Description: When I first started teaching introductory psychology a few decades ago I used to tell students that they had most of the largest number of brain neurons they would ever have at the time they were born. After their birth the number of brain cells dropped due to things like attrition and pruning (neurons… Read more »
Posts Tagged: memory
Investigator Lies and False Confessions: A Deeper Look
Description: Sometimes an individual who has confessed to a crime recants or withdraws their confession. What comes to mind when you read that sentence? Knowing nothing else about an individual case, what would you estimate is the likelihood that the person recanting a confession is actually guilty of what they origin ally confessed to? Now… Read more »
Psychology of COVID-19: Contact Tracing and Human Memory
Description: Think back over the past 10 days and then itemize everything you did, everywhere you went, everyone you saw, interacted with, for how long and how far apart were you during that interaction? Include every place or situation you encountered over that same period that involved groups of people. How many people? How close… Read more »
Pattern Separation and Human versus Animal Intelligence
Description: What do you know about how memory works? You likely have a basic understanding of how information comes in through or senses (via a very short term sensory store), pauses in working memory (if we work on it) and perhaps eventually gets processed into long term memory. Does that take you bac to a… Read more »
Fixing the Pain of Broken Hearts with a Drug: The Psychology of Memory Re-consolidation
Description: Perhaps not the best topic for Valentine’s day but the fact is some relationships end and some end badly with the former participants struggling to come terms with heartache. Heartache is a very general term, one which has a lot of poetic weight but what does it involve Psychologically and how might it be… Read more »
London Taxi Drivers, “The Knowledge” and Phrenology
Description: If you want to drive for Uber (well drive for yourself through the Uber App) the process to get started will take a couple of weeks (mostly made up of waiting for a background check to be processed). Compare that to what it takes to become a London Taxi driver. To do that you… Read more »
Analyzing Elvis: Parapraxis, Memory and Emotion
Description: Even if you have not taken a single Psychology course you certainly have heard of Freudian slips. A Freudian slip is where someone misspeaks, and the “error” actually exposes a deeper meaning or intention buried somewhere in the speaker’s unconscious that they themselves may be trying to remain unaware of. For example, if you… Read more »
Eye Witnesses to Traumatic Events: A Case Example
Description: You have most certainly heard, somewhere, that people who witness traumatic events do not make very good eye witnesses, but do you know why that is? Oh, and suggesting that it might be related to Freudian defensiveness is not allowed (it is uninvestigable). So why might it be that people do not simply NOT… Read more »
Psychology Research and Current Events: The Kavanaugh Hearings
Description: As a Psychologist I have to say that events south of our border over the past two years have a source of fascination, confusion and perplexity not to mention anxiety, fear and anger and that is just from considering the actions of the current president. This past week the confirmation hearings focusing on Brett… Read more »
Executive Functions in Alzheimer’s: Brain Pacemakers Might Help
Description: Alzheimer’s main impact is on peoples’ memories, right? Well, we can debate the depth of impact of the various features of the disease but it is the case that more than memory is affected. Specifically, the array of frontal lobe functions involving various aspects of what is called Executive Function (thinking, reflecting, planning and… Read more »
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