Blue Brain

The Mind’s Third Eye

2006-05-02T00:57:00.000-05:00

"The Three Musicians," by Pablo Picasso

The concept of perception, and how it relates to art, has opened up a totally new artistic dimension for me that I never knew existed. Perception allows each artist or viewer to relate to the art in his or her own particular way. Examinations of eye movement by camera have shown that “the eyes do not form a complete, static picture of the target. Instead, they pick up a group of 'identification points', which help the recognition process (Vakkari).” The tests show that there are naturally great variations in the way different people look at an image. An understanding of perception, through art, came to me in a flash, but explaining perception in words for me is like trying to explain how the brain works in 1500 words or less. Explaining perception through a work of Picasso makes the seemingly impossible at least a possibility.

It’s appropriate to say that “The Three Musicians” is unrealistic representation, but, at first glance, my mind was able to understand that it was an image of three musicians using their clarinet, guitar, and sheet of music. My conclusion of what the three musicians were doing leads me to believe that our minds’ perception is more of an interaction with what our eyes see, than a recording of a photographic image. The image we perceive is a live vibrant representation, viewed from different angles and in different colors that is uniquely our own. We can imagine ourselves in any part of the picture, viewing it from the opposite side, the top, or the bottom. We can imagine objects in full view even if another object is in the way. When an object is in the dark, we can imagine it in the light. These are the individual features of each of our perceptions that Picasso captures with cubism, which makes explaining perception through “The Three Musicians” possible because the painting is Picasso’s radically individual view.

The rectangular object that touches all three musicians, I believe, is a shadow. Picasso painted the shadow the same color because his mind imagined it as an object like the guitar, table, or musician. This is different from classical shading because the shadow has the same depth across the painting. I refer to it as a shadow instead of shading because our minds can see a shadow as an object. It is fascinating how he used the shadow of the left musician to create the face of the middle musician without changing the depth. Picasso used the shadow again to create depth by painting the right leg of the table in complete shadow.

The music sheet is a great example of how Picasso played on our mind’s ability to perceive an object from any angle or point of view. My guess is that the right musician is reading a sheet of music shielded from the audience’s view. Picasso imagined how the paper that the musician was reading would look if he was holding it in his hand, just as our own minds can do. Picasso painted the sheet of music as though he took it from the musician and turned it around for the audience to read. Picasso painted the sheet of music this way because, in his exclusively individual perception, this is how he saw the sheet of music. Imagine a sheet of music, don’t you see the notes?

Picasso painted the table from different viewpoints to represent our mind’s ability to perceive an object from different angles. Picasso saw the table straight on and from the top. He was able to imagine the table from both angles at once and expresses this by painting the table from both angles. The left side of the table was painted as though the viewer is seeing it straight on, so you can see the left musician sitting with his legs under the table. Picasso also painted the top of the table to show the guitarist’s elbow and the white, black, and brown object the on the table. Picasso expressed the movement of the table in his mind by painting the table from different angles.

The clarinet of the left musician was painted as an expression of how our minds can see an object even if another object is in the way. If the left musician is sitting at the table, then the audience should not be able to see the whole clarinet because the table would be in the way. Even if the table is in the way, our minds do not need to see the entire object in order to realize what it is. Picasso painted the whole clarinet because his mind could see the clarinet, even though it was blocked by the table.

Our mind imagines the color of an object to different degrees. An object’s color, in our mind, can change depending on how much detail we want to imagine. We can imagine a red ball, or we can imagine a ball with different shades of red arising from the texture, scratches, dirt, or surface imperfections. Picasso painted the musicians’ clothes in simple colors like the red ball. The details, like the wrinkles and the texture of the musicians’ clothes, are not important to Picasso’s perception, so he left them out. The simple one-color tones were enough to get his ideas across.

The colors of the musicians’ clothes are seen as though they are in direct light. For example, Picasso painted the middle musician in light, even though I imagine him playing in a dark bar. He painted the clothes bright colors because his mind perceived the color of the clothes in clear light. Picasso is playing on our minds ability to ignore both the shading and the light on an object to see it in one color.

I love how he simplified the beards of the two musicians. The guitarist’s beard is obviously short and stubbly, while the right musician’s beard is long and wavy. Through the simple strokes of his brush, Picasso allows our minds to create the different textures of the beards. With his long wavy strokes our mind is able to identify a long detailed gray beard, and then Picasso used simple crosshatching to create the guitarist’s short beard. Picasso used elementary techniques that allow our minds to create a detailed picture.

The construction of the musicians’ faces with simple geometric shapes is, yet again, Picasso allowing our minds to add detail. Picasso used empty circles for eyes and a geometric hourglass shape between them to represent the nose. He placed these shapes on a larger shape to represent the face, and then added triangular, circular, and trapezoidal shapes for the musicians’ hats and cloak. Picasso’s construction of the musicians’ heads amazes me because our minds are able to turn these strategically placed geometric shapes into a unique face. <>My next idea about how Picasso’s painting enables our perception, again will take some imagination. The dog was purposely painted under the table with its head in a shadow. Picasso painted the dog the same brown color as the walls to blend in with the background. He was exploring our brain’s ability to ignore background details unless our mind wants to focus on them. Picasso acknowledged the presence of the dog, but painted it into the background because it was not a main focus in his perception of the three musicians. Instead the dog’s presence was a feeling that made the scene unique.

Each one of the ideas that I have presented should show how Picasso painted the representations of the different images he perceived in his mind. His use of solid shading, simple coloring, geometric shapes, and objects twisted from different viewpoints create this unique painting that reflects Picasso’s individual perception of the scene. His simple techniques allow our minds to create the details that are missing in the painting. Picasso’s painting is not an exact representation, but instead the pieces of his mind’s perception that made the image of the three musicians his own. With our minds ability to change the viewpoint and see objects in different colors, “art is not merely the representation of the objects of the outer world into a world of the painter's pigments and lines,” but the unique perception of the artist (Railing). Picasso’s “Three Musicians” is an expression of his mind’s ability to perceive a totally individual image.

Works Cited

Railing, Patricia. “The Cognitive Line in Russian Avant-Garde Art.” Leonardo: v. 31 no1 (1999) p. 67-73.

Vakkari, Johanna. “Giovanni Morelli's "scientific" method of attribution and its reinterpretations from the 1960's until the 1990's.” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift: v. 70 no. 1/2 (2001) p. 46-54.

"I'm different...no really I am"

2006-05-01T15:25:00.000-05:00

When the art form Cubism is described, the first name that comes to mind is Picasso. Cubism is a form of art where the artist takes natural objects and splits them into geometric shapes creating an abstract form of art. If the key figures of cubism were like the seven dwarfs in snow white, Juan Gris, would be Doc, the seventh dwarf most people tend to forget. Why is this? Juan Gris is not a well known figure in cubism because he was nicknamed the demon of logic and more importantly, because his to the untrained eye his art work is too similar to the work of the more famous cubists, causing him to be overlooked.

The light-hearted art critic, Guillaume Apollinaire, is credited with coming up with the word surrealism. Surrealism is the cultural, artistic, and intellectual movement oriented toward the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind. (Surrealism) He helped give identity to this art form. Unfortunately his choice of names for people were not always as nice. Apollinaire was responsible for Juan Gris being nicknamed the “demon of Logic”. It sounds a little harsh to call someone a demon because demons are almost always associated with evil or darkness. I interpreted his nickname as meaning that he was not a true cubist because he was too logical in this methodology.

In an article written for the New York Times, Michael Peppiatt gives a review of the book, Juan Gris, written by Christopher Green. Green’s argument is that we have a misconception of Juan Gris as the demon of logic manipulating the more abstract cubist works of Picasso and Braque into a more logical art. This conception of Juan Gris as the demon of logic, falsely represents Gris as changing or detracting from the cubist movement. However, more than change the movement, he often just emulated what was already occurring in cubism.

I’ll be honest; it took me quite a while to really understand what was meant by the nickname demon of logic. I think the only reason why I was curious, is because I wanted to know exactly how he could be both a demon and a brilliant artist at the same time. I also wanted to know how being deemed the demon of logic effected his artistic career. It was kind of like seeing a car crash or pile up on the side of the road, you are tempted to slow down and take a closer look, to see if anyone is hurt. Similarly I wanted to take a closer look at Gris’ nickname to see if it in anyway caused him less fame and money. Although there is no specific evidence, I believe it did. In a sense this nickname implied that Gris would be drastically different than those more abstract cubist, when in actuality I was quite disappointed with how similar to the other cubists his work was. The nickname demon of logic carries with a certain expectation of opposition; he failed to live up to this expectation. In other words because Gris did not live up the expectation of something new and contrary to what already exsisted in cubism, he was probably seen as just another cubist which would lead to him having less fame and being overshadowed by giants like Picasso.

Although there are several differences between he and the other cubist artists, his similarities far outnumber his differences. Juan Gris is considered part of the tetrarch of the cubist movement, the other three being Picasso, Leger and Braque; unlike Picasso, Leger and Braque, Gris lived a short, dull and depressing life. He was poor, exciled from Spain and enjoyed little to no fame, from his artwork. More than just his life, the themes he painted in his artwork were completely different. “Gris painted still-lifes predominantly, only occasionally figures or landscapes. He sacrificed content in a monk-like dedication to his craft” (Kaufman). Gris painted more concrete subject matter, ordinary everyday things you might find laying around the house such as music, guitars, women, blinds, and flowers. Unlike Leger who almost never repeated the same subject, Gris often painted his wife Josette, flowers and guitars.

The other cubists painted still life objects as well. However; they manner in which they painted these are different. Picasso is often viewed as the quintessential machismo Spaniard most importantly because of his paintings of nude women. Gris never painted nudes to avoid the eroticism he felt haunted the cubist art form. His "Portrait of Josette Gris", 1916: although it is a portrait of a woman has a completely different tone and affect than Picasso’s "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907). Unlike Gris’ piece, Picasso’s piece has a more sexual nature. Gris and Picasso are painting the same subject matter, but they appear completely different because of the affect and tone they produce. However, the difference in these paintings are so subtle, that too often people generalize both painters, Picasso and Gris, as having painted women, giving little or no measure to the manner in which the painted the women. Also because the Gris was painted in 1916 almost 8 years after the Picasso, it is seen as an extension of a technique and subject matter Picasso had already mastered and become famous.

Likewise Juan Gris is similar to Georges Braque. If you were to actually analyze the pictures they seem very different, in terms of their style and color choices. For example comparing and contrasting Braque’s “ Man with Guitar” with Gris’ “La mirada sabia de Juan Gris” Braque’s painting has more grey tones, where as Gris uses acrid tones such as burnt oranges. Gris also uses more curves and swooping lines, but Braque uses classic cubist angles and straight lines. I’ll admit these two paintings are drastically different, but if I were to break the paintings down to their core, I’d find that they are both just paintings of guitars.

With all the comparing and contrasting of the art work between Gris and Picasso, Leger, and Braque it is clear how connected and similar each artist is, especially in terms of subject matter. Not painting nudes and using brighter colors helped Juan Gris avoid being an exact replication of Picasso and Braque enhanced his status as a free thinking individual artistl. Simple color and subject matter are not enough to completely separate Gris from the other cubist artist, a radical change in methodology or style would have done so.

At the core the cubist artists are extremely similar, especially when it comes to defining what cubism is and their ideologies. In a letter to his art dealer, Gris wrote, "Those who believe in abstract painting seem to me like weavers who think they can produce a material with threads running in one direction only and nothing to hold them together. When you have no plastic intention [i.e., a visual aesthetic] how can you control and make sense of your representational liberties? And when you are not concerned with reality how can you control and make sense of your plastic liberties?" (Kaufman)

Okay, so this all seems like jib jab artist talk. What does it mean? I interpreted the phrase plastic liberties as meaning anything outside of reality. He’s saying if we don’t really understand the real world, how can we possibly understand imaginary or non-real things. It’s like, reality is the foundation upon which we can base abstraction. If we have no foundation then the our imaginary images are like houses with nothing to hold them up, or in the words of Gris, threads running with nothing to hold them together.

Gris started with a mental image of something concrete in his mind, then moved to make it appear to be somewhat abstract through cubist techniques. Collector Douglas Cooper, one of the artist's greatest defenders. "He found it 'more natural to make subject "x" coincide with the picture that [he had] in mind than to make picture "x" correspond with a given subject.'" ( Kaufman). For example he would paint a guitar using a grid method to divide up different sections of the guitar into vertical strips only to combine these strips and different sections into an abstract cubist image of a guitar. Gris’ methods or painting and ideologies about cubism may be different than those of Picasso, Braque or other cubists. But the final result of the art work is a painting similar just cubism. I would be similar to racing a sibling to the kitchen for dinner. You may take the straight path down the hall, and you sibling may go through the living room first, but in the end you both end up in the kitchen. It’s the same with say Picasso and Gris, they would take different routes to compose the painting, but once completed, both are just cubist paintings.

I consider myself to be among the commoners or the general public when it comes to art. I would much rather just look and appreciate art for what it is, rather than have to analyze it or critic it. After cashing in for some endurance and patience I finally figured out something about art, it’s all connected. Artists are influenced by an array of things, from a mistresses, politics or even other artists. These influences and overlap between artists help us to delineate periods in art history. A prime example of this overlap is the cubist movement. Although each artist is brilliant in his own individual right, it would be ignorant to say that one particular artist was completely contrary to a specific artistic movement; as is the case with Juan Gris and Cubisim. Juan Gris’ nickname the demon of logic is simply put, illogical. Juan Gris was not anti-cubism, nor was he a completely different sect or genre of art apart from the cubist movement. When the expectations of the name demon of logic was combined with the striking similarities with other artists, Juan Gris became just another cubist and as a result he was overlooked and not nearly as famous as other cubists such as Picasso.

Our Eyes Do More Than See

2006-04-30T22:02:00.000-05:00

"The City," by Walt Kuhn

Art is becoming more and more engaging as I gain a greater appreciation of perspective. Perspective is the way that our brains process a two-dimensional picture into a 3-D image. My original impression of good art was how well something was painted or sculpted to look exactly as it would in real life. As I have come to appreciate perspective, I have been able to see more than just the 2-D image my eyes present. My brain fills in holes and makes more unconscious connections than I realized. I have been able to allow art to play on my brain’s unconscious visual power, especially abstract art.

Of all the different types of art, abstract art is the one type of art that completely baffled me. I had no idea why people felt it was so extraordinary. I remember an assignment for an art class my senior year of high school, in which, we were supposed to create an abstract drawing. I picked Neo-Plasticism which is an art form that allows only basic colored rectangles drawn by horizontal and vertical lines. I thought the art was simple and failed to respect its full power. Now that I appreciate that my brain can gather more information from my eyes than simple 2-D images, I go back to the neo-plastic paintings and wonder what the artists were trying to express with their paintings.

I am now any type of abstract art fascinates me. The more abstract the art, the more it fascinates me, because I now let my eyes take in the whole work and allow my brain to wonder. I find it so amazing how our brain can turn blobs of paint into a flower, a leg, or a ribbon. Abstract art allows me to observe how my brain works and to truly understand perspective.

While looking through the Ackland Art Museum gallery, I came upon a painting called “The City,” by Walt Kuhn. The City grabbed my attention with the artist’s attempt to draw a lady. Knowing that the artist could have painted a picture perfect replica of what he saw in front of him, I was pulled into deeper thought to wonder why the artist decided not to paint a realistic representation. What other effect or emotion was he hoping to express?

The first thing I noticed was the lady. She is a white woman with a pile of makeup on her face. She is wearing skintight stockings and a blouse that reveals much of her shoulders and chest. The blouse has four straps, but she only uses one to hold it on her body. This and the dark and grungy background led me to believe that she was a prostitute. It amazes me how these small details in my perspective can lead my brain to see this lady in this way.

Still mesmerized, I gazed at the painting and the parts other than the lady. I noticed the table, the flower, and the shoes. I wondered what type of shoes they could be, and then somehow my brain put it together; they were dancing shoes. Kuhn also painted her in a dance move with her legs crossed and an arm on one hip, like she is ready to dance a jig. It could have been the stockings, the shoes, or her pose, but I could now see this lady as a dancer in a dressing room.

I expected the title of the piece to hint at a dancer, but instead it is called “The City.” A summary of the piece suggests that she is indeed a showgirl in a dressing room, but suggests that the woman is a symbol of the city as a whole. This made me wonder what Kuhn was trying to say about the city with a painting of this showgirl.

My first thought of this lady was that she was a prostitute. Kuhn paints the picture with mainly dark greens, blues, and browns. These colors remind me of me of grime or garbage. With these colors, Kuhn suggests that the city is a dark and dirty place, at least where this showgirl works.

Kuhn wanted to express something deeper than a trashy city. The images of her red flower, her makeup, her falling straps, and her shoeless feet suggest something about beauty and effort. The showgirl is painted to look tired; to show the hard work that must be put forth to run a show, or a city. He must have painted these images to show that behind the bright lights and flashy beauty of this city is a dark side. The flower and makeup are things that represent the beauty of the city, but are lost in the grimy dressing room. Kuhn painted her with her shoes off and straps falling to show a showgirl with her costume off. Kuhn is painting the realities of a city, where beauty is lost to reality.

Kuhn painted a deep and thought-provoking piece, one that I could not have appreciated without an understanding of perspective. I would have looked at this picture and seen a poorly painted woman, but now my brain is able to make the connections that I have expressed in this post. I am even able to imagine what the artist was trying to suggest through the piece. I am able to feel what the artist is trying to convey and enjoy it. This is allowing me to experience the artistic world in a different way.

Is that a Face?

2006-04-30T22:00:00.000-05:00

Salvador Dali, the self promoting and acclaimed surrealist painter, is one of the most famous modern era painters. Dali was one of the most known and recognized surrealist painters with some of the most recognizable work. With his pursuits to portray the unconscious mind, Dali juxtaposed random, yet normal objects into one fantastic landscape, confusing our minds as the objects flow into other ones, not fulfilling the picture we are used to, or expect to see.

Dali was apart of the art movement called Surrealism which took place during the 1920’s up to the 1950’s. Surrealism was art where artists tried to attain the state of different than “real”, or truer, more than real, or surreal. The unconscious mind was a major influence of the movement, to try and evoke the imagination that lies within the unconscious.

The unconscious mind deviates from Freud’s theory of the different stages of consciousness. The third and last stage in this theory is the unconscious. The unconscious mind refers to the thoughts and memories spiraling around in your mind that you do not actively or consciously think about. It is interesting that this became intertwined with the art world and the Surrealism Movement.

In Dali’s art I believe that he does capture and almost portrays the jumble of imaginary and creative images that rest in our mind. I believe that he compiles the many different factors that most likely make up the unconscious and mixes them together in his paintings. He uses normal objects, people and places, and mixes them into totally impossible scenes. It’s as though he mixes normal thoughts, memories, knowledge, imagination, creativity, and dreams all into one complex and intriguing picture.

Dali’s style of painting is also so neat and easy to look at, so to speak. The ability to recognize and distinguish all the different elements he uses in his paintings helps further the notion that he accurately has portrayed the unconscious mind.

Dali’s most famous painting “The Persistence of Memory”, 1931, portrays the unconscious and surreal as many of his painting do, but does not utilize the extreme juxtaposition that some of his other works do. One that particularly evokes this contrast is the painting “Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach”, 1938, where many things are not what they seem.

In the previous post, perception was the topic of discussion, and perception plays a part in identifying the interesting connections of this painting and in Dali’s work. At first glance, disregarding the title, because I did not know it when I first saw the painting, the painting appears to simply have an elevated dish containing various fruits. One would expect to next notice perhaps other things on a table with a light colored table cloth. Instead you realize that the dish actually somehow depicts a face with the fruit at the top resembling the hair on the top of the face’s head, and that the dish is not on a table at all, but right in the middle of a landscape. Actually, the dish is partly making up the landscape. The landscape is actually part of a table though, as the table edge is evident on one side and the other side resembles a beach, with cliffs and a bridge over water or perhaps even sky. The cliffs turn out to be the heads of dogs and the bridge a collar of one of them. The dog with the bridge-collar has a tunnel going through the part of the cliff where his eye is. The snout of this same dog is white, where its head is brown, and wrinkles into the form of the surf hitting the beach. I mean this juxtaposition is unbelievable, a dog and a cliff? Only in the depths of unconscious could such a connection be made, but Dali has illustrated it here nonetheless.

