Times Article

OKAY, this article was awesome, the analogies really put aspects of the brain to life for me. This was very helpful to me and interesting is an understatement. A reference I liked was the comparison between the 100 billion neurons at birth to the stars of the milky way. You can sort of imagine how many stars are in the milky way, I mean, it is something that we can sort of see in the sky. As we learn of the milky way, to us we only see what is visible. I think this is a very comparable thing to our own brain and the billions of neurons we don't use/see. Something else I thought was interesting is the statistic that the brain of a neglected person is 20%-30% smaller than a child who is nurtured. How does this statistic stand with "nature" theorists I wonder? It seems like a pretty blunt statistic to not believe that nature has something to do with our development. Something that I thought was probably one of the best analogies for me was the brain is like a tadpole, as the tadpole develops into a frog, it looses its tail. Just as we are have temporary structures in our brain to help lay down connection like the neural tube, it falls off like a tail. The thing that is amazing to me is that we have more connections when we are two years old then when we are adults. That is sort of something that is harder to understand because when we are adults, we have more stimulation, more experiences, more knowledge... how come we don't have more connections? I understand the pruning, and the riding of all the excess, it is just hard to accept. Some day I want to be an adult bird that feeds my hatch lings with morsels of richness towards verbalizing words. It is interesting to me that just my talking to a child there connectivity are enhanced and even their heart beat raises. I agree with what they said about language, I wish I had some type of immersion class where we had a foreign language in my elementary because it was even hard for me to learn simple hello and goodbye in high school. Also, I think that having a second language is a big advantage in the world, there are so many opportunities for better jobs and of course more connections in the brain! So the main thing that I wonder about my own brain after reading this article is, how did my brain make it? It seems there are so many thing that can go wrong. It is just a miracle, but still even though people are just the same as I, it is still amazing that our brains are so intricate. Our brains really set us apart from any other mammal and that is pretty cool. Except the only draw back is, for instance when a tiger kills its prey, it doesn't think back after it is chomping on the meat, how could I have done that better? Did I look okay? ... it's just our way of life, but I think it is great!

Inplicit Association

WOW! This test was hard in the coordination department. I found that I favored men and woman in their traditional roles, however, I plan on being a careered woman and a mother... so I don't know how totally accurate that is. I also favored African Americans slightly over European Americans. I thought that I loved both races equally, or that is what I tell my self. I have a lot of friends back east who are African American that I keep in contact with but I wouldn't favor them over my husband or family. I thought that the test was based more on coordination verses recognizing a word or picture and classifying, because when the left category switched with the right, I had the hardest time switching my brain to match the action of my hands. I also thought it was weird that there were right and wrong answers. When you would categorize the world Love under BAD it would X you. What if you thought love was bad? I just thought it was a little interesting that you were supposed to play to the test. What if that effects your score because you are more focused on the what the test wants you to say because they red X you when ever you get an answer "wrong." I thought that It was interesting the facial expressions that they had pictures of. None of them were smiling, they all looked like they were in pain. I think that could have an effect if younger children did this test. With the word sad they would see that the person was sad looking and maybe they were supposed to categorize them under the GOOD because it says European American or Good but the person looks like they are sad. I thought that the gender was more geared towards beliefs, I think that I can have a career and be a mom, however, it is just a fact that woman make .75 cents to every 1.00 a man makes, thus I would prefer my husband to be the breadwinner. Plus, he can't clean or even think about changing a diaper, so I fill in that piece. It's nothing to do religiously, it has to do with strengths.