Question

What are 3 facts you learned about the brain that you didn't know before? Please be sure to provide examples.

Why do you personally think that learning more about the brain is helpful in studying psychology? Please be sure to provide examples.

Choose a famous individual with a nervous system disorder and explain his/her condition and how the brain has been affected. Please be sure to share specific details to aid in your discussion.

Answer 1

Answer-

Part -1: three amazing facts about brain:

• It is fattest organ in the body that comprises 60% of fat.
• In early pregnancy, brain develops 250000 neurons per minute.
• As we grow old we gradually become unable to learn and remember new things because at this stage brain is unable to filter and remove old memories and absorb the new things.

For example: in case of neuroplasticity (brain is able to rejuvenate and improve itself), the adult human brain has approximately 100 billion neurons and as education increases, it increases number of branches of neurons, volume and thickness of neurons. Brain needs regular exercise and brain exercises improves its functioning and reduces age related brain declines. In a research by V.S.Ramachandran, imagination and illusions used to restrict brain maps can help patients to reduce their pains (mirror box experiment).

Part -2: Yes learning more about brain helps in studying Psychology. Because brain is most complex organ of our body as the psychology deals with the study of most simple to complex behaviors/ actions of our body. Because its brain that controls our whole bodily functioning and if we understand brain we will be able to understand the mechanisms behind each body function. If we focus only on psychological part that is our bodily behavior/action, feelings, and mental processes (thinking, perception, memory etc.) then to understand brain functioning is very important. As the complexity of our brain increases, complex behaviors, mental processes and experiences will be there. Therefore knowing about brain and its effects on body that ultimately affects human behavior is always an interesting and vast area to study. For example: Neuroscientists conducted a study done in Mindlab International in U.K. on the effect of music therapy on anxiety and found that a particular song can reduce your anxiety feeling by 65%. In this study the song Weightless by Marconi Union resulted in 65% decrease in participants’ anxiety feelings. They explained a brain mechanism in while discussing the effect of song on anxiety feeling. Therefore brain plays important role in shaping human behavior, experiences and mental processes and makes its study important in psychology.        

Part-3: Micheal J.Fox a famous television and film star was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 at the age of 30 years. Parkinson’s disease is a neurological illness that affects parson’s movement and walk, presence of tremors, trouble sleeping, constipation, low voice, dizziness or fainting. It is a degenerative and progressive disease. Parkinson’s disease affected his brain and body badly as he was an actor so because of this disease he had symptoms of shaking, difficulty in speaking, difficulty in balancing his body difficulty in making facial expressions, and also muscular pains. He was also affected mentally as he mentioned in an interview that “there is shame in this illness” and also hided his illness for 7 years. He felt shame, avoided the illness or not accepted it, started heavy drinking though he left drinking later and started his foundation for Parkinson’s research and put his efforts in search of permanent cure of the disease. He retired from his acting career in 2000 because of Parkinson’s disease because his condition was worsening day by day.

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