To further mystify our minds, away from the “cliffs” and beach, the sea melts directly into the sky, with no clear difference where one ends and the other begins. The only indication that there is sky is the moon far off in the distance. The juxtaposition of these two things however is not as unusual as the other depictions in the painting. Below the cliffs and between the “table cloth”, there appears to be valleys with many different things. There is a brick wall that makes up one side of a cliff that further illustrates Dali’s connecting two things that we do not expect to connect. Many interesting characters of varying, disproportional sizes litter these valleys. One character that appears to be lying down makes up one of the eyes of the face that appears to be morphing through the picture. Another random object makes up the other eye.

In noticing all these strange connections that Dali has exercised in this work, I have come to a realization of how he might have decided to paint in such a way. It is as though he has taken several scenes that he has pictured in his mind, and painted them all into one perplexing image. There is the overall depiction of the beach landscape that your eyes want or expect to see, but they cannot due to the mixing of the other effects, especially the face/dish phenomenon protruding in the center of the image on top of a table. After accepting these individual subjects, since these jump out first and are the most obvious, the dog heads become noticeable and the fact that they are being utilized as the cliffs of the apparent landscape. The bridge is then acknowledged as a dog collar and more details are evident that the picture is not possible. What is interesting is that some may see the dogs before they notice the landscape, which exposes how perception plays a part in this work.

An article analyzing Dali’s writings contains some information on what certain elements in his paintings are called. The dogs and cliffs for instance, where on page 62 he explains double images, which mean that “the representation of an object that is also, without the slightest physical or anatomical change, the representation of another, entirely different object.” He also discusses how he tries to “systematize confusion” which shows why he relates objects that are totally unrelated in his paintings. Another article analyzes three major surrealist themes, those being dream, desire, and love, and expresses some background on the basis for surrealist works.
In his works, something that has distinguished itself through my eyes is the fact that no matter the variance of random items or places in his paintings, there is commonly some kind of human form portrayed in his surrealist type paintings. One would think that in order to portray the unconscious mind, human shapes would not be included, but I assume that anything can be depicted when trying to represent the surreal. The strange thing about the humans in his art is that they are represented in so many different ways. Sometimes there will be a basically normal image of a person who just happens to be in the middle of a bizarre, dreamlike landscape; whereas other times the person or people will be one with the landscape itself. They will either be visible within the different items, meshing within, or the different objects will be made to create certain aspects of human form.

It has just occurred to me how his interconnecting of different objects renders his ability to evoke the dream state. In dreams, the ones that can be remembered at least, scenes move from one place to another very unexpectedly, and he has obviously expressed this transition in this work. Dali painted this work with these strange effects in order to create the images and thoughts that mix around under our conscious thoughts. In incorporating the transitions of dreams, and the interconnecting of the unrelated things, he juxtaposed the unthinkable; creating what one would think would be what the unconscious resembles.

“This Painting’s Got a Kick to It”

2006-04-30T21:57:00.000-05:00

"The Tragedy," by Pablo Picasso

I love this piece of art because it is so powerful in its simplicity. The piece is called “The Tragedy,” by Pablo Picasso. This painting is one of my favorites, because the longer I look at it the more thought provoking it becomes. I began to focus on the figures in the painting, wondering what they are feeling, and how they are interacting with each other. I also wondered what Picasso was thinking and feeling while he painted. What was he trying to express with the figures, colors, and textures in the painting? The painting exudes emotion. The painting is not a perfect representation, but its abstract qualities communicate the scene’s emotion more effectively than a perfect representation.

At first glance, you know that something is wrong from the negative feelings that the painting exudes. Picasso purposely makes this a sad and depressing painting, with his use of blue as the main color. Blue is a cool color that can express sorrow and coldness. The figures in the painting appear cold because of the long clothes they are wearing. Coldness is harsh and can take a toll on people. Picasso knows this and is expressing the hardship that these people are experiencing. The family is barefoot, which adds to the sense of coldness. Both parents crossed their arms just to stay warm. Each figure is pale, either from the cold or from the tragedy in their lives. Picasso purposely chooses these colors to effectively express the emotion of the painting.

Picasso shows that the figures have fallen on hard times by adding details that reflect back on a better time. The mother’s posture, earrings, and full, thick hair expose her natural beauty and class. She is standing tall and strong through this tough time, instead of sitting and crying. Her earrings represent wealth and her hair is pulled back as not to get in the way. Her pulled back hair represents strength and hard work, as apposed to long flowing hair which would represent elegance and pampering. Picasso presents the father in the same way. The father is a powerful man with muscles that show through his shirt, but he looks old and tired from his gray unshaven beard. The parents’ past signs of youth, wealth, and ease add to the power of their downfall and their present hardships.

Picasso adds sadness to the figures with their positioning and body language. The mother, father, and child are all looking down which expresses depression, disappointment, and weakness. There is nothing warm or welcoming about the painting. Not one figure is looking at the audience, and the mother even has her back turned. The father has his arms crossed, usually a sign to be left alone because of negative feelings, and the opposite of open, welcoming arms.

The way that Picasso has painted the child into the scene adds to the emotion of the painting. The parents appear freezing cold and must keep their arms crossed to stay warm or, because of the tragedy, to close themselves off from others. The child, on the other hand, is grabbing for his father with his arms open searching for parental support, but the parents are too cold or distraught to reach out to their child. The tragedy that this family is feeling must be powerful, if the parents cannot reach out to comfort their bothered child.

I also wonder if the mother is hiding the tragedy in her arms. It looks as though the mother, the father, and the child are looking at something that the mother is carrying. If the mother is carrying something, it is surely connected to death, because of the emotion that the painting radiates. I could imagine this family at a funeral burying someone or something, but no other concrete details support this idea.<>

Each aspect of the painting adds to its powerful emotion. The abstract color scheme, the details of past life, and the calculated body language give the painting a powerful emotional punch. The way that Picasso weaves together all the aspects of the painting reminds me of death. Shear coldness and self-absorption radiate from the painting in a way that expresses the tragedy that has gripped this family. Picasso successfully packed “The Tragedy” with as much emotion as any real image.

2006-04-30T20:57:00.000-05:00

The Dutchman by Moyo Okediji

Fairly modern, The Dutchman by Moyo Okediji dates to 1995, and was inspired by the Robert Hayden’s poem about the slave trade and the mid-Atlantic. One can see from the colors used in this painting that it depicts a traumatic journey across the Atlantic, with African American portrayed naked, or with little coverings, and disheveled. This is a correct assumption; captured natives were brought aboard ships, usually branded and given little to no clothing for a journey in which many drowned. The center figure in the painting is a woman, one can tell from her breast shown, with white chains around her arms. These white chains could signify the white powers that took over her life and made her a slave. What seems to be snakes in the picture have long dark purple bodies in a circular shape with white diamond accents on what appears to be their backs. These snakes may have been what lived in the captured slaves’ ships quarters or could also represent part of the African area they were taken. This painting is impregnated with dual meanings and deeper emotions, dealing with the rawness of slavery as a practice and how it affected those it ripped away from their lives in far off lands.

What drew me to this painting was the wild use of colors and lines. A cubist work in itself, with forms and geographical shapes like circles, triangles and rectangles present throughout the painting, it displays many different themes in one jointly united work. The dark colors present on the body of the bald woman seen “diving” towards the bottom of the painting is in bright teals, purples and shades of salmon and orange used through the painting. The color scheme seems to grow in itself, with a darker shade of the same colors used, in the case with the blue and teal, the orange and salmon, and in the dark purple and the lilac color as well. The bright colors can’t mask the solemn acts being portrayed in this art piece. With years of slavery’s history to consider, one can imagine what an African from Nigeria must feel knowing some of his fellow countrymen’s’ ancestor’s reside in this nation instead of the one he calls home.

This piece of art is so deeply imbedded with the history of slavery in this country; one can feel the pain and angst caused by years of oppression and segregation as well. The beautiful colors remind me of the tropical colors one would find in the African jungles, and remind me that although it is history, slavery is anything but long forgotten.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

2006-04-30T19:22:00.000-05:00

Pablo Picasso’s work as a cubist painter has taken on much of a following. Fans travel worldwide to galleries when his paintings are displayed. With separate periods, his work progressed from blue tinted somber paintings to the first collages used in fine art. A young man from a life of paintings, with a father as an artist and a mother to encourage his work and creativity, he died a wealthy and well known artist throughout the world, pioneering genres and creating works of art whose legacy long lasts after his death. However, there are hidden messages within his work that show his true feelings of the world around him. Although he adamantly stated that he did not take a “side” in the war, his paintings tell a different story, depicting monstrosities that occurred during both World Wars. Along the same lines, he paints those without vision to symbolize the great gift of sight that man has; this is almost paradoxical to painting the blind since they will never see the art work they help, in a way, create.

Paintings from his first wave of creativity were known as the “Blue period”, marked by blue tinted paintings that are somber in most all aspects. This period of almost depressing paintings was inspired partly by a trip through Spain and partly by the suicide death of a close friend. Seen reflected in the solemn characters depicted; prostitutes, beggars, and harlequins, one can feel the angst and sorrow that fills these subjects lives collide with the blue tones, showing the depressed state of mind Picasso was in during this time. It is my understanding that blue tones are generally associated with sadness and depression, hence the term “feeling blue”. Despair and sadness were the themes meant to be carried out by the blue tones by artists that preceded Picasso, with many believing that these painting represent all the negative aspects of his life during this period.

In one of Picasso’s painting from his “Blue period”, The Old Guitarist, we see an image and automatically one feels sorry for the subject depicted in it. The elongated fingers of the guitarist are in typical fashion of Picasso’s “Blue period”, making the decrepit people portrayed seem like they live long, miserable lives. With light and dark blue tints that even make the man in this painting seem to originate from a “blue” background, one cannot help but feel glum after viewing this painting. Perhaps it is the skeletal figure of an elderly man that looks famished and emaciated that also creates a glum feeling. However, the old man is holding a guitar in pristine condition. With a ripped tunic that serves as his only clothing and grey hair, it seems that the only thing keeping this man alive is his love for the music he is playing. The blue tones through out the painting are in stark contrast to the brown guitar that lives up the dreary blue. This man lives for his guitar and his guitar alone, the face painted appears to be so deeply immersed in his music that nothing, his protruding bones, ripped shirt or old demeanor seem to upset his creative genius. With eyes closed and hands firmly pressed on the guitar strings, this man seems to feel the music flowing through his frail body without any remorse or shame in his life. Perhaps it is just me that sees the painting this way; I don’t see any shame in this man yet he is half naked on what seems like a street corner playing a guitar. Yet one can’t help but feel pity for this man. If I saw someone like this on the street corner I would bring them back a cup of soup and worry about them on the P2P ride home, hoping the summer heat or cold winter wouldn’t be the end of their being.

Picasso draws ones attention to the guitarists’ eye by darkening it with added shadows as is typical in his “Blue period”. With his use of the closed eyes in this painting it adds another layer of meaning to his work, one that portrays blindness. Although it is done in a subtle manner, Picasso has been known to depict characters that are blind in his “Blue period”. With other paintings, such as La Celestine and The Blind Man's Meal, portraying the life of the blind, his “Blue period” is laden with depictions of those living a difficult life never experiencing or viewing the portraits painted of them. Although his use of blindness is subtle in The Old Guitarist, with shading used to emphasize the blindness, in La Celestine, blindness is a theme that is anything but subtle. Portraying an older woman with what seems to be a missing eye exemplifies Picasso’s use of blindness as a theme during his “Blue period”. Picasso, as an artist, could have portrayed blind people so those with sight could more appreciate their gift of seeing.
Picassos “Blue period” is marked by relatively glum, dark and depressing paintings. One that embodies all these qualities is his piece, The Tragedy. In this piece we see a man, a woman and a child all gathered at the beach. This is anything but a fun family portrait from the beach, it has dark colors, and the subjects are fully dressed and barefoot on the blue sand. We only see the woman’s back and a profile of her face; she is draped with a dark blue cloth of some kind, as if hiding whatever is being held in her hands. The man appears to be hugging himself as if warmth was needed, with the young boy touching the leg of the older man. However, in ones mind it is easy to draw the conclusion that this is a family together on the beach on a cold, windy day. With its very dark, drab blue colors present through out every aspect of this painting, the elongated faces, fingers and feet, it is the epitome of Picasso’s “Blue period”.

Articles such as this one believe that it was a maturation process for Picasso to go through so many different stages in his artistic lifeline. From his early days of “Blue period” to his later “Rose period” one notices a subtle difference yet one that shows a more developed and skilled painter. His first timeline of paintings that were put together as a group was his “Blue period”. After that, from 1904-1935 he went to create ten separate collages of work, each having a different theme throughout. These pieces of work each reflected what was occurring in his life and during the time period. This is exemplified during the war years, 1937-1945. Picasso’s paintings during war times did have deeper meanings and showed a more mature side of Picasso than is seen in his novice “Blue period”. More mature themes drown out the vagabonds and whores that were first portrayed, with sophisticated and deep meanings in paintings such as Guernica, which shows the damages bombs caused to a town in Spain. The Charnel House also shows Picassos learned maturity in portraying the monstrosities that took place in Hitler’s concentration camps in World War 2. Although he chose to remain neutral during the war years, it is easy to see through his painting what feelings and emotions were going through his mind during those times.

As a painter, Picasso is far from my favorite. I prefer the whimsical, gay, brightly colored paintings by Dufy. However, I do recognize that as an artist he brought together styles to create Cubism, a form of art that encompasses shapes and colors to try and form deeper meanings than just paint on canvas. Perhaps some of my dislike as Picasso as a painter comes from my dislike of him as a person, Picasso having many scandalous affairs and fathering children with women that weren’t his wife at the time of conception, mainly it comes from me disliking cubism in general. His claim of neutral ness during wars is a false one, his paintings speaking much louder than his words. Also, his use of blindness in his art spoke to people to appreciate their vision and make the best of it.

Willem de Kooning and His Women

2006-04-30T16:46:00.000-05:00

Willem de Kooning was a renowned painter in the 40’s and 50’s, whose compositions were known for their spastic, scratchy textures and bold, intense colors. He was a leader of the abstract expressionists in New York, and along with fellow artist Jackson Pollack helped define the technique “action painting.” De Kooning made a name for himself painting abstract compositions; however it is his “Women” series he painted in the early 50’s that most intrigue me (Carrier). They are, like the abstract paintings, full of life and energy, but also an expression of the sexual frustration of man. The women depicted in the series are created using scratchy, expressive lines, conveying de Kooning’s aggravation in a bestial, almost childlike manner. These emotive, angry strokes are reinforced by a haphazard use of color, where olive greens, realistic flesh tones, and bright splashes of red all coexist not-so-peacefully. The nude women themselves are a far cry from the goddesses painted in the Renaissance (de Kooning’s woman is no Virgin Mary), their gnarly, buxom, saber-toothed bodies nearing abstraction. De Kooning reveals the ugliness of our subconscious sex drive, as theorized by Sigmund Freud, through violent brush strokes, unpredictable color, and disfigured female forms.

Freud is often criticized for his emphasis on sexuality. Many of his ideas extended from the notion that all human motivations, good or bad, derive from the embrace or repression of the sex drive. He also discussed with great expansion the subconscious. It is here, according to Freud, where ancient, primal instincts lie, where sexual desire is strongest and basest, and where artists receive their inspiration (Boeree). With these conjunctures in mind, de Kooning’s visual treatment of women is no longer a twisted examination of portrait, but an expression of the part of our consciousness that we constantly, undeniably repress. It is an identification of the bestial side of man. The thing that puts criminals in jail; the thing that gets women raped; the thing that makes men go to war. All of this repression of desire explodes onto the canvas in a moment represented by color, line, and distortion, a language so passionate it can only be met by a feeling of repulsion. This is the genius of de Kooning.

In de Kooning’s paintings, the physical appearance of the women serves as an identification with man’s repressed sexual desires. The women are heavy-set with broad shoulders, wide hips, and large breasts, exaggerating the specific female aspects of the figure. De Kooning did not paint a series of goddesses. Rather, he made the women seem more like animals, enlarging their gnarled teeth and eyes and cutting off their hair. He is playing with the traditional depiction of women, demonstrating the ugly, inhuman motivations behind such obsessions with the female body. Freud suggested these subconscious desires are repressed to meet societal standards, but have made their way to the surface through such means as art. De Kooning has recognized that, and embraces it through his canvases. He created an image that is both repulsive and identifiable at the same time.

The violence in de Kooning’s brush strokes is vital to his expression of man’s inherent sexual longings. It is these linear elements that distort and abstract the woman form. Like a child scratching with crayons on a primed wall, de Kooning’s hand scratches the arms, legs, breasts, and faces of heavy women into the canvas. The forms are created using broad black lines, angular and curved. Depth is not the goal of this technique. Instead, the figures look flat and drawn, eliminating any kind of attempt at illusion. The effect of de Kooning’s hefty, spastic, sketchy brushwork is the abstraction of the female figure to the point of making her appear almost inhuman. It is a devolution to the point where he can connect to our basest, most suppressed desires. This way a connection is made between de Kooning’s “Women” and the theories of Sigmund Freud.

The colors in de Kooning’s paintings create a sense of tension akin to the struggle between man’s subconscious desires and his moral obligations. Freud extensively discussed the fight between man’s carnal impulses and his ability to reason. It was a struggle between what he called the Id and the Ego, and it was this struggle that dictated all of our actions. De Kooning relates to this by painting dissonant colors. The colors do not live together peacefully. There are no spectral, gradated washes gracefully easing the eye into the subject. Instead, olive greens, fleshy reds, and dirty yellows all mix and fight for dominance, while white and black washes provide the chaotic structure of the paintings. Most of the colors are at full value, further flattening the surface of the painting. Working together with the violent brushwork, the colors create a tension on the canvas that is hard to look at.

In regard to the forms of the female figure, de Kooning refuses to use the conventional method of shading and modeling to convey a sense of volume and weight. Instead, he fills shapes with solid color, relying on our subconscious understanding of the shapes to sense the weight of the women. This idea is exemplified in Woman I, the most recognized painting of the series. The size of the shoulders and the stockiness of the torso, feet, and ankles all play to our understanding of a heavy, busty, working woman. This way, the figure feels weighty and bound to earth, further emphasizing the carnal, earthly desires that de Kooning is referring to in his depiction of the female form.

When it was first displayed, de Kooning’s “Women” series was met with disgust and controversy. It was said to be degrading to women and impossible to understand. This is exactly the response de Kooning wanted, and the reason he is considered one of the masters in art history.

Works Cited
Boeree, Dr. C. George, “Sigmund Freud.” Personality Theories. 23 April 2006. .
Carrier, D. “Unmastering de Kooning.” ArtUS. no. 7, March 2005. p.50-1.
Wilkin, K. “De Kooning declined.” The New Criterion. v. 23 no. 6, February 2005.
p.64-7.

Slow Down Freight Train...

2006-04-30T16:41:00.000-05:00

Many of my favorite artists are African Americans from the 40’s (Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence to name a few), and there’s some intangible quality inherent in their artwork that always stirs up emotions and memories deep down in my gut. They use materials in ways that are raw and emotive, creating a sensation that feels truly human, and Rose Piper’s Slow Down Freight Train is no different. The rich, high valued colors feel primitive and sophisticated at the same time. She creates a strikingly emotional posture of a man using various vantage points, both demonstrating her understanding of Cubist ideas. A visual rhythm structured around line and color echoes the blues tradition that inspired her. These elements play with the way colors and postures connote emotions, conveying an inescapable sense of helplessness and longing.

Piper uses a Cubist understanding of the way we perceive forms in space. This is demonstrated mostly in the figure of the man. She has painted the man so that we see him from more than one point of reference. Notice how his left arm is painted like we’re looking at him straight on, but his neck and head are painted as if we are positioned below him. Also, we are looking at the tops of his shoulders, as if we are above him. This way, the man is postured in a way that is physically unnatural, but emotionally powerful.

