe it’s time to consider the color of your walls or your computer screen.

If a new study is any guide, the color red can make people’s work more accurate, and blue can make people more creative.

In the study, published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science, researchers at the University of British Columbia conducted tests with 600 people to determine whether cognitive performance varied when people saw red or blue. Participants performed tasks with words or images displayed against red, blue or neutral backgrounds on computer screens.

Red groups did better on tests of recall and attention to detail, like remembering words or checking spelling and punctuation. Blue groups did better on tests requiring imagination, like inventing creative uses for a brick or creating toys from shapes.

“If you’re talking about wanting enhanced memory for something like proofreading skills, then a red color should be used,” said Juliet Zhu, an assistant professor of marketing at the business school at the University of British Columbia, who conducted the study with Ravi Mehta, a doctoral student.

But for “a brainstorming session for a new product or coming up with a new solution to fight child obesity or teenage smoking,” Dr. Zhu said, “then you should get people into a blue room.”

The question of whether color can color performance or emotions has fascinated scientists, not to mention advertisers, sports teams and restaurateurs.

In a study on Olympic uniforms, anthropologists at Durham University in England found that evenly matched athletes in the 2004 Games who wore red in boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling defeated those wearing blue 60 percent of the time. The researchers suggested that red, for athletes as for animals, subconsciously symbolizes dominance.

Effects that were perhaps similarly primal were revealed in a 2008 study led by Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester. Men considered women shown in photographs with red backgrounds or wearing red shirts more attractive than women with other colors, although not necessarily more likeable or intelligent.

Then there was the cocktail party study, in which a group of interior designers, architects and corporate color scientists built model rooms decorated as bars in red, blue or yellow. They found that more people chose the yellow and red rooms, but that partygoers in the blue room stayed longer. Red and yellow guests were more social and active. And while red guests reported feeling hungrier and thirstier than others, yellow guests ate twice as much.

Experts say colors may affect cognitive performance because of the moods they engender.

“When you feel that the situation you are in is problematic,” said Norbert Schwarz, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, “you are more likely to pay attention to detail, which helps you with processing tasks but interferes with creative types of things.”

By contrast, Dr. Schwarz said, “people in a happy mood are more creative and less analytic.”

Many people link red to problematic things, like emergencies or X’s on failing tests, experts say. Such “associations to red — stop, fire, alarm, warning — can be activated without a person’s awareness, and then influence what they are thinking about or doing,” said John A. Bargh, a psychology professor at Yale University. “Blue seems a weaker effect than red, but blue skies, blue water are calm and positive, and so that effect makes sense too.”

Still, Dr. Schwarz cautioned, color effects may be unreliable or inconsequential. “In some contexts red is a dangerous thing, and in some contexts red is a nice thing,” he said. “If you’re walking across a frozen river, blue is a dangerous thing.”

Indeed, Dr. Elliot of the University of Rochester said blue’s positive emotional associations were considered less consistent than red’s negative ones.

It might also matter whether the color dominates someone’s view, as on a computer screen, or is only part of what is seen. Dr. Elliot said that in the Science study, brightness or intensity of color — not just the color itself — might have had an effect.

Some previous cognitive studies found no effect from color, although some used mostly pastels or less distinctive tasks. One found that students taking tests did better on blue paper than on red, but Dr. Schwarz said the study used depressing blue and upbeat red.

The Science study’s conclusion that red makes people more cautious and detail-oriented coincides with Dr. Elliot’s finding that people shown red test covers before I.Q. tests did worse than those shown green or neutral colors. And on a different test, people with red covers also chose easier questions. I.Q. tests require more problem-solving than Dr. Zhu’s memory and proofreading questions.

When Dr. Zhu’s subjects were asked what red or blue made them think of, most said that red represented caution, danger or mistakes, and that blue symbolized peace and openness. Subjects were quicker to unscramble anagrams of “avoidance related” words like “danger” when the anagrams were on red backgrounds, and quicker with anagrams of positive, “approach related” words like “adventure” when they were on blue backgrounds.

The study also tested responses to advertising, finding that advertisements listing product details or emphasizing “avoidance” actions like cavity prevention held greater appeal on red backgrounds, while ones using creative designs or emphasizing positive actions like “tooth whitening” held more appeal on blue.

When the participants were asked if they believed red or blue would improve performance, most said blue for both detail-oriented and creative tasks. Maybe, Dr. Zhu said, that is because more people prefer blue.

The study did not involve different cultures, like China, where red symbolizes prosperity and luck. And it said nothing about mixing red and blue to make purple.

MySpace Turns Over 90,000 Names of Registered Sex Offenders

MySpace provided two state attorneys general the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders it had banned from its site in response to a subpoena.

The figure is 40,000 more than the amount previously acknowledged by MySpace, according to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who along with Attorney General Roy Cooper of North Carolina are among officials pressing social networking sites to adopt more stringent safety measures.

“Almost 100,000 convicted sex offenders mixing with children on MySpace — shown by our subpoena — is absolutely appalling and totally unacceptable,” Mr. Blumenthal said in a statement. “For every one of them, there may be hundreds of others using false names and ages.”

