Unit 9 Consciousness

Videos on Consciousness

Discovering Psychology program 13 "The Mind Awake and Asleep" is at http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/13/e13expand.html 


Discovering Psychology program 14 "The Mind Hidden and Divided" is at 
http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/14/e14expand.html


Starting to meditate? 
Here is a link to an online meditation timer. http://www.yourmeditationtimer.com/  It can help you concentrate in your meditation if you don't have to worry about how much time has passed. 


Mouse Party?

What would you see inside the brains of mice who were taking drugs? This interactive website gives you a glimpse inside the brains and synapses of mice on drugs including alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, ecstasy, and LSD.

Identify how each drug affects the brain. What neurotransmitter(s) does it affect? Is it inhibitory or excitatory? Does it block re-uptake or work some other way? Which parts of the brain are most affected?

You can explore other effects of drugs of abuse here. 


Dream Journal  - You should be making entries into your dream journal every day. If you don't remember a dream from the night, you should write about what emotions or thoughts you had upon awakening. If you don't have anything to enter for a day, you should write about a dream you had some time in the past - even the distant past. 


The point of the dream journal assignment is to get you to pay attention to your dreams and to start to think about various theories of dream interpretation to see if you think they apply. 

Memory

Unit 7 Memory

Good overview of basic memory concepts.

http://allpsych.com/psychology101/memory.html

Some fun memory games you can do online

http://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/dont_forget/index.html

NOVA: How Memory Works

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/how-memory-works.html 

This is not specifically about memory, but about implicit associations we make about people.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/ You can take some of the Implicit Association Tests to see what some of your implicit associations about people and groups are. I’m putting it with this unit as an example of implicit vs. explicit thought processes.

Story from National Public Radio (NPR) about H.M., the man who had the bilateral removal of his hippocampus (What is the plural of hippocampus?) and ended up with the nearly complete inability to form new memories. Find out why he had his hippocampus removed and learn about this amazing case study of anterograde amnesia. 

 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7584970 

The movie Memento was the first film by star director Christopher Nolan who went on to direct The Dark Night and Inception. It is a fictional film about a character who, like H.M.,  loses the ability to create any new memories, but still tries to solve a horrible crime.

You can stream it on Netflix or rent it. It is rated R due to some violent content and adult language.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/

Learning Links

(Note, the links to videos are to YouTube, so you can't watch them at school unless you are an awesome hacker and know a proxy work-around, also I have not tested some of these links this year, so please let me know if any are not working.)

Classical Conditioning:

Does the name "Pavlov" ring a bell?

Try your hand at conditioning Pavlov's Dog in this animation on the Nobel Prize site.

Here is the John Watson Little Albert video clip we saw in class. It has Spanish subtitles which is nice.

This article on the APA website describes how some college students figured out who "Little Albert" really was and what happened after the famous (infamous) conditioning experiment.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/01/little-albert.aspx

Unfortunately we don't know if is fear of furry things lasted beyond Watson's research.


Operant Conditioning:

BF Skinner and his beloved pigeons

Here is the Skinner video clip we will see in class.

B.F. Skinner shaping a pigeon to turn around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtfQlkGwE2U

And pigeons playing ping-pong? 


Observational Learning:

Bandura's Bobo Doll experiment... ouch

Here is a video of Bandura's Bobo doll experiment.

This Australian commercialshows how observational learning can affect kids.

Sensation and Perception Video

The link below will take you to the Sensation and Perception video we watched in class.

http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/07/e07expand.html

Look for the "VoD" button to play the video once you click on the site. 

Animations about vision - the retina and visual pathways

Fantastic animations about the eye, visual processing in the retina and the pathways that visual information travels in the brain.

Pay close attention to the "center-surround" aspects of retinal processing it this first video.

This animation shows how the photoreceptors, bipolar and ganglion cells of the retina are organized in "center-surround" arrangements that allow "bottom up" processing of visual information to begin in the retina. 

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/receptivefields.html



If a picture is worth a thousand words, an animation is worth way more. This animation really shows the visual pathway very well. Pay attention to how visual information is split in the Optic Chiasm and how it routs through the LGN of the thalamus as well as other areas specifically related to eye movement and the "biological clock" which controls circadian rhythms.

This excellent animation really explains how the visual information from the left and right visual fields makes its way to the right and left occipital lobes via the LGN of the thalamus. 

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/visualpathways.html

Sensation - How the ear works.

Sensation... The Ear Pages on NobelPrize.org and a nice animation

The organization that gives out the Nobel Prize has a great website about the ear and how it works.

If you're having trouble understanding the accessory structures and the cochlea this site is for you.

Here is a link to another animation about how the ear works

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/soundtransduction.html

Great Animations for the Biological Basis of Psychology

This animation company produces some animations with very advanced content concerning the neurobiology you are learning in Unit 3 - Biological Basis of Behavior and will be learning in Unit 4 - Sensation. While some of the videos go into more detail than is typical in an AP psych class, I think they're worth watching to deepen your understanding and push yourself to a more advanced college level.

For Unit 3, I suggest "The Action Potential", "Synaptic Transmission", "Reflex Arcs" and "Positron Emission Tomography"

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/neurobiology.html