In addition to painting from several vantage points, Piper used planes of color rather than altering values, another Cubist technique. The only gradation of value is in the man’s neck, while the rest of his body is painted using flat color. This technique causes the viewer to overlook the fact that the man’s neck, arm, and leg are all out of proportion if you are looking at him straight on. It also makes it believable that the man’s head is turned around at an almost impossible angle. However, this distortion appeals to the viewer’s emotional perception of body language, conveying a strong sense of longing and despair. You can nearly hear the man crying out, akin to a howling wolf, as he sadly gazes over his shoulder to the world passing by outside the boxcar.

The colors in Slow Down Freight Train are simple, yet commanding. Fields of red, yellow, green, white, and black (colors you would find in a box of crayons) interact in a way that creates movement and rhythm. The black and white elements anchor the composition in place, with the two walls, the man’s leg, and the floorboards acting like a blank sheet of music across which notes of color dance. The notes – red, yellow, and green – cause the eye to bounce across the canvas, each field of color working with and against the other.

Singing in harmony with the shapes of color are the linear elements of the painting. Most notable are the lines created by the floorboards of the boxcar. They loosely follow the guidelines of one-point perspective, all directing toward a single point in space, creating the sensation of movement in and out of space. The sloping line of the hill outside the boxcar emphasizes the spatial movement of the floorboards. Also the man’s posture, looking backwards, sends the viewer’s eye back into space, reinforcing the forward movement of the train. There is a play between the inside and outside world, the boxcar and the green land. The man longs for the freedom outside, but is trapped inside the moving boxcar, where the lines of the floorboards act like prison bars.

I’ve never been forced to leave home. I’ve never lived in poverty. I can’t even really remember a time where I felt unloved. But somehow this painting and others like it brings me to a place where I can connect with the emotions of the struggles it represents, and I don’t really understand why. Maybe it’s some kind of universal form of empathy. Or maybe it’s just a subconscious understanding of posture and color. Whatever it is, Rose Piper has touched upon something that’s truly human, and that’s quite an achievement.

Or so I thought

2006-04-30T15:38:00.000-05:00

Through studying the neurology and psychology of the brain, perception and art became involved. Perception is the way a person sees a certain thing, and can be different for every individual. One does not necessarily have a choice of how they initially perceive something, but they do have the ability to see it in different ways. This is a brain behavior and connects all that I am saying together. Art is one of the biggest perception dominated examples. Many great or controversial artists’ paintings are perceived in different ways and were most likely done that way purposely by the artist.

One painting that tested my perceptual abilities is located at the Ackland Art Museum on the campus here at UNC. The painting, by Hans Hoffman, is called “Undulating Expanse”, and was painted in 1955. Initially I saw the painting and did not really give it a second thought, thinking how it was just another painting with random color blotches that somehow was famous. To me I just saw shapes with the primary and secondary colors, lots of red and orange along with some blue, yellow and green. There were some triangles, circles, and this big flowing mass as well. It looked like something I could have done when I was seven, especially since it appeared that it was almost done hastily; the shapes weren’t completely filled in with color and the color that was there seemed to be thrown on simply to give it some. From my apparent rant above, you can probably tell that I am not one big on art and trying to understand it. Sometimes though you just have to try and deal with it.

Anyway, what I am getting at is that as I looked closer at the painting I realized that it was some sort of scene, it was a landscape. To my surprise the painting actually made a little since, it was not just some colors and lines slapped onto the canvas. The orange triangles were indeed mountains with a giant circular red sun behind them. The big flowing mass happened to be a long cloud front flowing over the top of the sun and mountains. The scene is perhaps at sunset, or even sunrise, as the sun is red and very low, and the sky all around it is light red, maybe even pink.

After realizing it was actually a unique and interesting picture, I thought how wrong I was to perceive it as something unworthy of recognition. Maybe it was done simply for a specific reason. Hoffman is quoted in wikipedia as saying, “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” To me this explains his purpose for painting the picture in this way. Perhaps he is simply painting the bare essentials of a landscape such as this, to point out how we need to take notice of beautiful scenes of nature again such as a sunset. Instead of living life in the “fast lane” or being occupied with measly social problems, or being caught up in one’s job, people should just sit back and appreciate the simplicities of the natural world.

Now I don’t think there were too many multiple lane highways in the 1950’s, but even so, the association of life in the fast lane is still pertinent to explaining what Hoffman was trying to get across in painting his landscape in such little detail. His coloring of the “undulating” cloud form in blues shows that he is maybe putting emphasis on watching the clouds, considering the rest of the picture is painted with colors of a fire, red, orange, and yellow. The behavior of a cloud again links the portrayal of how our lives should slow down and just float along, or go-with-the flow.

Although I initially perceived this painting as nothing out of the ordinary, looking deeper into the work before criticizing it is a much better strategy. No matter your initial perceptions of art, or anything for that matter, look further, or at the bigger picture before your mind is made up.

"Strange Fruit" and "Design for Death"

2006-04-30T15:04:00.000-05:00

Civil Rights leaders were not the only one’s to speak out against the social injustices and racism in America. Instead of using political routes for social change, artists such as Romare Bearden, writers such as Langston Hughes and musicians like Duke Ellignton used culture and art to help fight for equality and civil rights. The Harlem Renaissance, a period of social and cultural change in the Black community. A good example of this is the 1946 Billie Holiday recorded the song “Strange Fruit” in protest to the lynchings that were happening in the south. Here are some of the lyrics:
"Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."
(words and music by Lewis Allen, 1946)

Gertrude Abercrombie used her paintings to do a fight for civil rights as well. It is believed that her painting originally named “Design for Death” then later renamed “Charlie Parker’s Favorite Painting” is in response to the song “Strange Fruit”. After learning the details and history behind this piece and the song, “strange fruit” it is easy to see how connected they are. On the surface both the song and the painting are about lynchings. This is obvious in the lyrics and in the painting of the tree with the noose. They also share the emotional affect they create in audiences. The power of Billie Holiday’s voice as she sings these lyrics soulfully and almost mournfully is gripping. Similarly the shadowing, brush strokes, and dark color choice is griping to the viewer of the painting as well.

The amount of this painting creates is astonishing. The overall tone of the piece is dismal. This is because of the darkness of the sky and of the one singular cloud. In person the darkness jumps off the canvas because many layers of darkness can be seen. The noose leaves the viewer wondering if someone has already died there, and if they are moving on to the next lynching. The noose is almost dead center of the painting and the lines of the ladder also guide the view to the noose. The glove on the ladder and on the ground makes me speculate that those doing the lynchings had little regard for people and their personal possessions, but mainly absolutely hates black people.

The most gripping part of this painting is the tree. Up close it seems as if the tree just pops off of the canvas. It is a rich deep brown. More than the color, the shape of the tree is essential to the mood of the painting. It is striking how the lynching and the barren tree are both symbols of death. In the winter most trees loose all of their foliage and many plants die. It looks as if this tree has died and its only purpose is to be used to hang blacks. It appears that a lynching has occurred because of the noose and the garments that have been left behind on the ground and in the ladder. Also it seems that there will be another lynching because the set up has remained in position. All of this makes me think that the purpose of this tree is lynching. So the noose and the tree represent death, but so do the surrounding and background of the painting. The land surrounding the tree is completely barren and desolate, lifeless and dead.

There is an eerie calm about this picture. At the museum I sparked a conversation with the security guard about this piece and a few others in the same area. We talked about Jazz music and about his life growing up as a black man in the South during the heat of racism. We also debated for like 5 minutes about the black blob on the in the background of the right side of the painting. He kept trying to convince me that the black blob was the only opening in the clouds. His thought the entire sky was covered with clouds to represent the death that had just taken place. I was more inclinded to believe that the black splotch is a cloud, not an opening. With this in mind, I almost feel an eerie sort of calm about the piece, because there is only one cloud in the sky, which would suggest that a storm is not brewing or that it won’t rain for a while, and because the moon is surprisingly clear. I also thought of it as like the eye of a hurricane, calm in a creepy way, right before the second wave comes through and completely devastates everyone. Of course the storm would be the lynchings or any other hate crimes committed.

So after going through so many, “well if u look at it this way, it could be…”type conversations it finally hit me. Abercrombie is mostly defined as a surrealist; meaning, the part of the purpose of this painting is to take reality, twist it and bend it in a way that leaves the audience guessing and that allows for interpretation by each individual. So although the security guard and I didn’t quite agree on every aspect of the painting, we agreed that it was great surrealist artwork. I suddenly came to the conclusion, that it’s not necessarily the actual colors or brush strokes that evoke emotions, but rather the story the artist inspires me to create in my head when viewing the artwork.

"Happy Little Trees"

2006-04-27T14:18:00.000-05:00

Perusing the internet for artwork, I unexpectedly remembered the old Bob Ross TV show on PBS. It was a thirty minute show titled “The Joy of Painting”, consisting of the artist Bob Ross showing the viewers how easy painting is, usually with landscapes. I very much enjoyed this show but especially the paintings. In a matter of minutes Mr. Ross could create an almost pictorial view of a lake, mountain, forest or landscape with simple brush techniques. Perhaps the fact that I could watch the painting come alive on the canvas in front of me drew me that much more to his artwork.

I looked through many of his works, but they were all so good it was hard for me to choose a specific one. I finally decided on the piece titled “Mountain Cabin” that presents a tiny cabin on a stream bank with a striking mountain peak in the background. What drew me to this particular one was the fact that it was the most peaceful of settings. I can’t imagine a more appealing place to go and just get away from everything. I believe this is what he envisioned when he painted this piece. I think he was painting the perfect dwelling place where only living life mattered.

What amazes me about this painting as well as his others is how he can paint this image straight out of his mind. Besides the somewhat obviousness that it is a painting, it is still unbelievable how real the scene is. You can actually picture this place even though it is not a photograph. Being able to consciously paint a perfect scene of nature off of the top of one’s head is pretty impressive.

Another thing about this painting is that all the colors used are natural. I use natural because the colors are not too bright and they are not too dull. The colors and shading are bright though in terms of the mood of the painting. It is very tranquil, no dark or unpleasant parts about it. The smoothness and stillness of the stream water further depicts the calm of this place, and perhaps how he was feeling, consciously or unconsciously.

Many of the things I have described so far are what I believe were going through his unconscious mind during the formulation of this picture. Unconsciously, peace and tranquility, along with several landscapes were circling throughout his latent thoughts and memories. Nature seems to be a big part of his thoughts as well, and whether he is consciously thinking about nature or not, it has to always be in the depths of his mind. Vacation or a nice place to think or paint could also have been some of his unconscious thoughts during the painting of this picture, thus producing the idea of the cabin. Maybe this is his ideal place to live or to paint. To be honest, with his ability to whip up a landscape image in no time, there is no way that his unconscious thoughts don’t carry several full panoramas at all times.

According to the all-knowing wikipedia database, Ross spent twenty years in Alaska with the US Air Force. This may explain where his landscape and mountain peak interests developed from. Whatever it was, his ability to illustrate scenes of this nature with such simple painting techniques continues to intrigue me. It also mentioned how Ross introduced the wet-on-wet brush technique where he continued to apply the next layer before the previous one had dried. This in turn helped him to be able to paint his scenes so quickly.

Whether it was painted quickly or not, “Mountain Cabin” is a wonderful painting that pays tribute to Bob Ross and his kind personality. His peaceful unconscious and conscious thoughts and his love for nature are exposed through the scene in this painting. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch a rerun of his show on T.V. sometime soon.

Feeder 3.1

2006-04-24T10:34:00.000-05:00

La Vie en Rose

2006-04-24T10:33:00.000-05:00

Raoul Dufy is an incredible French artist with many amazing works of art in his portfolio. Picking just one of his pieces as my favorite was hard for me to say the least. With his works of art consisting of outside scenes, it is rather rare for Dufy to paint something inside; this painting with its whimsical pink color scheme has always been a favorite of mine.

His stenographic style incorporates using swift brush strokes atop of skeletal structures with a light wash of coloring. This distinctive approach is seen well in this painting, where the inside of a room is shown almost out of the corner of ones eye, with just the corner of a room shown. By taking this approach, Dufy shows a specific corner, and that corner is shown not in its entirety as if one had studied the corner and looked it up and down, it is shown as if one looked at a brief section of it, absorbing what one could in the brief time. The painted room is furnished quite simply, with a vase with a few roses atop a simple wooden table in the corner. However, the décor of the room is anything but simple. Both visible walls have a floral pattern on them, with one having only part of the floral pattern as a border to an interior checked pattern with a large portrait of flowers in a vase. The business of the décor is complemented by the simplicity of the furniture in the room, a table that is seen from an aerial view. This table is modestly decorated with a vase holding a few red and white roses with some greenery. Traditionally Dufys style, the roses are drawn in a black, skeletal outline and added to by layers of simple shapes and shades of reds for the red roses and white and creams for the white roses.

The dualism of the simplicity and the complete chaos that occurs in this painting reminds me of life in general. It also makes me think that perhaps since Dufy painted this certain picture over a thirty year span; (hence the two names, La Vie en Rose and Thirty years) that the changes that occurred in the world were depicted in the wall and the simple, steady things in the world were depicted in the table with the vase. The walls are a metaphor for all that is crazy, unstable and quite unexpected occurrences of life while the wooden table and the vase stand for the stable and more steadfast things that are always constant in ones time. Considering the history occurring during the thirty year span this painting took place, Dufy witnessed World War 1 ravage the city where he first studied art, Paris, France; saw his fellow countrymen fight a war for four years and saw the damages caused to people of surrounding nations. Perhaps this inspired Dufy to paint such an obscure painting; walls with busy patterns alongside a simple round table painted in many different shades of red and pink. The history fiend inside me feels that many paintings are relevant to the events which happen around their specific time periods, it is hard not to let the outside world in on ones creative mind.

What is amazing to me in dealing with this painting is that it took a span of thirty years to complete, beginning in 1901 and not finishing until 1931. During this time he still continued painting, producing some of his most famous paintings, Interior with an Open Window, The Races at Ascot and Fenetra ouverte a Saint-Jeannet. In 1901 Dufy had just started his formal art training in Paris and was a novice painter, if that. He had not yet established himself as a credited painter; yet when he eventually completed this work he has a well known and well respected artist. Yet there is no like of demarcation between his earlier work on the painting and when the piece was finally completed; there is a flow that is unbroken by what period it was worked on. The bright and rosy colored painting reflects a “come to happiness with ones life” painting that does show the chaos one experiences in life alongside the neutral and least complex areas.

JAZZY!!

2006-04-22T10:35:00.000-05:00

In a quest for my favorite piece of artwork, I was struck with the question, “well what is art?” and “how can I choose a favorite?” I had absolutely no clue what my favorite painting was or where to even begin searching for it. I’ll be honest and admit that although I studied and enjoyed tons of art history in my high school history course, I barely remember any of the artists and painting that I learned. Since my forgetful nature has made finding my favorite piece harder than it should be, I came up with the idea of adding to this search a form of art that I adore. I love music. I am a Jazz musician at heart. I believe it is the most creative and most natively American art form there is. I am in the UNC Jazz Band and I love every moment I spend in rehearsal, practicing or simply listening to Jazz.

Like Jazz, Visual art is very personal. Each individual person decides what they think is beautiful and why. I think the hardest part about choosing my favorite work of art, was coming to the realization that I am always changing. My perception of beauty fluctuates as my mood, environment and other aspects of my life change. It is entirely possible that I once had a favorite piece of art, but it no longer appeals to me because I have changed so much; or I just simply forgot what my favorite piece of art was.

So how did I incorporate my love of music into this assignment? It’s simple I did a google search. I google random things when I am bored on the computer; countless times I have even googled my own name. So this time I googled “Jazz Art”. I decided that my new favorite piece of art is a painting entitled “Other dimensional improvisations..." a drawing by Robin Jensen. The artist describes this as depicting the oneness of two or more artists. This is perfectly Jazz Art. Jazz is an art form based at its core on individual improvisation, on the spot composition of melodies. However, in order to make music, the improvisers must also work together as a unit to produce melodies and harmonies that fit together like a musical puzzle. This drawing captures the essence of Jazz.

If the viewer looks at the painting closely ignoring the colored curvy lines all across the page and looking solely at the darker lines, several musicians can be uncovered. I can pick out a pianist and a saxophonist improvising on their given instrument. This is the individual aspect of improvisation in Jazz. I interpreted the colors across the canvas as the musical melody, harmony, and rhythm. If the colors are the aspects of music, then the squiggly lines represent the music as a whole. The music surrounds the players just as the squiggly lines surround the images of the players. It is the music that connects what each player is doing to the group as a whole. Not only are the players as individuals connected by they music, but they are also surrounded by the music.

I also interpreted the colors and squiggles as not only surrounding the players, but engulfing them also. The musicians are the darker squiggles, but each individual and their instrument may be hard to extrapolate because the other colors and squiggles are s covering. In a sense the musicians are getting lost in the music. They are so caught up in the moment and joy of the music that it is no longer a picture about a person or how well a person can play, but rather about the music, how it unites people, covers them, surrounds them, and makes them for a moment in time, loose themselves and become secondary to the music.

This work, “Other dimensional improvisation” incorporates both visual art and my favorite type of performing art, Jazz. I find this piece captivating, and beautiful.

Titian was the MAN

2006-04-05T21:56:00.000-05:00

It is tough for me to try and nail down a favorite piece of art. I’ve always loved the emotional intensity of the impressionists and the colors of the Fauvists, but if I had to pick a favorite piece of art at the moment, it would have to be The Pastoral Concert by Titian. I love Titian’s loose brushwork, his compositional genius, and the beautiful way he renders his figures. He is by far my favorite Renaissance painter, and right now this piece is really doing it for me.

The subject of the painting seems a bit unusual really. There are four main figures, two of which are nude females, leisurely enjoying a cloudy afternoon on a hill overlooking a small house and forest. The two males are adorned in extravagant clothes, loosely fit and representative of the Italian upper class. One of the women is off to the side by herself, pouring what looks like water into a basin. The other woman is with the two men, holding a recorder-like instrument in her hand. All of the figures have rather stoic expression on their faces, like they’re participating in a serious, intellectually elevated kind of activity. It’s funny how the men are talking, and the women are off in their own worlds, the left one focused on pouring and the right one gazing at the horizon. Neither of them seems to notice that they are nude either. It’s a little odd from our 21st century perspective, but it speaks quite clearly to the status of women in the time of the Renaissance.

One of the things I love most about this painting, and Titian in general, is the way he arranges objects in space. In this painting in particular, the nudes are especially beautiful as they echo each other in their poses. If you look closely, each of the women is configured so that there is one straight, diagonal line, coupled with a curved line swooping around it. For example, the woman with the flute is sitting so that there is a straight line made from her head, through her flute, down her arm, and down her leg to her foot. Then, there is a curved line created by her back, the piece of cloth she’s sitting on, and her foot. This form is repeated in the other woman on the left and really brings a lot of compositional balance to the painting. Also, in a purely emotive sense, I think that it’s just wonderful.

Distance in this painting is not conveyed by one-point perspective like it is in a lot of the Renaissance paintings. Titian instead uses the strong diagonal of the hill the figures are sitting on and a blurring of the background instead. The line that creates the diagonal of the hill is by far the most defined line in the whole painting. There is also a strong contrast between the dark green of the front hill and the lighter, tan color of the field behind it. This contrast sends the tan field back in space, creating the illusion of depth. In order to further develop this impression, Titian blurred the details in the background, which makes the depth seem natural since we can’t physically see small details a long distance away.

To top everything off, Titian was revolutionary with his brushwork. He was one of the first painters to ever loosen his brush strokes, blurring the lines between values and shapes and figures. You can tell when you look at the edges of the figures, how Titian does not paint solid lines to define the shapes of the figures. This is very interesting, because it marks one of the first times that an artist models his figures without using sharply defined shapes and lines.

More than anything, Titian taught me how to appreciate Renaissance art, and if an artist can make a painting of four people sitting out on a hill chillin’ remain interesting and relevant more than 500 years later, than I approve.

Oh, How We Love Our Names

2006-04-05T09:40:00.000-05:00

As you know from my previous post, “How to Change Behavior,” I conducted an experiment on my behavior during spring break. My experiment collected data about whether or not I said a person’s name during conversation. I choose this experiment because I grew up hearing the importance of saying a person’s name. My dad talked about Dale Carnegie, the famous human relations expert and his methods of dealing with people. I knew that one of Carnegie’s most important principles in his book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” was to say a person’s name. The experiment served its purpose in influencing my behavior and it also taught me the importance of the name.