Last year, MySpace, owned by News Corporation, and Facebook.com agreed to set security standards after the Web sites were criticized for not doing enough to protect minors from sexual predators lurking on social networking sites.

Facebook, a privately held company based in Palo Alto, Calif., said the company was still working with Mr. Blumenthal to respond to a similar subpoena.

The disclosure renews the debate of whether social networking sites are a haven for sex offenders. “This is just the tip of the iceberg on MySpace,” said John A. Phillips, chief executive of Aristotle, a company that supplies identity and age verification technologies for companies like the New York State Lottery, breweries and film studios. “These are just the convicted sex offenders” who used their real names.

MySpace’s disclosure follows a report by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a panel created by 49 attorneys general, that said the issue is overblown. It concluded the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, was far more serious than sexual solicitation of minors by adults online.

Mr. Phillips, who served as a member of that task force, has been critical of the report. Ernest Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said the figure was “disturbing” but that there is no way to know how large the presence of online predators really is.

“We don’t know if that’s 80 percent of the population targeting kids on the Internet or 1 percent,” Mr. Allen said.

He commended MySpace for removing convicted sex offenders from its site. “This clearly reinforces the fact that there are a significant number of people who seek access to kids online,” Mr. Allen said.

Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace, said the company had spent the last two years purging problem members from its site.

“The reality is there are 700,000-plus sex offenders living in the streets of America,” Mr. Nigam said. “What we did was build cutting-edge technology to figure out where they might be living on the Internet and remove them from our site.”

MySpace reported that its community grows 10 percent year over year but has also reported a 36 percent drop in the number of registered sex offenders trying to create profiles.

John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, the company that makes the software MySpace uses to find the sex offenders, said that Facebook had become a haven for convicted offenders blocked from creating accounts on MySpace. Mr. Cardillo, who has approached Facebook about using his technology, said he could find 8,000 offenders on Facebook.

Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook, said that Mr. Cardillo’s figures were inflated. He also said the company actively monitors its Web site and users for suspicious activities.

“When you search for people on Facebook, you don’t get much information — a name and a thumbnail,” Mr. Schnitt said.

Welcome to World History: 1500 to the Present

And welcome to the class blog! Be sure to check out the blog multiple times a week for articles and other postings to comment on for participation points! Also, check in for news postings to prep you for our weekly current events game. (I will also be posting information for my IB Psychology students who are testing in the subject this spring -- you can ignore those posts of course!)

Every Sunday night I will post the "Week Ahead". I will attempt to update it as plans change throughout the week, but let's be clear, what I post on the agenda in the classroom is the most up-to-date agenda, not this blog!

The Week Ahead
Monday (2/2)
Introduction: the Course
--You and I
--Syllabus: web site, blog, etc.
--Participation Grade
--Survival Game Activity
HW: Obtain a notebook for your class journal

Tuesday (2/3)
Introduction: geography
--Mapping the world Group, then Class discussions [G,C]
-What is History
--The importance of primary sources
HW: NONE

Wednesday (2/4)
The World at 1500
-1492 - Video Clip
--Lecture/Notes
---Journal Entry 1: "America"
HW: Columbus' Journal Reading & Questions [R&Q]

Thursday (2/5)
--Discuss Columbus reading
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
-Lecture/Notes
-Interview a Picture
HW: Equiano's Journey [R&Q]

Friday (2/6)
-Discuss HW/Equiano
Current Events!
HW: Reading from Textbook: TBA

UPDATE: Grades Will be POSTED Sunday NIGHT

Teen smoking could lead to adult depression: study

WASHINGTON, Jan 29, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Teenagers who smoke could be setting themselves up for depression later in life, according to a groundbreaking new Florida State University study.

Psychology Professor Carlos Bolanos and a team of researchers found that nicotine given to adolescent rats induced a depression- like state characterized by a lack of pleasure and heightened sensitivity to stress in their adult lives.

The findings, published online on Thursday in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, suggest that the same may be true for humans.

"This study is unique because it is the first one to show that nicotine exposure early in life can have long-term neurobiological consequences evidenced in mood disorders," Bolanos said. "In addition, the study indicates that even brief exposure to nicotine increases risk for mood disorders later in life."

The Florida State University researchers injected adolescent rats twice daily with either nicotine or saline for 15 days. After the treatment period ended, they subjected the rats to several experiments designed to find out how they would react to stressful situations as well as how they would respond to the offering of rewards.

They found that behavioral changes symptomatic of depression can emerge after one week of nicotine cessation and -- most surprising -- that even a single day of nicotine exposure during adolescence can have long-lasting effects.

"Some of the animals in our study were exposed to nicotine once and never saw the drug again," Bolanos said. "It was surprising to us to discover that a single day of nicotine exposure could potentially have such long-term negative consequences."

