Being Human

On a recent posting by Patty2, she mentioned “laughter clubs”. That sparked an interest…I wanted to learn a more about laughter and the relation to the brain as well as laughter’s benefits.

Laughter...it's fun...it's funny...but why do we do it? Why can't you tickle yourself? What part of the brain is responsible for laughter and humor? There are not many answers to these questions because there have not been very many experiments on the topic of laughter. Part of the reason for this is that laughter is not a big clinical problem. People do not go to the doctor because they are laughing and feel good. On the other hand, there are a some people with brain damage that MAY cause uncontrollable, abnormal laughter. Also, there is a type of epilepsy with gelastic seizures...these seizures cause people to laugh.

Here is a link to a little more on laughter. http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/laugh.html

I found the topic of “disgust” in the reading this week rather interesting. This article discusses the anatomy of disgust.

For many of us, 21st century life is very clean. Much of our lives is devoted to avoiding aspects of life which disgust us. The middle classes live in pristine suburbs, removed from the dirt and grime of inner cities. They avoid public transport so as not to be pressed up against strangers. They shop in supermarkets which package their food in a comfortingly sterile way, giving no hint of the abattoir it emanated from.

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/A/anatomy_disgust/intro.html

This article caught my eye. It discusses the importance of spontaneous play and the development of children.

Many parents load their children's schedules with get-smart videos, enrichment activities and lots of classes in a drive to help them excel. The efforts often begin as early as infancy...

It is available here.

This recent article in the Olympian provided an analysis regarding the Washington state 10th graders. Gender, race, and income level were all factors...

In relation to gender there were no achievment gaps noted in subject of math. This was not the case in other subjects.

Tenth-grade boys in schools across South Sound improved their performance in reading, nearly reaching the bar set by their female counterparts. But a wider gap remains between boys and girls in writing. "The boys and the girls have improved at a steady pace, but the boys have been behind the girls," said Suzanne Hall, Tumwater School District executive director of student learning. "The girls are still outperforming the boys, but the gap is getting smaller."

link

There seems to be some great information available regarding Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development.

Here is a useful link on the subject matter.

Although there is no general theory of cognitive development, the most historically influential theory was developed by Jean Piaget, a Swiss Psychologist (1896-1980). His theory provided many central concepts in the field of developmental psychology. His theory concerned the growth of intelligence, which for Piaget meant the ability to more accurately represent the world, and perform logical operations on representations of concepts grounded in the world. His theory concerns the emergence and acquisition of schemata—schemes of how one perceives the world—in "developmental stages," times when children are acquiring new ways of mentally representing information.

Link

I am new to the world of Wikipedia and have found it very helpful.  I do have a question about items listed on Wikipedia.  Does anyone know if there are any limitations to the content such as accuracy etc?  As I mentioned, it's all new to me.  I would love to know more about it, especially since it is related to the end of quarter project.  Thanks in advance.