“How to Win Friends and Influence People,” has sold over 16 million copies and was a New York Times best seller for ten straight years. The book is for people who want to change their behavior in dealing with people. The book gives proven strategies, tips, and techniques for effectively communicating with people, winning people to your way of thinking, and becoming a leader. The principles that Dale Carnegie taught are as simple as smiling, being a good listener, and making the other person feel important.

To truly understand the importance of saying a person’s name we must first understand the importance of the name. Carnegie wants us to “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

Carnegie gives an example about a woman who made sandwiches at a General Motors Cafeteria. She had been making sandwiches for two hours when a certain employee approached her. His sandwich was just another sandwich she had to make. She weighed out the ham, gave him one piece of lettuce, and a few potato chips. The next time this certain employee was in the sandwich line he noticed the woman’s name tag and said “Hello Eunice.” On this sandwich she piled on the ham, gave him three pieces of lettuce, and all the potato chips that would fit.

This story shows the power of the name. Carnegie says that, “We should be aware of the magic contained in a name and realize that this single item is wholly and completely owned by the person with whom we are dealing… and nobody else. The name sets the individual apart; it makes him or her unique among others.” Even after being raised on the importance of the name it wasn’t until I had read this passage that I truly understood the magic of a name. With my experiment I wanted increase the percent of times I called people by their names and find out what factors caused this because it would help my professional and social relationships.

Over the six days that I conducted the experiment I greeted 75 people (counting greeting the same person multiple times), out of which I said a person’s name 41 times and failed to say a person’s name 34 times. I categorized the people I greeted as being family, friend, friend’s friend, worker, and friend’s parent. I greeted family members 24 times and said their name 12 times. Looking over the data the only family member that I called by name almost every time was my mom (4 out of 5). For my other family members saying each of their names was about equal.

I went home to Charlotte for spring break so I saw mostly friends and family. The conversations were comfortable for me because nearly all of the people that I greeted I had known for years. I have a hard time saying a person’s name I have not known for more than a year because I am sometimes uncomfortable. I only said the name of five of the17 people I had not known for more than a year.

Out of the 42 times I greeted my friends, I said their names 24 times. I said my friends’ names that I have known for more than a year 25 out of 28 times I greeted them. This is an impressive number to me, but it was easy to say my friends’ names because I was so happy to see them. These are the friends that I have known the longest and saying a person’s name solidifies lasting relationships.

The percent of the times that I call my friends by their names jumps out at me because it is so much higher than the percent of times that I call my family by their names. I think we take our family relationships for granted. I talk to my family nearly every day, but I have become lazy calling them by their name and working on our relationships. Now that I realize the magic of a name and my lack of use, I need to start calling my family members by their names. My family should enjoy the uniqueness that their name brings them as much as my friends do.

I also kept data about what type of mood I was in while I greeted each person. It is difficult to compare moods and their effects on my behavior because I did not use similar language. I did notice that when I was tired I struggled to say a person’s name, which I believe does not make it a natural habit. Each morning when I woke up I would stumble out of bed to eat a bowl of cereal and watch TV. During this time I did not say anyone’s name, whether it was my dad, brother, or friend. I communicated just enough to get whatever message I wanted across: milk, remote, pillow.

I also noticed I had an easier time saying a person’s name when I was happy and remembered the importance of a name. My stepsister, Cameron, had friends over one night. I was in a happy mood and ready to talk. In order to get Cameron or her friends’ attention I would say their names so that they knew I was talking to them. Calling Cameron or her friends’ names seemed most natural because I was in a happy mood.

I also wrote a short description of each conversation over spring break to find what factors, other than my relationship with the person and my mood, affected when I said a person’s name. I will use the conversations that I had with my friend, John, to illustrate three factors that affected when I said a person’s name. First, if the person was not looking at me or looking the other way I probably didn’t say his or her name. One time I went to the driving range and set down my bag of balls behind where John was hitting. He was turned the other way so I didn’t say his name even though I wanted him to know that I was there. It wasn’t until he said, “What up Culp?” that we had a conversation. Second, if the person was looking at me, smiling, and happy to see me then it was extremely easy to say their name. The first time I saw John during spring break he was smiling and I immediately said, “JOHN!” John made saying his name easy because I felt that he was glad to see me and that I was genuinely important to him. This is what Dale Carnegie talks about and it was working on me first hand. Third, I said a person’s name if I wanted someone to be happy to see me or like me. Another time I talked with John, I wanted him to play golf with me. So the first thing I did as I walked up to him smiling was to say, “Hey John,” and it worked. Without even thinking about it I used Dale Carnegie’s principles for influencing people.

I found a fourth factor from reading the short descriptions that did not come up in my conversations with John. From my conversations with my grandfather, my mom, a golf professional, and an older man I admire, I found that, if I wanted to show someone respect, I said their name. On the other hand I failed every time to say a person’s name who was working. Ben, my favorite waiter at a restaurant I like came up to see me, saying my name, and asking about school. I was genuinely glad to see him and answer his questions, but I failed to say his name. After discovering the fact that I show someone respect by saying his or her name, I realized that I was not showing equal respect to Ben if I did not say his name. This shows my ignorance of the power of the name.

Now that I have conducted the experiment I would have done some things differently. I would keep data about the amount of times that I said a person’s name during a conversation because I feel that it could have brought out even more information about when I say a person’s name. Dale Carnegie thinks that saying a person’s name multiple times is more effective than saying it once. I did not see improvement over the six days in saying a person’s name during a conversation, but I have improved my focus on saying a person’s name. I believe that I did not see an improvement because my rewards and punishments were too inconsequential to cause an effective change and the time period was too short. The experiment, however, taught me two important facts. The first is that people like to hear their names, and the second is that people like to be liked. In addition to this I have started additional research into human relationships by beginning to read Dale Carnegie’s book.

Or Don't Watch Your Language

2006-04-05T09:18:00.000-05:00

So my experiment was to try and restrain myself and swear less. Spring Break was perhaps a bad time to try and force myself to do anything. Regardless, I tracked my language over the whole week of break but I will be using the data spanning the eight days of Saturday through the next Sunday. The experiment focused on four different ways that would cause me to cure including anger, pain, sports, and habitually (for no obvious reason).

Luckily during the break I did not induce any injury or pain, but I did get sunburned to a crisp on my back and shoulders while down in Charleston for a couple days. The sunburn started bothering me the day after, but it varied from pain to itchiness and aggravation for a few days thereafter. This overexposure caused me to partake in spontaneous swearing outbursts due to the sudden pain or itchiness, or someone accidentally touching the burn.

Besides the few days down in Charleston, I basically just stayed at my house over break because not many people were home because only a couple of other schools were on break the same week. I therefore did not really interact with anyone but my family, and not that other people would have made me angry, but I just did not really have any reasons to get mad when I was just sitting at home all day. Hence there were only a few things that angered me enough to swear. The first being when I was driving back up to Chapel Hill to watch my High School team play in the state Championship basketball game and I almost missed an exit and had to swerve across traffic. The only other thing was when two days in a row my sister decided to accidentally pick up the keys to my car and leave me stranded at home. The second time I was much angrier because I was supposed to pick up my other younger sister from middle school that day.

It seems car or driving related causes were my main sources of anger. On my way back from Charleston I got lost in downtown for around and hour because for some reason they do not believe in signs. Once finally getting out, two of the three interstate lanes were closed so I plodded along slowly before traffic finally let up. Throughout this hour and a half episode quite a load of swearing went down.

Now I feel that sports-related cursing goes hand-in-hand with the anger and pain laden kinds because emotion seems to be the basis of these types. More specifically, over break marked the beginning of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. I, along with the millions of other basketball fans, filled out several tournament brackets and was in a few tournament pools. Anytime one of my picks would lose, especially on a buzzer-beater or last second basket then some swearing was inevitable due to a combination of anger and just no other way to express the loss. Not only did some of my picks lose though, I have to say this was a down year in terms of my luck, and picking-the-winner ability. Also, UNC lost in the second round to a team seeded much lower to them in George Mason. Actually watching a game, especially one with your team in it, elicits a lot of cuss words from your mouth because you care more about your own team than your bracket picks. Which is why I did not restrain myself at the High School State Championship game either, where my Alma Mader lost by four.

Besides the large percentage of my overall swearing caused by the pinnacle of college basketball in March Madness, there was still one other time. Since there were not many people home I spent some time at the Sports Center Athletic Club where I just shot basketball. After not playing for a while, it was quite annoying when I would continue to miss more and more consecutive shots. My restrain was poor here as well, but when I started to make some shots then this was not too much of an issue. It is a good thing there was no one there to play a pick-up game though because if I did not play well, swearing would be how I would have expressed my frustrations on the court.

Now, the last type of cursing that I categorized my data is more or less what caused me to want to attempt this experiment. This kind is the habitual kind that usually takes place when interacting with buddies and friends. And it may just be a guy thing. Whatever it was, after not being with any friends for a good portion of the week, the trip to Charleston with four other guys brought out the best of my vocabulary. Maybe being with your friends and cussing are just like one in the same. It was almost impossible for me not too; it was so natural and easy. Jokes, picking on each other, just the usual friendship slang, there was no restraint or regret whatsoever. When with friends it’s like the only way to describe or explain something is by inserting a random swear word for better effect.

As I said in the beginning, perhaps Spring Break was a bad time to try and force myself to change some behavior when this is the only time I don’t have to worry about doing any sort of work. What I found though is that sports related cussing is something that is really hard to stop. Whether watching or actually playing, emotion takes precedent in this type of situation. Anger and pain induced cursing are very similar to sports related, and whether controlling your temper or not, swearing makes one feel so much better. Swearing enables one to vent their frustrations and release stress. Trying to restrain from cursing would only hold in the anger or frustration and would eventually just get let loose and directed at something or someone else. I found out that the main type of cursing for me though is the habit, friend related kind. This kind was not emotionally stimulated therefore this is the type that should have been corrected. But the NCAA tournament seriously destroyed any “rhythm” I had going because it kept me swearing and therefore the habit did not subside at all.

So as I am sure you have guessed, my experiment turned out ultimately unsuccessful. My punishment-for-swearing calf raises were fulfilled every other day, always accounting for the day skipped. My reward for restraining was supposed to be scoops of ice cream. This would have been an excellent reward except for two reasons: one, I hardly restrained myself, and considering the lack of motivation I seemed to have in trying, I felt I deserved no ice cream even with a restraint. Number two, I had no ice cream. But overall my behavior changed probably for the worst. Due to the NCAA tournament I think my swearing became worse over the week.

What is funny is that originally, in my preceding post I hypothesized that I would have no trouble in curbing my swearing ways and improving my behavior. I also had predicted that if I did swear it would make me think about it, consequently making me more conscious about it and therefore, holding back. Well it did get me thinking about it every time I did but I had to urge to change my ways.

I was obviously completely wrong in my predictions and about my own “sleeping motivation”. Although, I really should have thought ahead and remembered that the Tournament started over the break. That tournament is the sole reason that I was no doubt a complete failure. I think because I felt no regret or wrong by swearing after a loss, and since it happened so often, (go ahead and laugh), that I just became accustomed to basically not even worrying about what I was trying to do. The tournament was like a catalyst just to get me going, and it never ceased.

Despite the results of my failure, I am glad that I thought about changing my behavior. Whether my swearing habit has changed or not I have become a little more aware of it and think about it more before I do, even if it’s just around friends. I still think my motivation is a sleeper and will awaken once again, but Spring Break was probably just a bad time to test it. Yet, I will continue to try and revamp my drive and commitment.

Coke No Mo' Part 2

2006-04-04T23:34:00.000-05:00

So, I decided to stop drinking soda. I mean sure, it’s got loads of empty calories, caffeine, and teeth-rotting sugar, but soda is a big part of my life. I drink it for pretty much every meal, I drink it when I watch television, I drink it when I study, when I play guitar, and sometimes even after I brush my teeth before bed. It’s like someone’s just stuck me with an IV full of Coke, and I’ve been walking around life pulling that little metal stand with the plastic bag and the tube and the needle and the squeaky wheels around with me everywhere. But, for a week, just one week, I went crazy and took the IV out. And I’ll tell you what. It hurt.

The first night of the first day that I gave up soda, I had a headache worse than anything I’ve ever had in my life. An anvil had fallen from the sky and smashed me like some cartoon. It was weird really, because I never considered caffeine to be the reason I drank so many soft drinks. Honestly, I like Coke, I’m thirsty a lot, and thirst plus Coke equals delicious hydration. I drink Coke with meals because it tastes good with pretty much all food, and there’s nothing like an ice cold Coke after you’ve mowed the lawn or raked leaves or something. However, life minus Coke revealed my body’s dependence on caffeine. And now, taking a step back and looking at specific times when I usually drank Coke, it makes sense that my body would experience withdrawals when soda was eliminated from my diet.

It is interesting to look at when and why I had cravings for Coke. I observed this fast for a week at the beach with a few friends of mine. By the end of the week it was easy for me to see that every time someone popped open a can of Coke or something I experienced an intense craving for soda. Also while on vacation, I found that when I got in from the beach around 4 or 5ish, tired and drowsy, I desired carbonated refreshment. This was the first circumstance where I noticed my reliance on caffeine. By wetting my appetite for an ice cold Coca-Cola, my body told me it was tired and needed caffeine.

As I experienced these cravings during times of fatigue, I thought back to my habits in order to find such a relationship in my daily routine. I usually return to my room around 3 or 4ish in the afternoon everyday. I’ve typically been awake for 6 or 7 hours, and I’m always a little bit tired. It is at this time everyday when I most consistently drink a soda. In hindsight, it’s really more of a habit than anything. I come into the room, grab a can of soda, sit at my computer or play guitar or watch television. It’s my “me” time, and while the Coke is tasty and refreshing, its caffeine also serves to energize me up until dinner. It’s a lot like people who smoke cigarettes really. It gives my hand something to fiddle with, gives my body a little chemical pick-me-up, and occupies my time as I wind down after a day of work. So, I was able to conclude that caffeine coupled with routine and habit were a big reason for my soda intake.

Over spring break I had to deal with an innumerable number of unfulfilled Coke cravings. Often I substituted Coke with water or orange juice or Hawaiian punch, but those didn’t really do the trick. More than anything else, I drank water. At restaurants water is free and easy to order. In order to change my behavior, I modified my Coke-ordering habit and ordered water in its place. It was a simple change of habit, taking discipline and repetition.

I enjoyed drinking water, because I saved money. Probably like ten dollars or so when you add it up. You see the thing is, restaurants really rip you off with drinks. Since free refills have become standard at pretty much all restaurants, they make up for that cost by bumping up the price of the first cup. This made me a little mad. I don’t want to pay extra money for refills I might not get. So, since I’ve switched to water, I haven’t gone back to Coke even though the experiment is over. It’s pretty freeing really.

Another reason I substituted water for Coke was because I found that it hydrates better than other drinks. I have never felt so good after drinking a few glasses of water. Especially in the mornings, if I had drunk a lot of water during the day before, I felt awesome when I woke up. I’m talking Awesome with a capital A. I have never in my life felt awesome in the morning, cause mornings suck and I’m drowsy and I want to sleep longer and I have headaches and I have to shower and brush my teeth and stuff, so this whole feeling great when I wake up thing kind of shook my world a little bit. Like a milkshake.

Speaking of milkshakes, I ate more ice cream than usual during my soda fast. This could be the effect of many things. First of all, there was an ample supply of ice cream in the freezer because my sister had a birthday party. Also, I really like ice cream a lot (note the double positive). However, in addition to these two factors, my sugar intake was dramatically lower without soda, so I think that my ice cream cravings were augmented by the sugar void in my stomach. I mean when you think about it, each can of Coke has about 40g of sugar in it. Drinking say, three cans a day, that’s 120g of sugar. That’s a lot of sugar, and without a Coca-Cola sugar supply, I definitely had room in my belly for other delicious food products. Like ice cream. Man I love ice cream.

At the end of a long, tiring, sugar-free, caffeine-free week, I met my first Monday back in Chapel Hill facing some interesting decisions. Could I continue life as I knew it without soda? Was my body ready to relapse back into a world of caffeine addiction? Would I be forced hook up the IV again? Well, so far I am able to answer with a confident, “NO.” The successive weeks following the soda fast have remained Coke-free and more or less caffeine free as well. I was successful at establishing a water drinking habit during my meals, and even during my free time if you can believe that. My body’s tolerance to caffeine has dropped to a record low, for whenever I drink coffee anymore (usually every other day before my 8 o’clock class), I’m instantly awake and jittery. It seems that this experiment has marked the beginning of a new era for me, and it sure feels good.

Here is the chart used to keep track of my progress.

"It's okay...I'll do it"

2006-04-04T22:00:00.000-05:00

Podcast

Facebook killed the Co-ed

2006-04-04T20:50:00.000-05:00

How to Change Behavior: For Dummies

2006-04-04T18:34:00.000-05:00

Have you ever wanted to change your behavior? Here is a simple experiment to do it.

I am attempting to change my behavior by increasing the times I say a person’s name during a conversation. Whether a quick “hey,” a short chat, or a longer conversation, I typically do not call people by their names. I noticed this when I got to school but I have done nothing to correct it. I think it is time to finally change. Over spring break, I will conduct an experiment to increase and measure the percent of times that I use someone’s name during conversation. In the experiment I will reward myself for using their name and punish myself for not. I hypothesize that with the rewards and punishments I will address more people as the experiment progresses.

The more that I think about addressing people by name the more I wonder why I didn’t. I do not have a problem addressing people who I know well by their names but for people I don’t know well I do. I know that it’s a good idea to call people by their names because it helps relationships. We all know from experience that we like to hear our names because it makes us feel important.

One reason I do not address people by their names is because I am afraid to call them by the wrong name. I came from a fairly small school where I knew all the people in my class since the 1^st grade; so coming to Carolina was a big change. I have met so many people with the same or similar names that I have a hard time remembering their names. I know I need to work hard to remember names so that I will have more confidence in addressing people.

Calling people by their names will be easier at home than at school because I will be around more familiar people. I created a small data sheet to record whether or not I addressed a person by their name. The data sheet will be on a note card so that I will be able to have it in my pocket at all times. This way I will not forget to record my data. One data sheet will be used each day and will list the person’s name, my mood, my relationship with the person, a description of the encounter, and whether or not I addressed the person by name. A periodic review of the data should help me become more aware of situations when I call people by their names and when I do not.

Name	Mood	Yes/No	Duration	Relationship	Description
1.
2.
3.

As basic psychology teaches, a reward and punishment program is an effective way to change behavior. In my experiment I will use candy as a reward and a rubber band pop on the wrist as punishment. The reward will be a small treat like a piece of gum, starburst, or caramel so that the reward will be close in magnitude to the punishment. My rewards and punishments are inconsequential because I plan to have many encounters with people and I do not have the resources for a larger reward and do not want a harsher punishment. The best way to use rewards and punishments to change behavior is to administer them right after the action you want to change (Lippke). Knowing this the rewards and punishments were designed so that they can be administered on the spot.

A scientific article I read recently addressd the idea that “successful communication between two people depends first onthe recognition of the intention to communicate.” This means making eye contact or, in my case, calling a person by their name. I found this article really interesting because scientist used fMRI scans to show how saying “Hey John,” is like saying “I want to communicate with you (Kampe).”

This experiment should increase the times anyone calls people by their names and also act as an example for anyone who wants to change his or her behavior. To change a different behavior keep the experiment the same but replace calling people by their name with the new behavior. The ability to change behavior can be liberating, allowing a person more pleasure and freedom. Continued practice must take place in order to make the behavioral change into a habit (Lippke). In my case, I will continue with punishment and rewards for more than the six days. The ability to change behavior is another amazing feature of the brain.

Citations

Kampe KKW, Frith CD, Frith U. "Hey John": Signals conveying communicative intention toward the self activate brain regions associated with "mentalizing," regardless of modality.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE 23 (12): JUN 15 2003.

Lippke, Sonia and Jochen P. Ziegelmann. “Understanding and Modeling Health Behavior: The Multi-Stage Model of Health Behavior Change.” Journal of Health Psychology 11: 37 - 50: Jan 2006.