The rats that were exposed to nicotine engaged in behaviors symptomatic of depression and anxiety, including repetitive grooming, decreased consumption of rewards offered in the form of sugary drinks and becoming immobile in stressful situations instead of engaging in typical escape-like behaviors. The researchers were able to alleviate the rats' symptoms with antidepressant drugs or, ironically, more nicotine.

Interestingly, adult rodents that were exposed to the same nicotine regimen as the adolescents did not display depression- like traits. It is not known exactly how nicotine works on the brain and nervous system to induce these effects, but exposure has toxic effects in several brain regions and neurotransmitter systems at distinct periods of development, Bolanos said.

Because various neurotransmitter systems in the brain continue to develop throughout adolescence, the researchers theorize that nicotine may negatively influence these systems resulting in altered functionality later in life. The study's findings underscore the need for further research into how this process occurs.

Scientists have long known there is a connection between smoking and mood disorders, but they have not been able to say for sure that one causes the other because there are so many factors influencing human behavior. This study provides support for the idea that smoking can induce symptoms of depression, and paradoxically, can also be a way of managing those same symptoms and enhancing the risk for addiction.

"The message to young people of course is don't smoke and don't even try it," Bolanos said. "If they do smoke, they need to be aware of the potentially long-term effects that recreational or even occasional cigarette smoking can have on their systems."

Coffee May Be Linked to Better Mental Health

The New York Times

Drinking coffee may do more than keep you awake. A new study suggests a potential link to mental health later in life as well.

A team of Swedish and Danish researchers tracked coffee consumption among 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia and 48 Alzheimer's disease.

After controlling for numerous socio-economic and health factors, the scientists found that the people who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two or fewer cups . Those who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, but there were not enough people in that group to draw statistically significant conclusions.

Dr. Miia Kivipelto, an associate professor of neurology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and lead author of the study, does not as yet advocate drinking coffee as a preventive health measure. "We have no evidence that for people who are not drinking coffee, taking up drinking will have a protective effect," she said.

Kivipelto and colleagues suggest some possibilities for why coffee might reduce the risk of dementia . Earlier studies linked coffee consumption with a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, which has been associated with a greater risk of dementia. And coffee may have an antioxidant effect in the blood-stream, reducing vascular risk factors .

The new study appears this month in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Below is the coffee shop in Seattle I spent many hours at studying, doing homework, socializing, etc., etc.

The Final Update

Below is the final video for your review. I hope it is somewhat helpful.

As you have heard, you are allowed to use ONE page (one side) of handwritten notes. I have made this decision due to the fact that you are limited by time (less than 90 minutes) with a demanding essay.

I will be at school all day Friday so please feel free to drop by and hand in assignments or to just say hello! I wish you all the very best next semester. I hope your time in IB Psychology was enjoyable and that you feel that you got something out of it! Please e-mail me any suggestions for next year (and what not to change!). Every year I go back to the "lab" and redesign the course.

Sunday night the blog will shift to world history, BUT, there will be plenty of postings relevant to psychology AND those of you testing in psych should check it often!

Final Outline

A few notes for the final exam:

1. DO NOT go crazy with tons of memorized details. This is not the focus of the essay. I know you are feeling stressed because it seems like a lot. PLEASE, the intent of the final is for you to showcase what you have learned by focusing on two disorders. DO NOT spend a lot of time on details (such as listing every characteristic, or cause, or therapy, etc.)
2. I will post a sample outline via video tomorrow AM.
3. Below is a more general sample outline -- I altered what I did in the review session today. THIS IS NOT what the essay must be like for everyone.
4. Tie in c/g/e/m where possible

Outline:

P1: Introduction
--Define what is considered "abnormal" behavior
--Identify the disorders you will cover
--Theme/Thesis -- what these two disorders have in common

P2: Explain the theme/thesis
--Here you can also define both of the disorders

BE SURE TO CONNECT BACK TO YOUR THESIS AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE!

P3: Characteristics of disorder 1

P4: Explain two causes of disorder 1

P5: Analysis of causes - (diathesis-stress model might help here)

P6: Therapy

P7: Characteristics of disorder 2

P8: Two causes of disorder 2

P9: Analysis of causes - (diathesis-stress model might help here)

P10: Therapy

P11: Tie it all together

P12: Conclusions

Keeping Things in Perspective

Schizophrenia

Tomorrow is our final day together! I must say that this has been an incredibly wonderful semester for me. I have had so much fun. You all have been wonderful students and I truly consider myself very lucky to have been your teacher. PLEASE stop in and say hello!


Tomorrow's topic is schizophrenia (the above image is a drawing done by a person with schizophrenia). Like eating disorders, I will try and condense a great deal of information into one lecture! There will be a few video clips along with a demonstration. WARNING: the demonstration can be rather disturbing to some students.

Tomorrow I will also handout the final exam essay. You will have next Monday and Tuesday to review in class. You will turn in STAMPED outlines along with peer review comments.

Monday night I will post the FINAL EXAM video. It will be the last video of the class. The video will outline the final exam as well as review a few key concepts from the semester.

In Case You Missed Genie!

Go here to see the video on Genie online.

Do great in tomorrow's socratic seminar!