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Several experimental studies show that school kids pay more attention to academics after they’ve had recess

Note that physical education classes are not effective substitutes for free playtime

To reap all the benefits of play, a play break must be truly playful.

when kids pretend together—“results in improved performances in both cognitive-linguistic and social affective domains.”

Some research suggests that the way kids play contributes to their ability to solve divergent problems.

The results? Kids given divergent play materials performed better on divergent problems. They also showed more creativity in their attempts to solve the problems (Pepler and Ross 1981).

Researchers found that the complexity of block play predicted kids’ mathematics achievements in high school.

The association between block play and math performance remained even after researchers controlled for a child’s IQ. It therefore seems plausible that block play itself influenced the cognitive development of these kids.

They also underwent brain MRI scans. Participants who reported higher cognitive activity levels were found to have higher diffusion anisotropy values in the brain.

but this new research also suggests that such things can also help preserve the brain's structural integrity.

phenotypes

My goal is to convince skeptics that a combination of “hard” and “soft” interdisciplinary research is necessary to advance the study of animal emotions.

broadly defined as psychological phenomena that help in behavioral management and control

It is important to extend our research beyond the underlying physiological mechanisms that mask the richness of the emotional lives of many animals and learn more about how emotions serve them as they go about their daily activities

emotions are real and that they are extremely important,

René Descartes

B. F. Skinner

Why then are there competing views on the nature of animal emotions? In part, this is because some people view humans as unique animals, created in the image of God

researchers studying animal behavior came to realize that there was too little in studies of animal emotions and minds that was directly observable, measurable, and verifiable, and chose instead to concentrate on behavior because overt actions could be seen, measured objectively, and verified

Most researchers now believe that emotions are not simply the result of some bodily state that leads to an action

William James and Carl Lange

Walter Cannon's criticisms

drugs producing bodily changes like those accompanying an emotional experience

do not produce the same type of conscious experience of fear

Primary emotions, considered to be basic inborn emotions

Natural selection has resulted in innate reactions that are crucial to individual survival.

are wired into the evolutionary old limbic system (especially the amygdala), the “emotional” part of the brain

substrate

. Each is connected to the other two but each also has its own capacities

current research (LeDoux 1996) indicates that all emotions are not necessarily packaged into a single system, and there may be more than one emotional system in the brain.

Secondary emotions are those that are experienced or felt, evaluated, and reflected on. Secondary emotions involve higher brain centers in the cerebral cortex.

ethologists

cognitive ethologists want to know what it is like to be another animal.

concerns how emotions and cognition are linked

A sense of self in the act of knowing is created,

various brain structures map both the organism and external objects

I am inclined merely to delete it [the mental realm] from biological explanation, because it is an entirely private phenomenon, and biology must deal with the publicly demonstrable.”

abanac postulated that the first mental event to emerge into consciousness was the ability of an individual to experience the sensations of pleasure and displeasure

Examples of animal emotions

Studies of the chemistry of play support the idea that play is enjoyable.

rats enjoy being playfully tickled.

grief in geese

grief and depression in orphan elephants is a real phenomeno

It is unlikely that romantic love (or any emotion) first appeared in humans with no evolutionary precursors in animals

No one discipline will be able to answer all of the important questions that still need to be dealt with in the study of animal emotions

However, research that reduces and minimizes animal behavior and animal emotions to neural firings, muscle movements, and hormonal effects will not likely lead us significantly closer to an understanding of animal emotions.

studies of the behavior of captive animals

Field work also can be problematic. It can be too uncontrolled to allow for reliable conclusions to be drawn.

Emotions are an integral part of human life, so why not for other animals?

in many instances, differences in degree rather than differences in kind.

y rare, a 2009 study by Belgian researchers found that 41 percent of hospital and rehab patients with a vegetative state diagnosis were actually minimally conscious

n a few cases, this technology has enabled rudimentary communication with patients trapped inside an unresponsive body. In the future, some scientists believe, it may be possible to directly decode these patients’ thoughts.

technology that created these disorders in the first place.

ut a badly damaged brain is not necessarily unconscious. The recent research tells us quite clearly that human consciousness is not binary. It can exist in degrees, fade in and out, even when the body is unresponsive.

wen also described a new way to assess mental function in unresponsive patients. It involves scanning someone’s brain as they watch an 8 minute clip of an Alfred Hitchcock film. When healthy people do this, various parts of the brain synchronize their activity at certain times in the clip. Owen argues that if brain injury patients exhibit similar patterns, it could be a telltale sign of residual cognitive function.

imple yes-no communication probably isn’t enough to allow patients to participate in decisions about their care.

Gallant’s lab has shown that it’s possible to reconstruct still images and video clips from the patterns of activity elicited in the brain of the person viewing them. If Gallant can see what your visual cortex is doing, he can tell you, more or less, what you’re looking at.

men with higher degrees of symmetry enjoy more sexual partners than men of lower symmetry.

Both men and women rated symmetrical members of the opposite sex as more attractive and in better health than their less symmetrical counterparts. The differences can be just a few percent—perceivable though not necessarily noticeable.

"It makes sense to use symmetry variation in mate choice," said evolutionary biologist Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico. "If you choose a perfectly symmetrical partner and reproduce with them, your offspring will have a better chance of being symmetric and able to deal with perturbations."

Women with a WHR of 0.7—indicating a waist significantly narrower than the hips—are most desirable to men.

Psychologist Devendra Singh of the University of Texas studied people's waist-to-hip ratio (WHR).