Watch Your Language

2006-04-04T16:44:00.001-05:00

In my podcast I talked all about motivation in terms of school work and just being able to focus on certain things such as drinking less soft drinks. Since the whole motivating myself to well, be motivated and study won’t really work when I am on my spring break coming up, I have decided to try and modify a different part of my behavior. Soft Drinks would not be an appropriate behavior to try and modify because I am not necessarily confronted with that dilemma everyday so I am going to try and curse less over my spring break instead. Yes, I know this was one of the examples of behaviors to try and modify, but by doing this I will be trying to motivate myself to stick with something, which is the behavior I wanted to change in the first place. Plus, I do think a lot about how loose I am with language.

Now in order for me to try and modify my language, I am going to set up a way for me to monitor myself. In order to do this I will create a chart that will allow me to track myself for the designated six plus days. Each Time I curse I will have to make a tally under the appropriate day. As the curses are tallied they will be divided into four different categories to help better understand the reason for swearing and which is the main area causing me to swear. The categories will include anger, pain, sports, and habitual based swearing. These curses will include the most derogatory words, not ones like the words “butt” or “hell”, ones that may be rather inappropriate but not necessarily swear words.

The punishment for one curse word will equal five calf raises. So at the end of each day however many curse words I have said, multiply that number by five, and I am punished by having to do the calculated amount of calf exercises, that I wish I would just do anyway. (There is that motivation problem again)

Now, if I feel the need or urge to curse, but I catch and restrain myself, then these must be tallied too. Therefore, "restraints" will be tallied in under "curses". As a reward for restraining myself, for each tally I will get to eat a scoop of ice cream (preferably strawberry, hopefully there is some at my house). There will be some leniency though. Since I am trying to modify my behavior, it will be pretty difficult to just snap out of a basically natural habit. Therefore, I’ll try to slowly accustom myself to changing the first couple of days of break, and then start the actual experiment after this little bit of preparation. Below my chart of data there will be spaces to explain and reflect on each day, and the overall success or failure of the experiment.

I found a very informative article that not only breaks down the different types of swearing and swear words, but actually gives statistics for ones most used in certain countries. According to the article as well, “serious study of the neurology of swearing behavior is lacking”, so hopefully these sorts of experiments will become more accepted or garner more interest in the near future. It is very interesting regardless, and I would like to read it even if I was not dealing with the same topic.

Now I am not trying to say that I curse like a sailor, I just feel like I do a lot more than I used too. Nor do I have anything wrong with me such as Coprolalia, the involuntary utterance of obscene words commonly associated with Tourette syndrome, which I found an interesting article on about how nicotine is now a treatment for it? But these are extreme examples of cursing where mine is just a habit that I would like to improve.

Anyway, I believe that in this experiment I will be able to restrain myself pretty well because if and when I don’t, I’ll think about it in the back of my head, or subconsciously. So when I do curse or swear I’ll think how I should not and therefore end up restraining myself pretty well. It will be somewhat impossible to really restrain if say I bang my toe on a chair leg or something because that will be spontaneous and pure instinct for me to yell something. But I would say the main reason for this experiment is to see if I can limit my habit of cursing not just impulses of instinct or emotion. If there is no need to swear I don’t see why I continue to do so anyway. My next post will detail how the experiment fared and hopefully my behavior will be improved.

Salt shake down

2006-04-03T21:23:00.000-05:00

Considering what a food network fiend I have always been and how obsessed I am with the way food tastes, I found it odd that I could not stop adding salt to already well prepared and delicious food. It felt like everything I ate, I added salt to, aside from sweets and fruit. Whether it was the french fries I ate with my hamburger or the green beans I ate with my mac-n-cheese, I added salt to everything and anything that graced my fork. My salt-adding addiction became so bad my dad would make a face at me every time I would add salt to something and then tell me I would have a salt disease if I did not stop. This truly became a problem when I would share french fries with my crunchy, health conscious friend Zach, who practically slapped my hand when I would add salt to our fries. I had added salt to the already salted fries! This habit was something that needed to be stopped immediately; I was so fixated on adding salt to my food I would not even notice if food had been pre-salted! With this in mind, I decided this should be my bad habit to break, forming an experiment with set guidelines as well as a punishment and rewarded for meeting my goal, not adding salt to my dinners.

After spending spring break on an excessive-salt free diet, I feel refreshed and high blood pressure free, which if you read my earlier post you will see that high salt intake can raise ones blood pressure. After learning about what dangerous effects excessive salt consumption has on ones body, the increased chance of having a heart attack for example, I conducted an experiment to see if I could cease this habit of adding salt to my food at dinner. Since dinner is a more complete meal at my house, lunch and breakfast (unless on the weekend) are really fend for yourself kind of meals, I decided this would represent the hardest meal for me not to add salt to my food. For this experiment to work I needed the help of a wonderful woman, my mother, to make 6 different yet equally delicious dinners so I could control my salt intake. These 6 different meals would give me 6 different chances to add salt to whatever the dinner was. While my mother was preparing these dinners, she added the exact amount of salt the recipe called for and I was not to add any more salt to the food. This seems easy enough, but when you are used to adding salt to almost everything, whether needed or not, this becomes a habit breaking issue.

Although I hate to admit that my behavior controls me and I do not control my behaviors, it is a very true statement. I have realized that I add salt to food without even trying it, which would be the main reason to add salt to any food, to enhance its flavor. Even though salt is a vital dietary supplement, aiding in hydration, an excessive amount of salt is dangerous no matter what your age and health condition.

My experiment also called for a punishment and reward part. Since I realized not only was I breaking a bad habit I was also helping my body by not consuming such large amounts of salt, part of my reward for not adding salt should be something that was delicious, like dulce de leche ice cream by Haagen Daz. Since my freezer does not work at school this reward was extra special since it is something I can never have while at UNC. For this reward to be worth not salting my food, I decided it should consist of 3 large and generous scoops of the delicious above mentioned frozen heaven that I consider it to be. Since my reward was so sweet, so to say, my punishment needed to be something I would despise doing and would avoid at all costs. Homework, doing chores and running where the only things I could think of that I truly abhor and would like to avoid like the plague. Since doing homework brings my grades up in my 5 classes, I decided that it would behoove me to continue my studies and still do my homework no matter if I added salt to my dinner or not. Next on my list was chores, but both my parents work very hard to support me and pay for my out of state tuition, so it seemed unfair to only do chores as a punishment for added salt to my food. Last on my list of punishments was running, which I consider an ancient form of torture, since it is painful, hard and completely unnecessary unless one is being chased by a dog. Since this seemed like the form of punishment that would make me want to avoid adding salt at any cost to any food. To make this punishment worse, I decided that I would run around my block 3 times, which is 0.8 of a mile, for every meal I added salt to.

The results of my experiment showed me that food tastes just as good with the salt recommended by the expert chefs that makeup the recipes. Since part of my experiment had a punishment and reward clause I was able to enjoy 1 ½ pints of my favorite ice cream, having 4 successful dinners adding no extra salt to my food and rewarding myself with 3 scoops of Dulce de Leche ice-cream by Haagen Daz. I also had to run a total of 1.6 miles because of the extra salt I added on the 12th and the 14th at dinner since running 0.8 of a mile was my punishment for adding salt to my already scrumptious food. Considering the amount of ice cream I ate as a reward, running those 0.8 miles for two days was just about the hardest thing I had ever done.

Now that I am not on a punishment and reward program for adding salt to my food, I notice myself adding a lot less salt, if any, to my food. I wonder if it was not the salt crystals I craved, if it was just the habit I got myself into by adding salt to my food and getting used to the taste. Granted, some things should be made illegal without the flavor aid of that wonderful rock, salt. When I eat those few items, like mashed potatoes or grits, I add salt as needed, just to add flavor, not because of forced habit like had been the case in the past.

Coke No Mo'

2006-04-03T15:48:00.001-05:00

Here's a little Podcast action for all you Coke addicts out there. Enjoy it.

I would rather just watch some T.V...

2006-04-03T15:48:00.000-05:00

Link to a podcast about my continuous decline in being motivated.

Pulling my foot outta my mouth

2006-04-02T20:30:00.000-05:00

More often than not I find myself sticking my foot in my mouth, saying something that just didn’t need to be said or shouldn’t have been said. I realize that this is not an uncommon problem in our society. There are those who are strive for politically correctness, and then there are those normal folk like me, whose frankness leads them to sometimes say a little too much. I’ve always thought that talking was a valuable social skill. I have not come to the conclusion that it is worthless, however I have come to the conclusion that listening and carefully choosing what we say is more valuable than non-sense talk or gossip.

An assignment in English class prompted me to take a closer look at when I talk most and what I talk about. I would sit at dinner or lunch while with friends and observe conversation. While doing this I realized that it was as if my mouth and ears were connected by a magical string of sorts; I began to notice that as I shut my mouth, I suddenly began actively listening to others. I noticed that during meal times the topic of conversation with my friends was usually other people. I was disgusted. O dreaded gossip has once again taken control over conversation. I have examined the etymology of the word gossip. Its original meaning is a close conversation between friends. After several centuries of language and social development, the word gossip has taken on a negative connotation. It is now interpreted as talking about others behind their back. Gossip is not left on the playgrounds of elementary schools or even on the yards of middle schools; it is a part of adult life.

Gossip is communications at its roots, delivering information to multitudes of people. However more than just communication, gossip is like a disease spread by everyday oracles breeding hostility, sadness and even ruining friendships. So if we know the downfalls of gossip, why is it that it is such an integral part of our communication with others? This is the question I have designed my experiment to examine.

I decided to track how much I gossip over one week. I defined gossip as any negative comment made about a person while not in their presence; whether about their appearance, actions or past activity. Who’s to say what negative and what’s not? Sometimes when I say something negative about a person I get this feeling the comment I made was a horrible thing to say. So how do I put this feeling into words? The cliché “walk a mile in the other person’s shoes”, fits perfectly here. I decided that a statement was negative when I would not say it directly to the person about whom the statement was said, for fear that the person would become upset or sad. Furthermore, I classified it as gossip when I said it to someone else. I created a chart to collect data about negative comments I made each day.

Prior to the onset of the experiment it was my belief that I gossiped because of boredom resulting from dying conversation. We’ve all had dying conversations at some point in our daily lives. Whether it be a conversation filled with those dreadfully long pauses, or a conversation with a person when it’s like pulling teeth to get that person to talk. What better to spike a deteriorating conversation than a heated dialogue about what someone else has done or how someone else looks.
I completely bought into the stereotypes portrayed in the movies and on TV that gossip is what goes on between girlfriends simply because they have nothing better to do or say. If this were a game show, there would be a bell or buzzer going haywire and giant red lights that read “WRONG” flashing all across this hypothesis. Although gossip and stagnant conversation may be linked, the hypothesis that I made to start is not wrong, but not as right as it could be. The hypothesis stated: I gossiped mostly when conversation was dull and in the presence of friends. This hypothesis is incomplete because it does not account for the situational aspect of gossip. Through this experiment I discovered that gossip is not just about conversation or who you’re with; gossip is commonplace in very specific situations.

I collected data about my gossiping habits during Spring Break. I am the only child, so if I were just sitting at home alone there would be no one to gossip with. Fortunately I have a driver’s license which enables me to get out of the house and flap my social butterfly wings. I thought for sure while hanging out with old high school friends over the break, I would collect tons of data and find the number of times I gossip to be an astronomical number. Again, I was buying into those good old stereotypes reinforced through the media. I quickly came to the realization, I didn’t gossip as much as I thought I would. I found out that with the short time I had to enjoy the company of my closest friends, we were too focused on catching up on lost time, and reminiscing about crazy adventures and silly moments. It hit me that gossip about others would always loose when put up against a good time, duh! So the idea that women just sit around gossiping for pure enjoyment, now just seems like utter nonsense.

I discovered that I was more likely to gossip and say negative things to my parents, of all people. I don’t know why it hadn’t struck me sooner. I have an awesome relationship with my parents, especially with my mother. If I had to name one person, ignoring religious beliefs, who was my absolute truest friend it would be her. With that close relationship also come trust and security. I have complete faith that I can tell my mother anything, and most often I do. I am confident that whatever I tell her, she keeps between the two of us. The correlation between this ideology and my data is inextricable. To my mother I can blab on and on about anything and anyone without fear of someone else hearing about it through the grapevine, or word of mouth. This confidence is like a match which sets ablaze the wildfire that is gossip.

Trust and confidence play a massive part in setting the stage for gossip, but more important than those factors is the situations that provoke gossip. A picture perfect family is gathered around the dinner table happily chatting about the events of everyone’s day. Sounds harmless right? Well, what if the picture were more realistic? It is doubtful the children and parents are talking about the highlights of their day and the beauty of life while gathered around that mouth-watering meal. The dinner table is an arena for gossip. I found out that it was during at times when my mouth should’ve been busy munching some delicious food that my mouth was instead busy gossiping. This phenomenon is explained by my parents’ need to ask questions and my desire to include them in my life. At this point I am going to do the typically American thing and shift a portion of the responsibility to someone else. My parents made me do it, I promise. Okay, maybe made is a strong verb. It would be foolish to ignore the data I collected which shows that more often than not gossip occurred when my parents asked about a certain person. Questions such as, “How is that friend of yours doing” or “have you seen so and so lately”, pave the road for gossip to come flying in.

The experiment was designed with rewards and punishments to be administered. I am a chocolate freak, not because of my race or sexuality, but because I love to eat chocolate. As a reward I decided to buy a bag of Hershey’s chocolate miniatures and eat one each time I replace a negative thought with a complement. It was hard to reward myself, because I ran out of chocolate. Somehow, I didn’t factor in how much I love chocolate, especially those Hershey miniatures. Rather than eat them as a reward for replacing a negative thought about another person, I mainly ate then as dessert after dinner. As for punishment, it just seemed unnecessarily cruel to subject myself to any sort of harsh punishment during spring break, so rather than crunches, I decided to limit TV time. So if I made one comment, I would miss one show that I really wanted to watch. After all during spring break I tend to watch more TV because during school I don’t have time to.

More than changing the behavior through reinforcements such as rewards and punishments, this experiment opened my eyes to my behavior and what causes it. It would be great if the thought of getting Hershey’s chocolate miniatures would encourage me to stop gossiping. The fact is, as much as I would like to, I can’t carry around a bag of chocolates with me to reward myself for not saying bad things about people. Not only does that seem juvenile, but I’m afraid of the damage it would do to my bank account, not to mention my super cool image. Reinforcements are not enough. I recognize that in order for a behavior to change I have to understand why I do what I do. Analyzing the data collected has shown me that confidence in others brings complacency and opens the door for gossip. I have also learned that certain situations such as meal times, and times when people are apt to ask questions about others lead to gossip. I will not avoid these people or these situations, but by simply being aware I can change how I react and what things I say. Words can be more hurtful than actions therefore; I chose to control my words and not to be a stereotypical gossiping woman. More importantly I want to forever remove the foul taste gossip leaves, by not always sticking my foot in my mouth, living a life full of regret free communication. Or at least try.

She said what!?

2006-04-02T14:19:00.000-05:00

There’s a scene in one of my all time favorite movies, The Little Rascals, where the all girls club is gossiping about the He-Man Woman haters club. In this movie, as in others like it, the girls gossip at tea parties and at slumber parties. I thought to myself, “is this really what girls are like”, and if so I must be weird or boring because I don’t, or at least, I hope I don’t sit around gossiping like that. This question prompted me to closely examine relationships with my female friends and how we interact. After coming up with this idea, I chose to spend time with my friends during our normal Sunday dinners on Franklin Street, just observing the flow of conversation, not talking too much, but actively listening.

I also vowed not to say anything bad about anyone else. I have become aware that when the conversation is stagnant we often turn to discussing the actions of someone we know, but who is not present. I thought, “is this because of a lack of creativity or stimulating conversation; or is gossip a result of the indoctrination, that it’s okay for women to sit around and casually chat about others, we as young women received while growing up?” I decided to create an experiment to observe how much I gossip and in which situations I am more likely to gossip.

The word gossip originally meant the “conversation of close friends”. According to Rebecca Birch Sterling not all gossip is bad. In an article explains how gossip can be useful because it aids communication, helps pass time as chit-chat, and helps solidify groups and identity (Sterling). It developed its negative connotations during the middle of the 19th century, just as romantic friendship was beginning to come under siege or attack. The romantic period was a reaction against the preceding enlightenment movement. Rebellion towards rules and social norms characterized the Romantic era. Deviation from social norms included lax rules regarding friendships and love. During this period homoerotic friendships were common. The term romantic friendship is a synonym or rather a euphemism for the homosexual relations of the romantic era. In the mid-19th century, as the romantic friendships were criticized the word gossip changed from simply meaning a conversation between close friends, to meaning a perverse conversation between friends engaging in homoerotic relations. The negative connotation of gossip developed here.

Today the word gossip brings to mind images of bratty 7th graders passing notes in class about what another girl is wearing. I define gossip as any talk about another person behind their back it’s interesting that I immediately think of school girls. The term gossip has not only negative connotations, but it is also associated with gender bias particularly with females. This is most likely related to the fact that majority of the romantic friendships in the 19th century were between women. Campbell Leaperand and Heithre Holliday write in the article entitled, “Gossip in same-gender and cross-gender friends' conversations” that the conclusions of their research found , “women may be more likely than men to use and encourage gossip in same-gender friendships in order to establish solidarity and make social comparisons” (Leaperand) With the bias and misconceptions that gossip is mainly a female problem, I am inclined to wonder, which came first, women gossiping or the stereotype. Obviously it’s a vicious cycle. The more women gossip, the more it is portrayed in the media. The more it’s portrayed in the media, the more stereotypes are created resulting in the belief that gossip is a female thing and that’s okay.

This experiment revolved around be observing and recording my gossip behavior. I defined gossip as any negative comment said about a person, while not in their presence. On a sheet that I will carry around, I will mark down each time I make a negative comment about someone who is not present. I realize judging whether a comment is negative is highly subjective. I will classify the comment as negative by asking myself, “If I said this in the presence of that person would they be sad or angry” if so the comment is negative and is gossip. The following is the chart I will use to collect data.

Date Comment Situation Explanation

Statement 1

Statement 2

I don’t want to just observe and record this behavior I want to stop it. So in order to stop gossiping I will create a system of punishments and rewards. The abnormal psychology class I am taking teaches that behaviors can be changed because they are learned and reinforced by operant conditioning. This is where what you do is reinforced either positively or negatively because of rewards and punishments. I plan to reinforce the positive behavior of not gossiping by giving myself a small reward. Like so many other Americans, I am a chocolate lover. My reward will be Hersheys chocolate miniatures. I will reward myself each time I replace a negative thought I was going to say, with a complement. When a behavior is removed, it stays gone longer and more consistently if that behavior is replaced with another behavior. I will also reward myself for each day I make less than 5 negative comments. Punishments work most effectively if administered immediately following the behavior; therefore immediately after gossiping I will drop and do 15 crunches. As much as I would like abs of steal, I’d prefer to change this behavior, gossip, and become a better person.

Because I love chocolate and hate doing crunches, I am hypothesizing that I will most likely spend more time being quiet and listening during this experiment because I gossip a lot. I also hypothesize, I will gossip most to my friends. I hope I will be able to shape my behavior and change for the better. Hopefully replacing negative thoughts about others with a positive complement about someone will help change my outlook on life, and help me to become a more positive person. If I change this cognitive and behavioral aspect of my life, it will carry over to other aspects of my psychology and may even effect how I feel physically. I may even find that being positive reduces stress and boosts energy.

No More Coke for Me.

2006-04-01T20:30:00.000-05:00

I’ve heard that my generation is fat. And lazy. And really just generally unhealthy. A lot of it can be traced back to the most delicious, bubbly, refreshing drink in the universe: Coca-Cola. You see, I’ve run across some frightening statistics about soda intake. Since our generation has grown up with convenient 12 ounce cans and 20 bottles, purchasable in 12 packs and stuff like that, we’ve become accustomed to drinking soda on a regular basis. According to a study done by the Center for Science and Public Interest, adolescent males drink on average 3 cans of soda a day, while females drink about 2 a day. This fulfills 15 percent of our (American adolescents) average recommended caloric intake for a day. How remarkable a fact is that! 3 drinks equals almost a sixth of our whole diet.

