Psyc 301 Week 2

READ BELOW:

You should view the several videos for each week and select one video to write about. For the video that you select for each week, you will be asked to do two things (be sure to identify the video you are responding to in the main topic of your posting):

1. Summarize the content of the video, relating the content to material presented in the text or in other class readings. Refer by name to the major individuals featured in the video.

2. Provide a personal reaction to the video. In your reaction, you may describe a personal experience of yours that is relevant to the content of the video, or you may describe how the video has helped you think about things in a new way or has failed to stimulate your thinking. I am looking for a readable, coherent essay that gets to the heart of the matter, that makes clear your beliefs, opinions, and/or criticisms, and that in general shows that you have taken the time to critically assess the information from the video. Thus, postings should be more than superfluous comments like “good job” and should make every attempt to incorporate course concepts and relate the brain to behavior.

I CHOSE THE VIDEO BELOW:

Plasticity:

• Plasticity in Stroke:

View the very absorbing video about Jill Bolte Taylor, brain researcher, who has become a powerful voice for brain recovery http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229. Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist who experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain in 1996. On the afternoon of this rare form of stroke (AVM), she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. It took eight years for Dr. Jill to completely recover all of her functions and thinking ability.

• Plasticity in Epilepsy:

Visit and learn about the remarkable story of a young girl who suffered from uncontrollable, intractable seizures who had a neurosurgical procedure called hemispherectomy (to remove one cerebral hemisphere of her brain) and, because of the powerful effects of brain plasticity, she got better since took over the function of brain regions that were damaged.