Recent research was done by the Epifanova and colleagues in 2021 examining the way the neocortex controls cognitive, linguistic, and voluntary movement activities. The most common kind of neuron in the brain is a neocortical pyramidal excitatory neuron. These neurons' apical dendrites travel parallel to and perpendicular to the pia in both directions. The structure allows the dendritic arbor's numerous layers and components to be linked to one another due to its stiffness. Long-range cortical input, for example, situated on distal apical dendrites, has an impact on layer II/III neurons, while short-range cortical input is mainly found on basal dendrites. Changes in excitatory neuron arborizations in the neocortex are often linked with cognitive deficits in humans. According to the most recent studies, the molecular mechanisms that underpin precise morphological and functional organisation in the neocortex are still not fully understood (Epifanova et al., 2021).
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Gregory John Depow and colleagues researched the experience of empathy, which is the ability to comprehend and share the emotions of another person. It is like having acquired fresh insight into something about another person that has improved one's capacity to connect with and better grasp the experiences or perspectives of another. Almost all empathy research is done in laboratories with strangers, which is challenging as it can create negative emotions. In this study, individuals demonstrated more empathy for good emotions than negative emotions, and participants showed more empathy for pleasurable experiences than painful ones. Positive emotions like pleasure and excitement are shown to be three times more common than negative emotions like disgust, anger, and fear. Close friends were more likely to evoke empathy. This effect is very likely linked to accessibility, since people interact with friends rather than strangers. (Depow et al., 2020)
Research by David A. Moses and colleagues studies the concept of Neuroprosthesis for decoding speech in a paralyzed person with anarthria. Those who are paralyzed may benefit from technology that enables them to communicate again. It's conceivable that a system that decodes words and phrases directly from such people's cerebral cortex activity would be a step forward. In patient’s whose spastic quadriparesis and anarthria were caused by a brain stem stroke, the authors recorded 22 hours of brain activity over 48 sessions as a participant attempted to pronounce words from a vocabulary list of 50. Deep-learning algorithms identified and classified words by analyzing brain activity patterns. These computational models and a natural-language model were employed in his research to compute next-word probabilities based on words that came before them in a sequence. With a 25.6 percent word error rate, words were decoded from brain activity in real time (Moses et al., 2021).
A study published in Psychological Science and conducted by scientists at Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, shows that people make choices that show preference to their parents even over their friends. In this study. either the person's parent would bear all the reward of a card game task and the friend all the loss or the friend would bear the the reward and the parent would bear any losses. The experiment showed that when the subjects knew they were playing to benefit their parents, they were over 25% more likely to continue the game - which benefited their parents. The study found that this occurred equally regardless of age and ther was no difference between men and women. The study can be found at:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797618778497 This article discussing the therapeutic history and role of psychedelic drugs in the field of psychology is extremely interesting. With the help of theraputic guides, patients are able to confront depression, anxiety, and even their fear of death. The results in eve federally funded experimental treatments have been very promising and in some cases show better results than other treatment options have in the past. Please do take a look at the full article:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/15/magazine/health-issue-my-adventures-with-hallucinogenic-drugs-medicine.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FPsychology%20and%20Psychologists A recent study in the journal Psychological Science found that some action based video games can significantly sharpen visual motor skills and strengthen the sensorimotor system. People who played action games for 5-10 hours showed improvement to visuomotor control, although those who played non-action games did not. This system helps us perform a variety of daily motor tasks, from cooking to driving. The study can be found at:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797616650300 Two Standford scientists study the phenomenon of microfinancing from a psychological perspective. What incentives are involved in microfinancing? They believe that those emotional responses which lead to charity are involved in microlending. There findings demonstrated that when microlending requests accompanied by pictures which evoked emotion were more likely to receive funds. This does tend to support the hypothesis that successfully triggering emotional responses in a potential funder is involved microloans. More information can be found at:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-neurology-of-lending_b_7494878.html According to a study conducted by scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health, “Children whose mothers were exposed to high levels of fine particulate pollution in late pregnancy have up to twice the risk of developing autism as children of mothers breathing clean air.” Fine particulates, which were especially harmful, include those emitted by fire, vehicles and industrial smokestacks. According to the US government approximately 1 in 68 children have been diagnosed with autism. (2010) These statistics are up from 1 in 150. (2000)
Although autism has a strong genetic basis, genes alone cannot account for the rapid rise in the disorder, prompting researchers to search for possible environmental factors. More information can be found at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/18/air-pollution-autism-_n_6345448.html Behavioral scientists have jumped on using social media as a way to analyze group behavior, however according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon and McGill University, these figures could be misleading. For example, different social media platforms are frequented by different sets of people, leading to skewed data. In addition, one needs to be able to filter so-called, “robot accounts” and public relations firms. Also, researchers need to be able to collect from many different social media metadata in order to gather a more accurate and complete picture of the overall trends. More information can be found at:
https://forumblog.org/2014/12/can-we-study-society-via-social-media/?es_p=199191 According to a study conducted by the Department of Human Development at Cornell University, women are underrepresented in fields that are math intensive including geoscience, engineering, economics, computer science and physical science. However, the researchers noted that in other scientific fields such as psychology, life science and social science, women were found in greater numbers. The result of the group’s analysis revealed that although there are less women in these math intensive fields, it is not that there are barriers to women’s advancement, as there were in the past, rather it is environmental factors that occur before women enter college that contribute to whether or not they will enter these various fields. More information can be found at:
http://psi.sagepub.com/content/15/3/75.full.pdf+html?ijkey=/rLBbJMggBVeg&key&siteid=sppsi%2520 |
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