I understand where these statistics come from, for soda is a significant part of my own diet. With every meal, in all of my free time; when I play guitar, when I watch tv; when I shower, and when I brush my teeth, I’m always drinking a Coke. It’s delicious, but apparently it’s unhealthy too. My roommate is always telling me about the empty calories I’m consuming and how I’m addicted to caffeine. Also, a buddy of mine went to the doctor the other day because he was sick. The Doc asked him what his diet was like, and when he found out he drank Coke for all his hydration, the Doc said that that was the reason he was sick.

I don’t want to be sick. So that’s why I’m going to change the amount of soda I drink and replace it with water and healthier drinks like juice and milk. I will follow my progress, relating how my change in drinking habits affects my physical and emotional state of mind. Also, if there are any “withdrawal” consequences I have to deal with like headaches or tiredness, then I’ll keep track of that too.

This is how I’m going to keep track of my progress. First of all, I will not drink soda. This includes dark, syrupy drinks like Coke, lighter “lemon-lime” drinks like Sprite, and even novelty drinks like delicious Orangina. Basically, all carbonated drinks classified as “soda” are out. In addition to simply eliminating soda from my diet, I will substitute a healthier drink like juice, water, or milk when I am thirsty or eating a meal. Hopefully, by the end of the week I will have more energy because of vitamins helping out my immune system and water flushing out the bad stuff in my body. Data will be recorded on a table, including which drinks I consume and how I feel emotionally and physically at the end of each day.

There are obvious outside variables that could affect the data for this experiment. First of all, the fact that I’m doing it during spring break means that I’ll be staying up late, sleeping late, not really doing anything during the day, and eating unhealthily. As a consequence, I think that my way of life will cancel out any physical goodness my body derives from the healthier drinks I’ll be consuming. I do think I will sense a bit more tiredness from the absence of caffeine, but I expect by the middle of the week my body will have adjusted to this so that I feel pretty regular. Anyhow, regardless of the outside factors that may mess up the science part of the experiment, I think that any consequences I experience from drinking less soda will be positive, so I’m excited. My next post will conclude how the experiment went.

Salt me up a bit.... or not

2006-04-01T09:38:00.000-05:00

My mother is a wonderful cook. Whatever you feel like eating, she can whip it up like Paula Deen whips up her world famous fried chicken. With every scrumptious recipe she makes she adds the exact amount of salt that the experts at the Joy of Cooking test kitchens recommend to make the food flavor “kicked up a notch” One would think that there would be no need to add salt to these practically perfect recipes. I, for some reason or another, do. I add salt to just about everything, sometimes before I have even tried it! The constant nagging my dad gives me about this nasty little habit of mine never really sunk in until I started racking my brains to come up with a topic for this research I needed to conduct.

Salt, in extremely high amounts, can be deadly. It raises ones blood pressure which can increase ones chance of having a stroke. Wow, a stroke, just from adding a teeny, tiny little bit of salt to my food everyday. Well, maybe it is not a teeny, tiny bit, it might actually be a large amount considering all one needs in a sodium healthy diet is a teaspoon. After reading this, I decided that excessive salt consumption was my bad habit that I needed to break! The comforting fact about my preference towards higher salt content in food was that it is genetic. Another thing wrong with me I can blame on my parents.

For this experiment I decided to see if I could lower my salt consumption at every meal. I did this by eating my mothers deliciously prepared food (which already included the amount of salt needed for the recipe) and not adding salt to it, which is something I always do. As simple as this seemed, it was much harder than I had expected. Instead of easily being able to stop adding salt to my meals I found my real problem was breaking the habit of grabbing the salt shaker and watching those lovely rocks flow out of the top.

I decided to make the main meal I focus on dinner, since lunches at my house are comprised of sandwiches and left-over’s with breakfast being mainly fruit and oatmeal. My mother cooked a different meal every night, so this was easy to ensure that I did not have the same meal twice (and the same likelihood to add/ not add salt). I also made sure my mother made food that I had eaten before, that way I knew and liked the taste of the food.

Part of this experiment required me to come up with a reward and punishment for each goal I meet or break.. Since my goal was to not add any extra salt to the food I had, I bases my success on whether or not I added salt to my food, any part of it. The reward for not adding salt to my dinner was the enjoyment of 3 scoops of Dulce de Leche Haagen Daz ice cream. The punishment that I received from adding salt to my meal was running 3 times around the block (.8 miles). This reward/punishment seemed fit since I love ice-cream and I despise running.

This experiment takes place during my spring break, which I spent at home in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. It was because of this that I was able to make my experiment possible, at school I rarely eat healthy and delicious meals that are well prepared and would be unable to conduct this experiment.

What seems like an easy experiment turned out to be a life changing event for me. Following this chart I made I was able to moniter when and where I added salt to my food. This also made my punishment/reward much easier to divvy out since I knew when I had "cheated" and added salt to my food. Hopefully conducting this experiment has showed me the dangerous affects of adding salt to everything like I was in the habit of doing.

Added salt to meal(dinner) Did not add salt to meal(dinner)
Meal 1 – March 10th
Meal 2 – March 11th
Meal 3 – March 12th
Meal 4 – March 13th
Meal 5 – March 14th
Meal 6 – March 15th

"A Few Good Minuets: Bad Habits"

2006-03-31T11:24:00.000-05:00

The link to the podcast show "A Few Good Minuets." This episode is about my bad habit of slouching.
http://www.unc.edu/~wrculp/podcast.mp3

The T.V made me kill him

2006-03-20T14:46:00.000-05:00

A report given by Frontline News which states, “Before the average American child leaves elementary school, researchers estimate that he or she will have witnessed more than 8,000 murders on television”. It blows my mind to think of how much violence adults watch on television. Gone are the days of clean fun variety shows with musical acts and sketch comedies, they were gone long before I was even born. Those shows, which seem so ancient now, have been replaced by television shows that grab an audiences’ attention through eye peeling action scenes often filled with painful and bloody violence.

Some people argue that although the amount of violence in the media is increasing the crime rates throughout America are actually dropping .Compared to 1973 when the total crime rate was 47.7 incidents for every 1,000 people over age 12, the total crime rate for 2004 was 21.1 incidents for every 1,000 people over age 12 (Bureau of Justice Statistics). However, drops in crime rates are not conclusive evidence that violence in the media has little to no effect on the American public. A study of crime rates and violence in the media, does not account for the change in perception and thinking, and the desensitization the viewers may have caused by watching violent television. These are just beliefs commonly held by those who oppose violence in television or want stricter laws controlling television. I strongly believe; it is not television that causes one to do violent acts, but rather one’s free will to do such acts. Violence and aggression caused by a combination of things such as genetics, biological imbalances, not to mention the most influential causes: motive and opportunity. A television is not a brainwashing machine; it’s mainly a source of entertainment. I realize that these two arguments are contradicting therefore; I would like to investigate specifically only the biological effects violence in television may have on the function of the brain.

The frontal cortex, or front part, of the brain is associated with the ability to maintain focus on a particular subject. MRI scans have shown that more aggressive individuals show less activity in the frontal cortex of their brains. “Researchers found nonaggressive children who had been exposed to high levels of media violence had similar patterns of activity in an area of the brain linked to self-control and attention as aggressive children who had been diagnosed with disruptive behavior disorder”(Warner) I interpreted this as if the front part of the brain shows less activity because of media violence, then I would be less likely to focus and be more aggressive.

If the function of the brain can be understood, it may lead to the discovery of which parts of the brain affect specific behaviors. After several class discussions and readings it amazes me how complex the brain is. It seems almost impossible to classify and explain By using advancements in MRI technology, it would be possible to scan the brains of subjects who are watching violence on television, and scan those who are watching non-violent shows. The frontal cortex of the brain will be scanned, paying close attention to the amygdale. “The pursuit of neurological patterns in viewing violence would likely start with the amygdala, because it has a well-established role in controlling physiological responses to emotionally arousing or threatening stimuli”( Murray) Violence on television can be defined as any point in which a character is receiving physical harm, including, but not limited to beating, stabbing, shooting, anytime when there is blood is scene, and fighting. It is nearly impossible to find shows on today’s television stations which have none of the fore-mentioned violence. Because most children shows, namely those on PBS such as Reading Rainbow and Seseame Street have the least violent scenes, the control group will be asked to watch these shows. The experimental group will be asked to watch shows such as 24 or Law and Order, which contain some of the most violent scenes of any other television shows. Of course there are limitations to this experiment, the amount of violence in a particular show is subjective because depends heavily on the opinions of the person who decides whether or not the television show is violent or not.

The MRI technology will be used to scan the brains of both groups while they are watching the television shows. Initially the brain will be scanned previously to watching the show, so that the function of the brain can be noted. The brain will also be scanned while previous to the actual experiment while the subject is completing a task such as putting together a puzzle, punching a bag, writing a letter or completing a simple everyday task. This is to assess more thoroughly the function of the brain while completing tasks that are not necessarily connected with the amount of violence watched on television. It is important that the tasks not be too connected to TV so that the subjects reactions or responses are unconditioned, meaning the person doesn’t consciously know that the television program is having an effect on them. If they know the experiment is testing how television is effecting their behaviors they may be more likely to make an extra effort to ignore the television or to change their behavior. Then after watching a few hours of television either violent or nonviolent depending on which group the viewer is in, he or she will be asked to complete the same or highly similar tasks. The brain will then be scanned again while the viewer is watching the television shows and also while he or she is completing the tasks post viewing television. The purpose of this experiment will be to determine whether or not the brain functions differently in the experimental group while they watching violent television shows and completing tasks, than in the control group which is not exposed to the violence on television.

The MRI will show biologically if changes in the brain occur while one is watching violence in television. The information gathered from the MRI brain scans will be used either for proponents of violent television, who believe that it is free will that dictates one’s behavior and not influences from media outlets such as television; or the information will be used for those who believe in tougher communication laws regulating television programs. Hopefully if the MRI scans can determine the biological effect television has on the brain, this may lead to research and uncover the biological effects other things which are thought to be maladaptive such as smoking, drinking, drug use, isolation, and abuse, have on the brain. If so this technology can be used as to strengthen areas of the brain more likely to be affected by maladaptive behaviors, so that the brain can maintain its function and efficiency, be repaired if people have already started the maladaptive behaviors, or even prevent those behaviors.

Terminal Brain Injuries? No thanks.

2006-03-10T11:27:00.000-05:00

Does traumatic brain injury affect ones memory? With as much research as I have been doing on the topic of traumatic brain injuries, I have yet to find a study that tells me what would happen to ones memory after receiving a traumatic brain injury. With this in mind, I have decided to purpose my own experiment, conformed to my wants and whims instead of a scientist. Although I claim to be no expert in the subject, the machine that would have the whole experiment revolving around it would be the magnetic resonance imaging machine, the MRI. Incorporating the MRI machine into almost every part of the experiment is something I plan on doing, since there is no other way to show images of brains at work. With the MRI machine I plan on testing the effects of traumatic brain injury on ones memory. The experiment will also include songs, words, pictures and numbers to tests ones memory, with the finding being shown on the brain activity as monitored by the MRI test.

The machine that will make this experiment possible, the MRI, is a complex piece of equipment at best. MRI machines produce high quality images of the inside of the human brain. With these high quality images, scientists are able to show the brain at work, which means that we are greatly able to understand how the brain works now. In the past the brain was part mystery to scientist, but with the introduction of the MRI machine scientists are able to navigate the brain easily.

While deciding how to develop this study I had to think of what kind of test subjects I wanted to include. As you have hopefully read in my last posts, the “magic number” in selecting test group size seems to be 20 people large, as was the case in both the studies about traumatic brain injury I discuss. Not to be nonconformist, I too decided to stick with the test size of 20, including 5 men and 5 women with no history of traumatic brain disorder and 5 men and 5 women with a history of a mild traumatic brain injury. Those with traumatic brain injuries will have an average time of 2 years from the time of their initial accident that caused their traumatic brain injury. All test subjects chosen will be close to the same age, in their mid to late 20’s. This is done to exclude any early on-set Alzheimer’s seen in some older patients, seen as early as 31 years in rare cases, since Alzheimer’s is a degenerative disorder that affects ones short and long term memory.

As part of the experiment, I will have all 20 test cases perform various memory tests. These tests will include remembering parts of a song that subjects were only able to listen to for a period of 30 seconds, recalling pictures and placing them with the corresponding word that were initially attached to it. Another simple memory test I plan on having the subjects do includes one that has a sequence of letters flashing on a screen, starting with just two letters and progressively getting larger while incorporating different letters. The subjects will be asked, immediately after each group of letters is flash on the screen, to write down the letters that they remember. This will be able to tests the patients short term memory, which stores information for a mere 15-30 seconds and show how ones short term memory is affected by a traumatic brain injury.

While these tests are occurring, the subject group will have a brain MRI scans to show what parts of the brain are active in what subjects, including male and female and especially those with traumatic brain injuries and those without. This will be able to show the effects of a traumatic brain injury on ones capability to store and retract memories as needed. It will also be able to show, in the trauma-free subjects, if there really is a difference in men and women’s memory as is believed by some.

For this experiment, I propose that the people with the traumatic brain injuries will have a significantly lower likely hood of remembering things. In the brain MRIs taken of the subjects without traumatic brain injuries more brain movement will be detected in the areas of the brain normally associated with memory. Subsequently, MRI’s taken of the test subjects with traumatic brain injuries will have much lower movement in their brains in the areas that are associated with memory. These subjects will also perform at lower levels on the memory tests, more than likely not being able to recall what all those numbers flashed on the screen were, what the words of that annoying song were or what odd word is associated with that goofy picture. This experiment will also see what memory test people without brain injuries perform better on, the musical tests, the word/picture test or the number test.

Although this experiment would require millions of dollars in funding, it is important to realize the scientific breakthroughs that would come from it. With the ability to find what actually happens to the brains of those with traumatic brain injuries, scientists will benefit.

Brain Behavior in Sports

2006-03-10T10:21:00.001-05:00

So through the last couple weeks we have discussed the brain and neurosciences in class, as well as done our own bit of research. What we have covered so far in the John Ratey book, A User’s Guide to the Brain, has been very interesting and I advise you to pick it up if you’re interested. Along with the book, I have read many of the interesting blogs the class has discovered as well as academic journals I have found on the internet. There are many different fields of study in the neurosciences but one element that seems to be prominent throughout all of them is that of the MRI. MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging and is one of the main ways the brain is “photographed”. Without the image that the MRI scans of the brain, the study of the live, functioning brain would be impossible.

One would think that for the most part neuroscientists had studied and experimented about most everything already, whether they actually gained any sort of results from certain studies or not. But as of this moment the different cognitive processes that combine and work together to create my thoughts and ideas in my brain have just formulated something very interesting. How intriguing would it be to study the functioning brain at a level unlike any other, yet so common to the brain and body? I would very much like to know how differently the brain functions in the middle of athletic competition. By athletic competition I am referring to two components, the actual neurological activity of players during a sporting event, as well as the competitiveness of players. The first basis of the study would be to try and find out how the brain changes and functions during athletic competition. To do this, an experiment would have to be conducted using MRI’s to try and visualize and see if the brain’s behavior changes drastically or unusually during game time. This would include scanning the brains of football players, basketball players, soccer players, swimmers, and even runners during their respective sporting events, and monitoring the way the brain behaves. The different sport athletes would be tested due to the different goals of their sports. Football, basketball, and soccer are team sports whereas, swimming and running are more individual. Basketball is more about hand coordination, football about tackling or dodging, soccer has to do with feet coordination, and swimming and running deal with endurance and how good of shape one is in. Each of these different sports would probably show different patterns of behavior.

Professional athletes would undoubtedly be the best athletes to use in this experiment because they play at the highest level and against the best competition in their respective games. College athletes would work almost as well and high school athletes would provide decent results. It would be interesting to separate races and sexes at some point in the experiment also, in order to see if there are differences between them. What the MRI would be trying to capture is the different ways the brain might act when it is focused on the physicality of playing a sport and competing. It might be near impossible to actually track the mind during actual sporting events, but if it could somehow be simulated where the player could actually be monitored and then have an MRI or brain scan done during or right after a play, then it may actually work.

One way that data could be taken on brain behavior in the middle of a game might be through some of the newest technology using electrical recording techniques. These include MEG and EEG (I doubt it’s possible to pronounce what they stand for) which can track faster sensory messages. Many small sensors and electrodes are placed on the scalp to record the almost instantaneous firing of brain cells. These techniques can then be paired with MRI scans because despite the spatial resolution in MRI’s, they are quite slow due to the focus on blood-flow response. MEG and EEG have comparatively poor resolution, but since they read so quickly, pairing these methods together would create a better understanding of brain function and would allow brain behavior to be tracked when neurons are flying around faster than usual.

There are different stages of mentality during a game that a player goes through. There is the actual in game, middle-of-the-play action, as well as the not always achieved “in the zone” behavior when a player is playing either outstanding, or when they are getting very focused before an event or game. Another behavior to be looked for is more psychological because it deals with the actual conscious thoughts going through the head of a player during any of the mental states already mentioned. The further an athlete ascends in sports, not only the better they are at their sport, but the more mentally tough they are. An article title the “Will to Win” mentions Studies that have proved that top athletes have the ability to concentrate and focus harder than normal people.

When an NFL running back is handed the ball from the quarterback, how is his brain functioning with the high speed of the game all around him, the play he is supposed to be running etched in his mind, and the anxiety of the defense coming after him. This could be considered a study or experiment of the measure of instinct and reaction time, and thought altogether. Maybe this could help explain why the game or event seems to “slow down” despite the actual real time speed.

Something else that comes to mind as one of the bases for this experiment is when someone is referred to as “basketball smart”, or “football smart”. Athletes may not always be the most intelligent people in terms of academics, but might be some of the most intelligent people in the terms of their own sport. I believe trying to get a scan or reading of the brain in the middle of a game, match, meet, or middle-of-the-action would unveil new discoveries in the dynamic ability of the brain.

Speaking of conscious thought, in the middle of a game situation, the unconscious or deep thoughts or memories in the mind seem to be forgotten. How is the brain reacting during those split seconds of game action? What visibly changes? How does the adrenaline and hormones pumped through the body affect the brain and its activity?

The second course of study to try and be covered during this experiment is the characteristic of competitiveness. Does the brain behave differently or change in the middle of a sporting event due to the competitiveness of a person? Do the neurons and impulses speed up and does this have anything to do with the rush of adrenaline? Being competitive is a characteristic of personality which I wouldn’t think is always associated with having anything to do with neurological activity. But the competitive drive has to be deeply imbedded somewhere in all the “circuits” of the brain. Being competitive fuels players in there games and gives some of them almost an extra, unseen burst of energy or power and drive. I would like to see if within this experiment anything could be noticed having to due with this trait. In contrast, some athletes are not that competitive, they may just enjoy the game and playing it but they might not necessarily be driven to win. It would be very exciting to see how the behavior of the brain may change due to the drive through competition of a certain player.

I believe that if this experiment could be conducted and the brain could be scanned during in-game action, that certain areas would be activated that usually are latent and that scientists have never even seen before. I think the areas would be different obviously depending on the athlete, but also depending on their sport and what it demands cognitively and physically. Competition would also arouse a different brain region and would probably correlate with much of the brain behavior associated with athletics. The results that this experiment could attain could further scientific understanding in how dynamic the brain is. This would open up many new venues in the field of sports psychology and could even lead to people being able to train their brains how to perform in athletic situations. Sports would be analyzed deeper than they ever have before.

New Discovery about Dyslexia

2006-03-10T10:03:00.000-05:00

I read a brain scanning article that stated neuroscientists do not know what areas of the brain are active in dyslexic children when they process words. I began to think that finding the active areas of the brain of dyslexic children would be a great experiment for neuroscientists to conduct. Dyslexia, a mysterious brain based reading and writing disorder, affects 5 to 15 percent of Americans. Sufferers of this neurological learning disability most commonly mix up letters, like the “c” and “t” in “cat.” Behavioral studies show dyslexics have difficulties with word recognition, spelling, and decoding arising from deficits in the phonological component of language. The experiment that I propose would be designed to find and compare the active areas of the brain of dyslexic children and a control group of children taking the same tests. I hypothesize that the experiment would find that the dyslexic children use more of the right side of their brain than the control group, which would use more of the left side.

