Throughout these past three days my perspective was widened on so many topics. Day to day my top choices varied but one that definitely stuck out to my was Ylenna’s presentation on body image and what it does to the brain. I believe this is a huge topic that is not always brought up. In humanities I am actually also researching this topic and how it affects our culture whereas if I committed to it in biology I would have the opportunity to discovering the biological aspect of it! Through the presentation something that really surprised me was that our brain actually contains a highly distorted model of what we actually look like. Researchers at UCLA found that those with body disorders have less brain activity when processing images as a whole -- what they call the, “big picture” -- than they do when looking at things in greater details. This information is crucial to understanding how the brain perceives the body this way. There is also a lot of stigma surrounding this issue. Many people believe and stigmatize those facing a disorder as “crazy”, “weird” and most commonly, “attention seekers”. This is why I would like to be an advocate for this topic, it’s a huge issue that affects so many people and is only talked about in hushed voices whereas instead we could be reaching out and educating others on the importance of acceptance and awareness of what's actually going on. My burning question would be, “do any other parts of the body contribute to these disorders? If so which ones and how?
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AuthorHere I will be uploading weekly reflections on my Teen Brain Health Project! Archives
April 2017
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