How Does Our Memory Work?

The brain interacts with your physical environment. Cells of your brain record things that give you memory. Autobiographical memories are the most important memories because they are about us.

We gain the ability to time travel through our minds at the age of 9. We begin to day dream, remember, and distinguish time periods, like day weeks and months.  We later develop Abstract thought which is the ability to plan ahead. Your memory system helps you survive, and develop, you language and problem solving. Your memory reaches its fullest power at the age of 25, by the age of 27 it begins to fade, by the age of 40 it is partially gone, and later one you can lose it completely.  Memory loss can be devastating. Events cannot be deleted by will, and this causes negative effects because the events you may want to delete can be traumatizing. The emotions you feel when you remember something makes this memory a lot stronger. 

Post-traumatic stress:  may happen when you have an encounter with death, it is almost impossible to make it fade away, because the memory will stay fresh. A certain drug exists that may help you erase this memory but this is not good because memory shapes your character and your identity. Without memories you wouldn’t be yourself.

The Myth of Multitasking

1. Multi tasking is considered to be a myth because it can’t be done. It is proven that people can’t do two things at the same time, like multitask. What really happens is that after performing one act people move on to the other act, then move back to the first act, or could jump to another act, and begin moving back and forth between the tasks they are trying to perform. This is not considered multi-tasking.


2. The term response selection bottleneck refers to the brain being for to respond to several stimuli at once. By performing this, people loose time since the brain determines which task to perform.

3. The release of stress hormones and adrenaline may damage your health. It is also extremely uncomfortable. The stress hormone can also cause loss of short term memory. Now that we have knowledge of the disadvantage of multi-tasking, we can start lowering our use of it.

4. Russell Podrack found that multi-tasking affect the way you learn. When you multitask you do not receive the information efficiently. While multi-tasking you do not learn well, but if not you use a part of the brain called hippocampus, a region of the brain used to store and recall information.

5. The author concludes that if we continue multi-tasking frequently, we may never gain wisdom in the subject and perhaps we may lower are IQ.

BaMbuti Pygmies

The Bambuti are pygmy hunter-gatherers, and are one of the oldest indigenous people of the Congo region of Africa. The Bambuti are made up of bands which are small in size, from 15 to 60 people. The Bambuti population is 30,000 to 40,000 people total. There are four distinct cultures, within the Bambuti. The Efé, which speak the language of their neighboring Bantu tribe, the Sua, who speak the language of their neighboring Budu, the Mbuti, who speak the language of the neighboring Bila, and a small subgroup of the Aka who speak the language of the neighboring Mangbetu tribe. The majority of the Aka migrated to the western Congo basin thousands of years ago.The Bambuti culture is incomplete without music and dance.They are skilled musicians.Storytelling is a well-developed form of art,highly respected by all members of the society.The Bambuti practise a form of singing called the Yodeling.

Colin Turnbull

Colin Turnbull was borned in London and studied philosophy and politics in Oxford. He later graduated from the Banaras Hindu university in india witha degree on indian Religion and Philosophy. he then traveled to the republic of Congo to study the BaMbuti pygmies with Newton Beal an ohio school teacher he met in India.

He went to school at the Westminster School. When he ended his studies he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War 2. After Turnbull's experience with the pygmies he became one of the most famous intelectuals of 1960 and 1970. Through his trips in africa he fell in love with an african american named Joe Towles. for 30 years the lived as an open gay couple in New York city and then in Virginia until towels died of AIDS in 1988. After turnbull's lost he gave awaay most of his money and lived as a Buddhist monk tutored by Dalai Lama's older brother, until his death from AIDS in 1994.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Turnbull

http://www.colinturnbull.com/

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/turnbull_colin.html

What causes Perception?

Perception can be caused by internal and external factors. Internal factories are things inside your body, and external factors are factors that affect you from the outside. The internal factors that can influence perception are many. Memories have a lot of influence because it reminds us about the good and bad things that we have gone through and reminds us not to do bad things again. Personality can influence because the person we are inside knows what to do or not and what is expected of us. Knowledge has influence on perception because we have learned things that teach us about mistakes commited in the past or dangerous things.

External factors have a great influence in perception. We may decide what to do depending on what is going on around us.The things we see happening can determine our actions. For example if we see a car crash in a certain street we will be cautious when passing through that street, because we dont know what happanaed in the past car crash.

Things I like:

I like cars

I like adrenaline

I like soccer

I like Age of War

I like the psychology class

Thing I dont like

I dont like working in psychology

I dont like feet

"Perception is reality"

This quote refers that people may have different visualization of the same objects, because of an experience or a memory they may have with this certain person, place or object. this also refers to the different ways you can see an object, in different angles, this may give an image of a totally different object. Many people dont have the ability to percept objects in different ways. Perception alters the way I see the world, because optical illusions are present in very day life, and i am able to see different things in the same object. I can also percept things that happen to me, and find another way to interpret them

Why study psychology?

I think psychology is important to study because you learn about behaviors of yourself and other people, and how our body, specially our brain controls what we do and how we do it. It also teaches us about our behavior, and how certain behaviors are triggered and how to handle with them.