Guinevere Eden, a noted neuroscientist at the Georgetown University, has preformed studies on children without dyslexia to document which areas of the brain are used during reading. Her studies found that children without dyslexia first started to read using the right side of their brains then switched to the left side as they became better readers. As beginning readers, children without dyslexia probably use the more visual and non-verbal right side of the brain to see words as just symbols that represent pictures. Then as the readers mature, they begin to use the verbal left side of the brain that excels in categorization, symbolic abstraction, speech, reading and writing. Eden says that as the left side begins to take over the right side the visual stimulation from reading is suppressed.

From the research that I have conducted for this and my last two posts I would suggest that individuals with dyslexia be given MRI scans while they engage in different reading and writing tasks. Functional MRI (fMRI) scans, as described by the Institute of Physics, would be the most appropriate MRI scans to see which parts of the brain are using the most oxygen rich blood while certain tasks are being preformed. Both groups of children, the dyslexic and control, will perform the same tests while given an fMRI scan. The tests that the children will perform will be similar to reading and writing tests that are used to determine if a child has dyslexia. These tests will be administered in the same fashion as a study I read by Todd Richards in the Journal of Nuerolinguistics called “Individual fMRI activation in orthographic mapping and morpheme mapping after orthographic or morphological spelling treatment in child dyslexics.” In the study a child was given instruction and two buttons, yes in the dominant hand and no in the other, to answer the yes or no questions presented. The tests will be exactly the same for both the dyslexic group and the control group.

If the experiment occurred then I would want two groups of children between the ages of nine and ten from all over America to be tested. The first group would have dyslexia. The children would be tested for dyslexic behavioral symptoms and scored accordingly. According to The International Dyslexia Association, the test should include: (1) medical and family history, (2) specific oral language skills, (3) educational reading, writing, and math skills, (4) cognitive language memory skills, (5) auditory processing skills, (6) and visual processing skills. A comprehensive test of this nature must be conducted to determine if an individual has dyslexia because there is no simple test for dyslexia. The second group would be a control group of “normal” children. The control group would have to have no mental or behavioral disorders, fall in the middle 50% on an IQ test, and not be in advanced or corrective classes in school.

Ideally, I would like to see this experiment conducted in every state so that all regions can be tested. I would hope to get a minimum of 20 dyslexic children and 20 “normal” children from each state. The children would come from different parts of the country so that regional effects can be determined. I would also try to split the groups equally between male and female participants. I would not use race to determine who would be tested, but I would look at the difference and similarities in the data between races.

From my basic knowledge the dyslexic group of children and the control group of children should take the exact same test so that the same data can be compared. I believe that if the brains of both groups were functioning properly and the same tests were administered then the same parts of the brain should be active. This would allow the neuroscientists to compare the parts of the brain that are active during a certain test in the dyslexic group to that of the control group. The same tests must be given so that same processing for each answer takes place. Processing in active parts of the brain require oxygen rich blood. This is why I proposed the experiment, to find the different areas of the brain that the dyslexic and the control group use to process the same information.

I believe that the best way to analyze the data would be to take all of the fMRI scans of the dyslexic group for a question that was missed and compare them to the fMRI scans of the control group for the same question. It would be interesting to see if active areas of the brain in the dyslexic group that missed the question would be different from the active areas of the brain in the control group that got the question right, but similar to the active area in the brains of the control group that got it wrong. The same comparison would be made for the questions that the dyslexic group got right. The fMRI scans and the corresponding test responses would create a large data base to distinguish between the parts of the brain that are used to process similar information between dyslexic and “normal” children

It is my hope that the data would support my hypothesis. If my hypothesis is correct then the fMRI scans would show that the right side of the brain is being used more than the left when the dyslexic children use their brains to process information. I hypothesized this because it is known that the left side is associated with verbal and linguistic skills with which dyslexic children have trouble. As Guinevere Eden said, children start off using their right side of the brain to read and write then switch to the verbal dominant left side. If my hypothesis is correct and the data shows that dyslexics use the right side more then this would prove the dyslexic children have not switched to the left side of the brain for their reading and writing. Whether this is caused by a lack of ability in the child or lack of effective instruction is for future experiments.

Even if the data does not support my hypothesis, the experiment will not be a failure because it will have found the active areas in the brains of dyslexic children used to process certain information. The fMRI scans and corresponding right or wrong answers will be concrete data for future experiments concerning active brain areas of children who suffer from dyslexia. As I said in the introduction, dyslexia is a disorder that has been difficult to fully grasp and every study will bring us closer to an understanding.

Cited Work
Richards, Todd. “Individual fMRI activation in orthographic mapping and morpheme mapping after orthographic or morphological spelling treatment in child dyslexics.” Journal of Nuerolinguistics: Science Direct, March 10 2006. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2005.07.003

Basis of Intelligence in the Brain....Maybe

2006-03-09T21:46:00.001-05:00

When I was searching for information about MRI technology, I came across a journal excerpt on the Carnegie Mellon Center of Cognitive Brain Imaging website. The article consists of theories on the basis of intelligence in the brain, based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). I found this quite fascinating and will relate it to you now, but you can also read the entire thing here.

I am not going to lie; the article is literally a chapter, so it’s painfully long. The article title is “The Neural Bases of Intelligence: A Perspective on Functional Neuroimaging” by Sharlene Newman and Marcel Just. Sounds pretty interesting, but then you remember that it’s an academic article, and how exhausting trying to read one is. The article begins by discussing how the study of intelligence has presented a comprehensive characterization of human intelligence, and methods to measure the variation of intelligence. The article lists different ways that may provide insight into the basis of individual differences.

It starts with a little bit of history, pointing out that intelligence is difficult to define. The authors go on to define intelligence as goal-directed adaptive behavior. This means that intelligent behavior changes in order to confront and meet new challenges. They then go on to discuss the variable g, which represents an individual’s general problem solving skill, ability to perform well on cognitive tasks, and is referred to as fluid intelligence. Spearman who designated the variable of g, said that mental energy is one of the factors that determines g. This however, was in the 1920’s so Spearman said everyone has mental energy, but it’s different per each individual, and that’s basically all he could really say considering there was no scanning technology. This contrasts with the author’s theory which is based on using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). According to Newman and Just, MRI’s and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) have the potential to provide a clearer understanding of the neural bases of intelligence. MRI’s have the ability to provide information about neural network properties, which includes brain region specification involved in a given task and degree of synchronization between pairs of activated regions. The rest of this chapter consists of the authors trying to elaborate and explain mental energy.

One way they tried to find a mental energy definition was trying to find a correlation between intelligence and biological measures. An example of this is looking for a correlation between head circumference and intelligence, or “the bigger the brain, the smarter the person”. This has actually provided a modest correlation, but is way too controversial and does not really provide any insight into intelligence or individual differences. They next discuss Jensen’s hypothesis that the speed of processing was central to intelligence rather than brain size, which suggests that nervous system characteristics determine reaction time and that people who have better functioning nervous systems develop more complex intellectual skills.

They state that intelligence is born out of networks of cortical areas and the investigation of the behavior of these areas may lead to the explanation of individual differences. How well the neural system adapts to its environment affects the quality and efficiency of its processing and should also provide a source of individual differences. They then outline four principles of cortical computation that help to describe this theory: each cortical area has a limited resource capacity, the topology associated with a given task changes dynamically, cortical regions function collaboratively, and the quality of white matter tracts connecting cortical areas may also affect processing speed. All these principles suggest possible sources of individual differences in intelligence.

Post length pending, the rest of the chapter elaborates each of these principles by discussing various studies that prove them. Basically, the authors have written down all this elaborate information, then at the end say, that this whole chapter is meant to help “springboard” new studies. I think they are merely pointing out what is known so far in terms of the bases of intelligence, but with all the new technology, it will soon be able to answer more central questions about the neural basis of intelligence.

I apologize for the “dragging on” of this post, and the excess of neurological lingo, but the article was pretty full of information and the summary I just typed is actually much easier to read. After reading it though I was surprised that there was actually still a debate whether intelligence and head size were related, I had always thought that that was nonsense. I found another article mentioning the same kind of study, but it was a study of one-hundred postmortem brains. This article refers to the neural basis of variation of intelligence as well, and states that many studies have been done on brain size along with intelligence tests, but continue to reveal inconsistent findings. It discusses many statistics from the study on how certain characteristics are associated with certain cerebral size with both men and women. One example it points out is that body height accounts for up to four percent of variance in cerebral volume between the sexes. The article is actually quite short and ends saying that stronger structure-function relationships could be observed with finer testing instruments. They ultimately conclude that brain images should be considered for intelligence tests.

These articles both deal with the bases of intelligence in the brain, one much more in depth than the other. The information from these works provides a beginning to what will perhaps someday lead us to a better understanding of the bases of intelligence in the brain. If the bases of intelligence can be mapped who knows what sort of things will be discovered about ourselves and our nature.

War and Football

2006-03-09T14:52:00.000-05:00

Even though it is a concept I find difficult to grasp, when you really look at neuroscience and biological breakthroughs in regard to the brain, it seems obvious that our understanding of human behavior is breaking from traditional understandings of psychology. More and more behaviors and opinions and disorders are being linked with connections made in the complex universe of the human mind, discrediting the old ways of explaining them. All psychological theories, from Freud’s sexual stages to Skinner’s operant behaviorism, are all linked to neurological activity. It’s almost like we don’t have a say in anything, because the blueprint of our life was created when all the little charges and synapses were woven together in the womb. The way we act, the things we laugh at, the people we like; even the way we make our hotdogs seem to be linked with our brain’s way of synthesizing the world we interact with, and every individual comes with a particularly custom-made mind that works in its own special endearing way. In order to further understand the complex nature of our brain, it’s important to relate experimental, observable research to theory about how the brain works. In this post, I will propose an experiment to understand a rather large part of human behavior, our irrevocable desire to be apart of large cooperative groups.

Of course, the power of the brain is simply unfathomable, making our journey a difficult one. And it’s kind of difficult understanding how the brain thinks about itself. We’re using neuron connections to comprehend neurons; employing synapses to synthesize synapses. But that’s beyond the point. The fact is, as we come to a better understanding of how the brain works, and what it’s actually doing, we will come to a better understanding of the human condition, the human psyche, and why we’re so messed up. That’s why experiments are so important.

One part of the human psyche that I find particularly interesting is how we attach ourselves to large groups or teams. It can happen in an organized way or naturally, groups can be as large as a country or as small as a hall on a dorm. But, no matter what size of group and really no matter the nature, people gravitate to participation in cooperative ventures of some kind all the time. I think this is very interesting, and very true, and the very reason for many problems the human race faces today, and in all of history.

I guess a natural place to begin when discussing the human race’s need to be part of a whole is with nationalism. Nationalism is ancient. Well, the term isn’t ancient, but people have lived and died for their countries/people groups since the beginning of time. It essentially stems from a love of people, things, settings, and traditions that are near and dear to you. It’s a love of familiarity.

Now, while nationalism is easily recognized when Nazi Germany tries to eliminate a whole race, or when we all put “These Colors Don’t Bleed” bumper stickers on our cars after 9/11, I think that the basic impulse that stimulates nationalism is seen in everyday life, specifically in sports. In an experiment, I would suppose that the feeling I experienced when the Carolina Panthers won the NFC Championship in 2004 comes from the same place in the brain as the feeling Americans experienced in 1945 when the Germans surrendered in WWII. The idea is that essentially, nationalism is rooting for a big football team. But guns score the touchdowns.

In order to find a link between college sports and nationalism, MRI technology would be needed to measure the activity in the brain. That part is manageable. The tricky part of the experiment would be lying to the subjects. One way or another, the subjects would have to be tricked into thinking that their team/country (depending on the group) has won or lost a great struggle in some shape or form. The goal of the experiment is to incite both love and anger in relation to the abstract concept of a team, and then to the concept of a country. Then, by analyzing the data, an association between the two would be either recognized or not, demonstrating the nature of the relationship between team identity and nationalism.

There are few possible sources of error in the experiment. First of all, I am assuming that the subjects have a reasonable amount of interest in their football team or country. This may not be the case if subjects are selected by random, which they should be in order to eliminate any bias. Also, for the country portion of the experiment, many times there is a lot of time invested into thinking about a war or cause. In our experiment we would be assuming that the subjects are coming in with a significant amount of time-tested loyalty to their country.

One reason I feel there is such a strong correlation between sports fanaticism and nationalism is because of the similarities in the ways people react to them. First of all, they are organized in similar ways, especially during times of war. A football team is like an army. The coaches and players are divided into ranks, each player has a specific job, and coaches have superiority over the players. There is an overall strategy that the team sticks to according to its strengths and weaknesses, just like a country has to work with what it’s got in wartime.

Also in a similar way to each other, both sports fans and citizens are united or divided by the way that their perspective group is performing. When a country is winning a good, “justified” war, then their citizens never felt more nationalist. However, when there is loss or indecisiveness or longevity in war, countries are divided. Look at the US’s involvement in Vietnam and Iraq. In the same way, when a team is having an off season, die hard fans still show up at games and keep track of their boys, while fair weather fans “wait until next year.” I think that both of these mentalities come from the same place in the brain.

Does Brain Thickness Really Have an Effect on Intelligence?

2006-03-05T21:10:00.000-05:00

While reading through some scientific journals for information concerning brain scanning and MRI technology, I came across two interesting articles. The first article I read, by Elizabeth R. Sowell, is called Longitudinal Mapping of Cortical Thickness and Brain Growth in Normal Children and published in “The Journal of Neuroscience.” Marit Martinussen authored the second article, Cerebral cortex thickness in 15-year-old adolescents with low birth weight measured by an automated MRI-based method, published in “Brain: A Journal of Neurology.” I established that both of these articles discuss and analyze studies of the effects of thickening and thinning on brain functions during adolescence. MRI scans measured the cerebral cortex thickness related to verbal test scores. Children were the subjects and similar results were found in both studies, except the studies measured a difference in the thickening and thinning of similar brain areas between low birth weight children and normal children.

The first article, by Sowell, discusses a study that measures the brain thickness of 45 children selected out of 77 between the ages of 5 and 11 who were thought to be “normal.” Interestingly enough, the children were decided to be “normal” if they did not have a neurological disorder and were not in corrective classes or tested for gifted enrollment. Each child took two IQ tests, two reading assessments, and given two MRIs an average of 2.2 years apart. I realized that the standard IQ test must be Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (Wechsler, 1999), because both studies used this IQ test.

As I read both studies, I found that the MRI scans provided the best data to compare all of the other measurements. The MRI scans showed thickening and thinning with color coded pictures from different sides of the brain. The MRI scans found on average that global thickening of the children’s brains increased by 1mm per year; thinning occurred in the front lobes and in the back of the brain at a rate of 0.1-0.3 mm per year; and thickening occurred in the left hemisphere’s Broca’s (the classical language region) and Wernicke’s areas and only in the right hemisphere’s Wernicke’s area at a rate of 0.05-0.2mm per year. It stunned me to think that “the cortical thickening in theseregions observed here lead to speculation that there is a relationshipto the fine tuning and mastery of linguistic skills that occurduring the age range studied,” while the thinning of the front lobes was associated with improved performance on a general intellectual verbal functioning test (Sowell). This article advances our overall understanding of the brain by concluding that thinning “occurs as part of the ultimate sculpting of the brain into the fully functioning adult nervous system” (Sowell). Wow.

The second article, by Martinussen, discusses a study that measures the brain thickness of 50, 15-year-old, children that were born with low birth weight (LBW) and the effects this had on their brain thickness and IQ scores. The group of LBW children was compared to a control group of 58 norm birth weight 15-year-olds. Low birth weight is measured as ≤1500g while normal birth weight is greater than 1500g and less than the 10^th percentile of birth weight. This study’s groups took two Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (Wechsler, 1999) IQ test and given two MRI scans at birth and one-year. < style="font-family: georgia;">Just as Sowell’s research showed, the greatest brain thinning between childhood and adolescences in normal birth weight births occurred in the frontal lobes, while this research showed the frontal lobes thickened in LBW children. I thought this could be caused by delayed maturation, supported by the fact that shrinking “may reflect more mature organization that supports improved cognitive functioning.”

The MRI data showed that the LBW children and the normal weight children had similar areas of thinking and thinning, but LBW children had additional thinning while the normal birth weight children had additional thickening. Overall the LBW children had regional and global decrease in brain area and less complex brain wrinkles and foldings. Just as I suspected, the research found that the LBW children had lower IQ scores. I believe that it must be stressed that mothers have a nutritious diet if future research shows that low birth weight delays maturation in some of the brain’s areas; because delayed maturation decreases brain area and creates less complex brain wrinkles, which in turn, decreases intelligence.

These articles advance our understanding of the brain by showing that thickness, thinness, and folds in a child’s brain can affect IQ scores. If a relationship between the brain’s size, thickness, and shape and cognitive functioning can be established then what causes the differences in the physical makeup of the brain becomes enormously important. These studies of the human brain show importance of the future use of MRI scans, because as I see it, MRI scans are the best way to measure the physical characteristics of the brain.

MRIs, Scientists, and their PETs

2006-03-03T15:36:00.000-05:00

As I was perusing the vast UNC journal database, I happened upon an article in the Scientific American Mind entitiled “Fact or Phrenology?” about the reliability of functional magnetic resonance imaging scans (commonly referred to as MRIs). It was interesting, because it seems that MRIs are considered to be the best technology we have to assess brain activity. It must be at the very least consistent in its results, or else doctors and researchers would have converted to more valuable ways of tracking brain functions. However, according to David Dobbs, writer for the Scientific American Mind, there are many overlooked flaws in regard to MRI scanning, and scientists should be sensitive to these as they use the technology to study the mysterious universe of the brain.

Now, let’s be honest, scientific journals are confusing. I found it was difficult to understand any kind of analysis of MRIs since I didn’t really understand the distinction between different brain scanning machines. David Dobbs, the author of the article, must have understood my plight, for he aptly included a wonderful summary of brain scanning technology at the beginning of the article. If I understand correctly, brain scans have progressed from measuring x-rays (CAT scans), to measuring gamma rays (PETs), to measuring changes in magnetism of the blood (MRIs). Each piece of new technology has bested the prior in its ability to “see” the functions of the brain quickly and precisely. For example, PETs require the patient to consume slight radioactive material and sit completely still for hours at a time to record relatively low resolution models of the brain’s activities. When MRI scanning was invented, it was remarkably able to take a cross section of the brain in seconds, with very high resolutions compared to the PET scanning technique. However, while this is an improvement, the reliability of MRI scanning has come into question in the past few years.

The problems that scientists have with MRI scanning aren’t exactly the way in which it scans the brain, but rather the way some scientists interpret its readings and give too much gravity to the not-so-precise pictures it creates. This goes back to the method the technology uses to scan the brain. You see, the manner in which MRIs detect differences in magnetic resonance is by the way that blood takes oxygen to neurons and then leaves deoxidized. When the blood deoxidizes, this shows a change in magnetism, thus signifying a change in blood flow. This in turn has been related to heightened neuron activity, and is used to measure many different studies of the brain. However, while a majority of scientists claim this is a precise measure of brain activity, there seem to be some flaws in the system.

Neurological activity is almost instantaneous, with connections occurring in milliseconds at a time. In contrast, a change in blood flow takes many seconds, allowing an innumerable amount of neuron activity to take place in the time it takes for an MRI to measure any activity. Thus, an MRI is really showing huge blocks of neurological adjustment, rather than specific changes. This creates a fairly vague reading which, in many cases, is more than precise enough to use for practical purposes. But, when you’re talking about big time cutting edge scientific research, it seems that more and more, an MRI just won’t cut it.

While new technology is developing, it should be important to make an efficient use of the technology we already have now. I found a good example of this in the article “On the Usefulness of PET Scanning” in the British Journal of Neurosurgery. The article is more of a lab report than anything, and it details an experiment which focused on the locating of tumors in the brain. They found that PET scans were more accurate at pinpointing the locations of the tumors than MRI scans, especially after radiation treatment. The problem in the past had been that MRI scans had confused normal cells for malignant ones after treatment. However, since PET measure gamma rays, they are able to locate more accurately the bad cells.

With continuing research like the brain tumor experiment I am confident that we will continue learning about the brain in ways we never thought possible. Also, in universities and labs world wide, MRIs are receiving an overhaul, with new, more advance algorithms and capabilities to see straight through your brain and out your foot. And while it is uncertain whether these advances will take care of the sloppiness of MRIs, with faith in science, anything is possible!