0.8 to 1.0 WHR in men is attractive to women, although having broad shoulders is more of a turn-on.

Where fat is deposited on the body is determined by sex hormones; testosterone in men and estrogen in women. If a woman produces the proper amount and mixture of estrogen, then her WHR will naturally fall into the desired range. The same goes for a male's testosterone.

"The idea is that beauty is conveying information about health and fertility, and we admire that,

Men's faces are shaped by testosterone, which helps develop a larger lower face and jaw and a prominent brow.

Research reported last month found women both smell and look more attractive to men at certain times of the month.

The rules of attraction, it turns out, seem sometimes to play out in our subconscious.

A 2002 study found women prefer the scent of men with genes somewhat similar to their own over the scent of nearly genetically identical or totally dissimilar men.

The power of music to affect memory is quite intriguing. Mozart's music and baroque music, with a 60 beats per minute beat pattern, activate the left and right brain. The simultaneous left and right brain action maximizes learning and retention of information. The information being studied activates the left brain while the music activates the right brain. Also, activities which engage both sides of the brain at the same time, such as playing an instrument or singing, causes the brain to be more capable of processing information.

strengthen or weaken emotions

certain types of music such as Mozart's Sonata for Two Piano's in D Major before taking a test

releases neurons in the brain which help the body to relax.

average of 119

f 111,

average of 110

Healthy and Not So Healthy Effects

studying the effects of the beat of the music. It was found that slow music could slow the heartbeat and the breathing rate as well as bring down blood pressure. Faster music was found to speed up these same body measurements.

One cannot deny the power of music.

study music have higher grade point averages that those who don't

GABA neurons help dopamine neurons calculate reward prediction error.

it sheds new light on how behaviors can be reinforced,

new theories or treatments for addiction.”

prefrontal cortex’s ability to boss the brain increases with age.

reward system can outmuscle the master planner.

adolescent brain specifically evolved to respond to rewards so teens would leave behind the protection provided by their parents and start exploring their environment — a necessary step toward the independence they will need in adulthood.

So that’s why you have parents to act as your prefrontal cortex,” Frank jokes. Then, all too often, he says, “you reach adolescence and you don’t listen to your parents anymore.”

brain acts as the sculptor and chops away excess synapses. Scientists refer to this process as synaptic pruning.

If you have ever thought that the choices teenagers make are all about exploring and pushing limits, you are on to something

necessary phase in teen development

exploratory period.

Even laboratory mice experience a similar phase during their development.

Young mice that explore most tend to live longest

magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. The scanner relies on a powerful magnet and radio waves to create detailed images of the brains

Teens also can play games that require them to make choices,

observing and measuring which parts of the teens’ brains are most active

During the risk-taking and rewards-based tests, one region deep inside the brain shows more activity in adolescents than it does in children or adults, Crone says. This region, known as the ventral striatum, is often referred to as the “reward center”

Adolescents are particularly sensitive and responsive to influence by friends, desires and emotions, researchers say. It’s one of the hallmarks of this stage in life.

eel good” response helps explain why they often give in to impulsive desires.

to be shouting louder” between the ages of 13 and 17 than at any other time during human development.

prefrontal cortex, it’s the brain’s master planner.

brain is locked in a tug-of-war between the logical pull of the prefrontal cortex and the impulsive pull of the ventral striatum.

prefrontal cortex seems to lag in developing. It turns out this delay serves an important evolutionary function,

So it’s important that the master planner not be too rigid or restrictive during adolescence. Instead, it stays open to learning.

One of the processes involves axons, or fibers that connect nerve cells. From infancy, these fibers allow one nerve cell to talk to another. Throughout the teen years, fatty tissue starts to insulate the axons from interfering signals — it is a bit like the plastic that coats electrical cables.

In axons, the insulating tissue allows information to zip back and forth between brain cells much more quickly. It also helps build networks that link the prefrontal cortex with other brain regions, allowing them to work together more efficiently.

The second key process involves synapses. A synapse is like a dock between nerve cells. Nerve cells communicate by transmitting chemical and electrical signals. Those signals move through the synapses.

brain starts discarding many of these connections

So the brain strengthens the synapses it really needs and eliminates those that either slow things down or aren’t useful.

A major goal of psychology is to predict behaviour by understanding its causes. Making predictions is difficult, in part because people vary and respond differently in different situations.

differences in extraversion, intelligence, self-esteem, anxiety, aggression, and conformity.

we cannot always predict who will become aggressive or who will perform best in graduate school or on the job.

behaviour is that almost all behaviour is multiply determined, or produced by many factors.

depression is caused by lower-level genetic factors, by medium-level personal factors, and by higher-level social and cultural factors.

single cause.

are not independent of one another

much human behaviour is caused by factors that are outside our conscious awareness,

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who argued that many psychological disorders were caused by memories that we have repressed and thus remain outside our consciousness.

biological influences

abilities and characteristics of individual people

social groups,

Research psychologists use scientific methods to create new knowledge about the causes of behaviour, whereas psychologist-practitioners, such as clinical, counselling, industrial-organizational, and school psychologists, use existing research to enhance the everyday life of others.

collect and interpret data in their everyday lives

accepting explanations for events without testing them thoroughly may lead us to think that we know the causes of things when we really do not.

Empirical methods include the processes of collecting and organizing data and drawing conclusions about those data

scientific method as the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that scientists use to conduct empirical research.

Statements that cannot be objectively measured or objectively determined to be true or false are not within the domain of scientific inquiry

Values are personal statements such as “Abortion should not be permitted in this country,” “I will go to heaven when I die,”