weekly assignment #1

This week i am going to relate content we have learned in class to my personal experiences. The content that we are discussing that i will be relating to would be dealing with Jean Piaget and his 4 stages of cognitive development. I can relate something personal in my life to the third step, concrete operations. This stage deals with children ages 6-12 years old. In this stage children are able to get a sense of the past, present, and future.

My brother is 11 years old so he falls into this stage of development. The other day i heard him talking about how when he is older he wants to go to college in Florida. This relates to class because he is able to think about his future. He understands certain things that will happen in the future and he realizes that he can have decisions in his future.

He also showed that he understands past. Yesterday we were talking about birthdays since my birthday was on Monday. He was talking about different birthday parties i had had in the past. He was also reminiscing about different things that happened during his birthday parties.

Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity had two main concepts. First is neurogenesis which is the growth of new brain cells. The second part is that that brain can rewire itself. With these two main concepts, the brain can make new connections by rewiring itself through the existing neurons. My hypothesis is that as the image is shown on the camera, pulses are then sent to the tongue which goes to the brain. The brain then creates an image in the mind due to the pulses given by the camera. These pulses indicate the color of the image being shown on the camera. This way the brain can try to figure out the image in front of them. The pulses on the tongue are sent to the thalamus in the brain, which is next sent to the sensory cortex, then finally to the occipital lobe where the visual process takes place.

Tryptophan

Tryptophan is on of the eight essential amino acids that plays a role in the development of the vitamin niacin. It must be obtained though food or supplements. Trypotophan is essential for the production of many necessary substances in the body. One major substance would be the neurotransmitter serotoin. Serotioin plays a role in sleep and mood patterns. Tryptophan supplements have been used as anti depressants and help in weight loss and sleep aids. Tryptophan is an agonist in terms of neurotransmitters because it helps the neurotransmitters pass through to send the message, serving as an anti depressant. Trypotophan doesn't have any side effects since it can be found in the body in natural ways.

Test

I was pleasantly surprised with my test score. I thought that I did pretty well on the test but i didn't want to become too overconfident with the information that i knew on the test. I was afraid that i thought i would do good and then end up failing it. I really like that we were allowed to go back and correct our answers. That helped us by not only being able to better our grade, but made us go back and actually understand the information that we had gotten wrong on the test. Since we could earn credit back if we got them right, we actually worried about finding out the correct answer. I believe that it was very beneficial to us in many ways. I feel much better about this class and am more confident in myself about obtaining the information. I really like the topics we are learning about and i find them very interesting. I cant wait to learn more.. and I'm serious when i say that haha

I liked the idea of the YouTube videos. It was a fun way to watch presentations and it wasn't boring at all. There were a few complications with the video cameras and getting the video up loaded onto the computer, but in the end everything worked out okay. I think this is a project that would be a fun thing for classes to do in the future.