Works Cited

Dobbs, David. “Fact of Phrenology?” 2005, Vol.1, Issue 1. Scientific American Mind. 12 Feb. 2005.

Plowman, P.N. “On the Usefulness of PET scanning.” British Journal of Neurosurgery.

12 Feb. 2005.

Traumatic Brain Inuries: More than meets the eye

2006-03-02T16:46:00.000-05:00

In recent scientific publication, the matter of traumatic brain injuries has risen. What are people with traumatic brain injuries faced with on a day to day basis? All these questions are answered in two publications explaining the seemingly interesting yet vague subject of traumatic brain injuries. As far as scientific publications go, they are at best mildly confusing. These two articles dealing with traumatic brain injuries and its link to balance and traumatic brain injuries fatality rates in car accidents break away from the scientific publication mold: they are both interesting and fairly easy to navigate.

Traumatic brain injuries aren’t like Alzheimer’s disease that mainly passes down from parent to child, they are serious injuries that can happen to anyone at any time and very little can be done to prevent them. The study about the effects of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) on one’s balance show that there is a correlation between TBI and loss of balance skills, although it is not clearly apparent during a clinical exam. Doctors examined 10 healthy subjects with no kind of TBI, (6 men and 4 females) and 10 subjects that had suffered TBI somewhat recently (2.8 years was the average time since the TBI occurred). Tests were given to the subjects that dealt with one’s balance, including a Dizziness Handicap Inventory test that showed an increase in “dizziness” and “unbalance” in the subjects that had suffered from a TBI. Another test performed showed that subjects with a history of TBI had much more difficulty staying balanced, walking in a straight line and also walked significantly slower. This study seems to summarize the obvious, if you have a brain injury your brain will not work as fast as those that have not suffered a brain injury. In any case, this study shows the importance of studying the effects of TBI, since, as we will see in the next article, no one is really “safe” from TBI, even if you have the most pedigree, genetically perfect line of DNA.

The study I found fascinating about traumatic brain injuries (TBI) is one that deals with the percent of people that have suffered from TBI’s caused by vehicle crashes. Researchers took into account a 5 year (1996-2001) road trauma registry and recorded the amount of TBI caused and who received them. Defining the severe TBI’s were factors including injury to the brain or skull, excluding superficial scalp wounds. Armed with this knowledge, researches tackled nearly 1240 cases of severe TBIs. The fatality rates of those with traumatic brain injuries caused by vehicles are numbers that jump right off the page. For people with severe TBI there was a fatality percentage range from 71% for those 75 years or older to one of 20% for those considered children. The results from the study show the importance of following much ignored seatbelt laws, where the odds of having a severe TBI are 3.9 times higher for people in an un-restrained vehicle (sans seatbelt) than in a restrained vehicle (with seatbelt). The same can be said about wearing a helmet while riding a motorcycle, the odds of having a severe TBI are 18.1 times higher if you are riding a motorcycle without a helmet than if you were wearing your seatbelt in a car. The results of the research show the importance of seatbelt and helmet laws to protect us from injuries that could negatively impact our everyday life.

Although there is much more research that needs to be done on TBI, these two studies have enlightened at least one person on how and what TBI can do to society. With long term effects including dizziness, lack of balance and slow motor skills, TBI’s effect patients long after their initial occurrence. Technically terminal brain injuries aren’t preventable, if you are in an accident at a high velocity there is a high chance you will have one. With these studies there is now even more research that supports lawmaker’s choice to crack down on the seatbelt and helmet less motorists.

Could I have been smarter?

2006-03-01T20:59:00.000-05:00

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology is used to scan the brain and show which parts of the brain are performing work. New technology used by Yale University is combining the jobs of the MRI and the Functional MRI into one. The functional MRI looks only at the how the parts of the brain work whereas the MRI looks at the form of the brain. This consolidation is useful because it provides scientists and doctors with a more complete analysis of not only the structure of the brains, but also how the brain is functioning. This technology is particularly useful in diagnosing and treating people who are mentally ill. More importantly, this technology can help predict vulnerability to mental disorders, making it possible to prevent the onset of mental illness.

I am in an Abnormal Psychology class this semester. It’s an early morning class, but each morning I have that class I am on the edge of my seat waiting to soak up information like a spounge. I took this assignment as an opportunity to learn not only about MRI technology, but also how the function of the brain effects a person’s mental stability. I read articles, “ Quantitative diffusion tensor MRI fiber tractography of sensorimotor white matter development in premature infants”. I was shocked at how I actually understood some of the things discussed in the article. The jargon or “gobbly goop” in the title made the article seem intimidating and made me not want to read it. Fortunately, in order to write this assignment I had to read it. I also read, “ Early Brain Injury in Premature Newborns Detected with Magnetic Resonance Imaging is Associated with Adverse Early Neurodevelopmental Outcome”, which turned out to be the most clear and interesting resource.

My abnormal psych course teaches that psychological disorders and abnormalities are classified as mental processes which are disruptive to daily activities, deviant from societal norms and cause stress. There are several things which can cause psychological abnormalities such as behaviors, thoughts processes, environmental situations, and genetics.These articles show that mental illnesses can also be caused by biological reasons such as dysfunctions and atypical brain structure. “In premature newborns, brain abnormalities are common on MRI early in life and are associated with adverse neurodevelopmental outcome”(Early Brain) These two articles explain how MRI scans can be made in an early stage of life, such as with premature infants, to detect a predisposition to mental illnesses.

Research of Columbia University used MRI technology to prove that premature infants have smaller heads than term infants resulting in less white matter. White matter is part of the brain that contains myelinated nerve fibers and appears white. It is one of the two main solid components of the central nervous system. During the final stages of birth infants begin to produce more white matter because the neurons and cells have matured enough to branch out and grow with other cells, expanding and increasing the amount of white matter. When infants are born prematurely their brain cells and neurons skip this crucial step in development. A lack of white matter could result in increasing the likelihood that people born prematurely would have lower IQ scores and a greater vulnerability of developing mental disorders than those who were carried full term.

It amazes me that all of this information was discovered with MRI brain scans comparing term babies and premature babies. I was a premature infant. It may seem bizarre, but after reading this article I immediately thought of how smart I could have been or if I am particularly vulnerable to developing a mental disorder. Technology has grown so much over the past few years. It seems that technology and medicine are increasing and growing at such a rapid rate, that in no time disorders, disease and other health issues will not only be able to be diagnosed and treated more effectively, but predicted at an early stage or before they even begin. I found the articles on these blogs not only informative, but inspiring.

The Effects of Pre-Birth Enviorment

2006-02-22T16:05:00.000-05:00

“Unhappy Lives Start in the Womb”

This article discusses how a pregnant mother’s anxiety level can affect her newborn’s happiness. The article summarizes a British study concluding that a mother’s pre-birth anxiety elevates her child’s level of the hormone cortisol for up to ten years after birth. Heightened cortisol levels can increase vulnerability to depression. Surprisingly, I found this article informative, interesting, and easy to read. I read this article and asked the obvious question, was my own mother anxious late in her pregnancy? If so, was I affected? I don’t think I am an unhappy person. Does this mean my mom was not overly anxious? While I’m not convinced a mother’s pre-birth anxiety is a determining factor in a child’s happiness, the article intrigued me how I might help my future wife or sisters. After reading the article I will reassure and supportive pregnant mothers more so that their anxiety levels stay low.

The article made me think deeper about what factors during pregnancy might affect a child’s behavior or happiness. I have accepted the premise, as other research has shown, that the environment in which a child is raised and nurtured does have an effect on his or her happiness, but it is a stretch for me to believe that pre-birth environment will also have an effect on the child’s happiness. This leads to the essential argument of whether nature or nurture is the most important factor in determining a person’s happiness. The article takes the nurturing argument to new heights by taking the position that environmental nurturing begins before birth. If more research is found to prove that pre-birth environment does affect the way a person feels or acts, then I wonder what might done to help a mother and her child. The article suggests that if a mother is feeling high levels of anxiety during pregnancy, then she could get psychological help to maintain a stable emotional level. To sum up the article; just as a particularly anxious mother has a negative effect on her child’s self esteem, the same goes for a child in the womb.

The blog does a good job listing up to date news articles, studies, pictures, videos, and opinions about the brain and neurology from biological, psychological, and sociological perspectives. Most of the blog is the simple copying of interesting articles that relate to the brain or neurology and very occasional opinions and thoughts from the creators. The creators of Brain Blogger did not write this particular article but apparently choose to post it because it discusses a thought provoking topic in an easy to read style. Instead of posting a link to another article, I would prefer that the bloggers also be the author of the posts, or at least comment on the articles to provide some of the bloggers’ own insight and personality.

The post fails to deliver the punch possible because the bloggers simply post the article and do not provide an original analysis or insight to help the reader accept the premise of the article. The bloggers could have given us some of their own thoughts, whether the article was interesting, credible, or undeveloped. The bloggers’ input could have helped overcome my skepticism of the notion that a child’s pre-birth environment can really have a lasting effect on a child’s happiness. Without the bloggers’ comments, the blog loses its personality and potential punch, becoming a simple website. Despite its short comings, I would still use the blog when I was in the mood to read mostly raw up to date technical information about the brain and neurology.

If you can't lie....

2006-02-21T15:04:00.000-05:00

While searching for blogs dealing with interesting and relevant scientific updates, I stumbled across this one. This blog is from a scientific blog site that has many contributors and is dedicated to having up to date posts about relevant scientific findings and new data discoveries. In the posting it examines new information about brain MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, which takes a 2-D or 3-D images of the brain activity occurring in someone’s brain at that exact moment. This brain imaging is used to tell what parts of the brain are active during the process of lying as well as during the process of truth telling. What this post revealed is that the imaging that is produced by the brain MRI scans stand up to normally used “lie detectors”, called polygraph tests, and actually surpasses them in reliability.

This particular post is dealing with an issue that is in great demand in our modern world, credibility and reliability of those used in court trials. Criminals and victims alike proclaim their innocence with no way of judges and juries to know whether one is telling the truth or not. Given that the tests look for outward emotions, Polygraphs have lost their reliability, since they can be “studied” for and the results manipulated, as shown in many of Alias’s episodes where Jennifer Garner basically saves the world while lying through her teeth to the bad guys. With a brain scan such as the MRI which is able to closely monitor brain frequencies, finding out who is being honest has become easier with past scientific data suggesting that certain areas of the brain are associated with lying, while some areas are associated with telling the truth. The results from the scan will be able to tell what parts of the subjects’ brain were more active and will be able to show if a person has been lying or being truthful. This, scientists hope, will prevent the shortcomings presented by the polygraph tests, mainly the manipulation of the actual test, since they suspect that brain activation is hard to control.

This scientific data, though exciting, is not all that it is measured to be. The test group was only 11 healthy subjects, hardly enough to actually measure the true accuracy of the MRI test. Moreover, the scientific study shows that, although highly reliable in detecting those who are lying (a high 92%), the MRI test was much less successful (70%) in those who were telling the truth.

This post is written in terms that just about everyone could understand, making it much more likely for people to read even if they don’t have any interest in science. The author of the post doesn’t waste the reader’s time going through the grueling and easily misunderstood inner workings of the MRI that other authors might have. With only a little bit of scientific lingo sprinkled into this most interesting and relevant post, it catches the eye of many readers and explains the large number of visits it has had.

For any Law & Order junkies like myself, this is great news, for we all know that polygraphs aren’t trusted enough to be valid in a court of law. As more research and testing is forthcoming in the area of using brain MRI tests as lie detectors, MRI tests will be prove to be unshakable and will actually be able to be used in courts as hard scientific fact. Convicting criminals based on testimony of others doesn’t seem like the most dependable form, so if the MRI test proves to be more consistent in later clinical trials the whole law system could change for the better, adding science as a witness.

Aetiology: Study of disease

2006-02-20T11:24:00.000-05:00

AETIOLOGY
causes, origins, evolution, and implications of disease

Aetiology is a branch of medicine in which the causes and origins of diseases are studied. I am very interested in the study of diseases, so I took this assignment as an opportunity to learn more about this field. The blog, “Aetiology” was written by Tara C. Smith, an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Iowa. She has a picture of herself in her blog profile. Immediately I looked at the picture and assumed that she was very young and could not be too credible a source. However, upon reading more background about her, I realized that I was mistaken. Ms. Smith has lots of accreditations. As a result of knowing the background of the author, it appears that this blog is a credible source for information about aetiology. The primary focus of the blog is why the number of rheumatic fever cases has decreased in the United States. I used the format and design of the blog, the audience to which this blog appeals and whether or not the blog is effective in accomplishing its purpose to inform as guidelines to understand and evaluate the blog’s effectiveness.

At first glance I thought the blog is to be viewed by others in the scientific world. The design of the blog is clean and well aligned, which makes it easier to read, and is not distracting. Unlike amateur posts, this blog has few pictures, all of which are pertinent to the comprehension of the article. This helped me focus more on the evidence being presented in the blog, instead of just looking at pretty pictures.

Another aspect of the blog that made me believe in it’s credibility was the background information given on the author. Tara C. Smith is an assistant professor for the University of Iowa. Also given is a list of her titles, accomplishment and research history. These add to the validity of her blog because it shows that she is well educated and therefore, should have a firm understanding of the material she is presenting. Even the title of the blog, which is concise, uses its simplicity to give credibility to the blog. Short titles have more credibility because they are to the point, no jargon or extra words are needed.

The tone of the blog and the diction used by the author, not only help me to believe what the blog was saying, but it also dictates the audience to which this blog is appealing. The jargon is targeted to those scientific minds and who are able to grasp the complex concepts of aetiology. Because I am neither a scientist, nor extremely interested or gifted in when it comes to science I found myself a little lost. I was focusing more on understanding the jargon and terms she used, rather than grasping the overall message of the blog. In this way, I couldn’t see the forest for starring at the trees. The links and advertising given on the blog also target a particular audience, those interested in scientific research. Amazingly I find myself uninterested when it comes to subscribing to scientific magazines, such as SEED.

The purpose of this blog is to inform others about why there has been a decrease in rheumatic fever cases in the US. The answer to this question is lost in the endless jargon, and complex concepts which she explains for more than half of the article. The blog goes into more detail about Streptococcus pyogenes, its origins and other diseases Streptococcus pyogenes cause than it does about rheumatic fever and why outbreaks have declined. The author explains how a decrease in Streptococcus pyogenes may have led to a decrease in Rheumatic fever; however the question why Streptococcus Pyogenes decrease is never fully answered.

The blog is has a professional look and appeals to members of the scientific community. The aetiology blog, why has rheumatic fever declined in the US, does inform others about aetiology of Rheumatic Fever; however the effectiveness of the information presented is lost in the jargon and attempted explanations of complex concepts. Although I am interested in disease, I am not particularly scientifically minded, therefore, the technical jargon and tone of the blog did not appeal to and captivate my attention as I had originally hoped.

Politics are Brain Waves

2006-02-20T11:23:00.000-05:00

I found this blog entry the other day, and it struck me as very relevant to both the political atmosphere of the United States and my personal growth and development as an "educated" person (whatever that means). As I read it, I felt like the author was writing to me, because for the past year or so I have struggled to find my place on the political spectrum. These days it seems like I’m stuck at some political fork in the road, and not even Frost's beautiful verse can comfort me. It’s like I want to make the two schools of thought converge so I don’t have to make a choice. Anyway, that’s why I found the article so intriguing.

The blog entry is basically about the role our brain plays in the way we align ourselves politically. According to McIntosh, the reason that people become partisan is because of the pleasure regions in the brain. While it seems quite obvious, when an individual refutes an opposing idea in an argument, he feels pleasure. This way, as he develops ideas and opinions and learns to refute others, the idividual begins to feel comfortable and safe with his cannon of beliefs. This is why it is natural for humans to create opposing parties.

As it’s said in the blog, it's no surprise that people feel pleasure when they refute an argument of the opposing side. This makes sense, because it feeds our egos and makes us feel a bit smarter and superior to the other guy for a while. I mean, you can see it in little kids, when they brag pompously to their friends as they claim victory in an argument whining, “I told you so…” The fact that it has been related to neurological activity is interesting. This brings to question many things, like whether our political alignment is a derivation of our psychological make up, or whether we’re determined liberal or conservative before we are even born. However, it seems to me that your neurons would not be so drastic an influence on the way in which you lean politically, but rather how politically extreme a person will be. If a man receives fantastic, indescribable pleasure from rejecting a conflicting point of view, it makes sense that he will subscribe to a clearly defined set of beliefs and stick with them through thick and thin. On the other hand, the man who does not receive the same kind of pleasure will shy away from that kind of politics and take a more moderate path.

The part of the blog that kind of disturbed me was at the end, when McIntosh says that we as humans are "innately biased against critical thinking." I don't like that, because I think he's right, and I think that it's terribly applicable to American politics right now. Rather than thinking for themselves and concerning themselves with the truth, Americans just gravitate to the strongest side with the most confidence. They don't question their own ideas, they don't listen to opposing arguments, they don't recognize that nothing in life is black and white. Instead they feel pleasure yelling at people who don't agree with them. Politics have become argument for the sake of pleasure.

So this is where I find myself: whether it is because of my biological make up, my upbringing, or specific events from my childhood, I’ve turned into some kind of self-evaluating personal critic who can’t stand up for one side or another in any kind of black and white altercation (except sports). This could possibly be the way my neurons are set up, I’m not sure. But I know that I hate politics and that I have a hard time aligning my self with either party. So, this article makes perfect sense to me, and I’m glad I came across it. I just hope that more people will learn to think "critically" (whatever that means) so our country will become less partisan.

The Danger of Snoring

2006-02-20T11:16:00.001-05:00

In searching through various science blogs, I came across a post titled “Can Snoring ruin a marriage?” This blog appealed to me due to it being labeled under the category of a “brain and behavior” post.

Since our English class is themed on the brain, I figured this was as good as any place to start. This blog was one of the most recent posts on the home page of the site, so I found it rather quickly. I really like how easy it is to scroll down through the blogs. The post is not shown in its entirety, only the title with beginning excerpt followed by the link to read the rest of the post. By condensing the blogs, the site becomes much more appealing when you don’t have to scroll down through a ridiculously long post when looking for a separate one. This improves the navigation of the site tremendously. Not to mention that the categories mentioned above give the reader a better idea of what the post may be about, in a way the title might not necessarily. These categories are below the post along the same line as the link to read more, along with a “post comment” link.

The specific blog post that I found was dealing with the age old problem of a husband snoring and keeping the wife awake and later even depriving her of sleep. But it’s not such a small or simple a problem as it seems. It appears that this continuous nightly ritual puts a strain on marriages and even leads to divorces. This blog discusses a new study to monitor and record data about the husband’s snoring and how it affects the wife and their relationship. The study tests different couples and how they are affected, but mostly the wife and her ratings according to quality of life and marital satisfaction. The poster does a good job of explaining most terms and medical words that people would not necessarily know even though this is specifically stated as a science blog. There are some exceptions though, for example, how the author does nothing to explain what the scale of marital satisfaction, quality of life, or sleepiness is measured on. It explains how these numbers jumped from this one to that one, but that does not really mean anything to me. The post continues in describing the dangers of “snoring” and a disorder titled Sleep Apnea. Snoring is actually the indicator that there may be a problem. Sleep Apnea is in effect when tissue in the back of the throat collapses and blocks the airway. The ensuing pauses can last at least ten seconds and can happen up to ten times an hour. This results in lowering the blood oxygen level, making the person at risk to hypertension, stroke, or other cardiovascular problems. Any wives reading this are probably feeling a little regretful for yelling at their husbands for snoring last night. Nonetheless, the overall blog is easy to read, very informative, and helpful for people who may be experiencing these same problems.

I guess this is not necessarily new scientific research, but actually more of the preceding tests and data that will lead to new research and treatments. I had thought that the problem of snoring had been studied multiple times already, and that for the most part, there were already ways to hinder it and treatments for it. It seems this is not the case however. I am happy to know that research is still being done on this specific disorder because the results and treatment can only get better. I mean this problem does not affect me at all because I am not married, nor do I snore, I don’t think I do at least, but if I ever happen to be a snorer then this will come as a big help to me in the future. The thing is though; this disorder is more common with obese, middle aged men, which I am neither, so hopefully I will not have to worry about this for a while. At any rate, I hope this can be helpful to anyone else who comes upon it, because, who would have thought snoring was dangerous?