This week my group broadened our topic to emotions instead of specifically, negative emotions. It is extremely helpful since we were kind of overlapping with the depression group. Through my research I have ran into several hormones linked to serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine and much more. It’s been super interesting to see how these chemicals play a vital role in the brain and making you you! During my research I ran into an article from The New York Times by Lisa Feldman Barrett That completely intrigued me, one quote reads, “My lab analyzed over 200 published studies, covering nearly 22,000 test subjects, and found no consistent and specific fingerprints in the brain for any emotion.” I’d been hearing so much about how various parts of the brain pertained to specific emotions so it very super interesting to hear a different claim. This encouraged me continue my research and see what other supporting arguments I could find. I also believe their is a lot of stigma surrounding adolescents and how we are, “hormone crazed” which is another contributing factor as to why I want to bring awareness to this topic and educate others. Happiness is an accepted emotion, whereas sadness is not. I’d like to show neurologically that just like your happy and various chemicals have to do with that, you can also have negative feelings related to hormones in the brain as well. My slogan for this project is, “Emotions are the building block of human life.” I chose this because as mentioned before there is a lot of stigma surrounding negative feelings and I want to show that both happiness and sadness are a part of life that should be accepted. My wondering this week is based on behaviors. I understand emotions and behaviors are hand in hand but I would like to know more about that connection. There are six basic emotions, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness and surprise. and the physical response lines up with them. When you're happy you smile and laugh. When you’re sad you frown or cry. I would like to know what causes this to happen and how it’s a natural response in everyone.
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Our recent field trip to UCSD C.A.R.E was very interesting. Their goal of being able to quickly diagnose patients with psychosis was extremely intricate and it was cool being able to get a behind the scene experience of the new technology they use while working towards their goals. A really awesome moment for me was taking our mini tour around the hospital and all the buildings surrounding it. I found it fascinating how all those extra buildings are really what keep the hospital running day and night. Personally I’m interesting in emergency medicine so it was cool to see where the ambulance delivers the patients and I got to learn a bit about what goes on inside. Such as who receives the patients and how the nurses and very well trained in dealing with trauma since they are a level 1 trauma center. Back at the psychiatric center I got to gain a deeper understanding of what it is they do on an everyday basis and how they treat patients and do research. Another great experience was watching them put the EEG cap on one of my peers and seeing how they were able to get so much information from that. They caps recorded the neuron and muscle activity. Whenever my peer blinked with the cap on you could see how much the activity would increase, it was crazy! Overall this visit left me wondering how psychology and psychiatry plays a role in emergency medicine and how they respond to trauma. Hopefully I am able to do a bit more research on that and how it affects the brain. Our recent field trip to Dr. Sasha Kauffman’s lab was amazing! The staff was super welcoming and invited us to actively participate in order to further our understanding of what is it they do on an everyday basis and how lab work really looks like. A big learning experience for me personally was during the brain slicing. I was actually given the opportunity to glue the tiny mouse brain onto the tiny pans that they use to place and cut the brain. Of course I was really nervous and had shaky hands so when it came time to glue the brain I accidentally flung it elsewhere. I felt embarrassed but quickly recovered with help from our lab specialist and managed to successfully place the brain on the small pan. Through this I was able to realize that growth comes from simple mistakes and improving from there. Learning about the teen brain has personally really given me so much information that I never would have know about otherwise. Particularly learning about neuroscience and an adolescent brain has cleared many stereotypes regarding teenagers and how we are, “hormone crazed”. Through this I’ve been able to how I can better take care of both my physical health as well as understanding how important my mental health is and how to make sure I am treating that with care as well. Everything a human is, is really in the brain. This is where all our thoughts, emotions, memories, actions, the list goes on and on comes from. Because of this, neuroscience can help us pinpoint all these different behaviors and learn why and how it’s happening. As young advocates I would say a lot of the stigma surrounding teen brain health is due to a lack of understanding. The more we are able to educated ourselves and others the deeper understanding we can receive on various mental health topics. This week was definitely packed with a ton of information. Having two guest speakers was a great opportunity and I was able to get so much hands on experience from it. I personally really enjoyed our visit with the representatives from Dr. Sasha Kauffman’s lab since I able to get such a deep understanding of the tools scientist use in order to further their studies on the brain. A great moment for me was looking under the microscope and finally getting an in depth look at the brain and what it’s really made up of. At first it was a bit challenging identifying the different structures within the brain but little by little my partner and I got the hang of it and were able to successfully find these sections! Another awesome learning moment was learning a bit about the chemical their lab focuses on, Kisspeptin. It was super interesting to see how much more information they have gained through their research and learning about this chemical’s critical role in puberty and development. Through their presentation and activities I was also able to learn that Kisspeptin in mainly found in the hypothalamus and is basically the “activate” button for puberty which is super interesting! This led me to wonder what would happen if this chemical was completely removed or vice versa, doubled. Hopefully during our visit to their lab I am able to follow up with these questions. |
AuthorHere I will be uploading weekly reflections on my Teen Brain Health Project! Archives
April 2017
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