Being Human

After reading the past posts dealing with sleep and health, I started to look at other resources on the subject. With my current sleep schedule of only getting about 5 hours per night, due to work, schedule school and a early bird daughter, I have experienced the increase stress level and mood swings this article discusses not only in myself but with my wife. I just thought some follow up reading might be interesting to others. I cannot really remember the last time I saw eight hours of sleep, I think I will try and do that more often.

The downside of running on empty

Scientists are finding more evidence that sleep deprivation can affect appetite, weight gain, diabetes risk, the strength of your immune system, and even your chance of developing depression.

In 2004, University of Chicago researchers restricted a group of men to only 4 hours of sleep per night. After just 2 nights, the men had an 18 percent decrease in leptin, a hormone that tells your brain when you are full, and a 28 percent increase in ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. These results were reinforced last October by a study of almost 10,000 adults that found that people who slept fewer than 7 hours a night were more likely to be obese than those who got 7 hours of shut-eye. "

Chronic sleep deprivation causes changes in metabolism that produce a state that stimulates hunger," Epstein explains. Sleep deprivation can also affect how your body handles insulin; insulin resistance puts you at risk for weight gain and diabetes.

In a study that's still under way, Van Cauter and her colleagues are looking at chronic sleep loss in a group of normal-weight men and women under age 30. Over 6 months, those who slept fewer than 6.5 hours a night were more insulin-resistant than normal sleepers who logged 7.5 to 8 hours per night.

The short sleepers, the study shows so far, need to produce 30 to 40 percent more insulin to dispose of the same amount of glucose. Still other studies suggest that over time, sleep loss may play a role in the development of depression.

There are many different ways to approach human development, which is even evident in our introductory text Notable Selections in Human Development.

I'm not just talking about schools of thought within psychology, like the difference between a Freudian psychosexual stages approach and a Paiget cognitive-developmental stage model.

I'm thinking a bit broader. I'm going to use categories that come to mind and give them my own names, although there may be a much better way to say the same thing.(This is tricky, so please excuse the rough outline. Maybe some of these are subcategories of others.)

For example:

Genetic model - Development as a function of genetic programming. We unfold within the set capacities of our specific biology.

Social model - We develop according to what the society we grow up in values and demands.

Environmental model - We develop according to how the environment has acted upon us, both individually and as a species. (An example? Nutrition.)

Self Determination model - We develop according to our choices. We are what we choose to be. These choices occur on both a conscious and unconscious level.

Spiritual model - We develop according to our soul and the moral/ethical choices that we make. (This is an attempt to describe something that isn't necessarily religious in nature, it could be a purely self-imposed and self-taught ethical/moral system or sense of self that is not merely mortal in nature.)

I'm sure there are more. Which ones can you think of? Are there important subcategories that you can think of?

I find that while I'm personally interested in how individuals come to be who they are, I'm even more interested in how individuals come to be different than they are now. The process, for the lack of a better word, of actively becoming.

I'm also personally interested in the interaction of all these elements within each individual and society, rather than looking at a singular model of "explanation" or description. So, this list is to help me to remember elements that go into making a person (rather than looking for a "right" one).

Patty

I watched this on 20/20 Friday night. From my personal experience I found it was pretty close to the experience I've had with my husband on a few points they made:

Attention to detail: They espoused that men don't pay attention to detail as much as women. They put a woman in a room alone for a period of time and then they put a man in the same room for the same amount of time. They then asked each to recall details of the room. The woman went on and on about every detail of the items in the room. The man had no idea what was in the room. Another point they made was that women process information faster. She asks a man a question and expects an answer right away - this is definitely the case with my husband and me.

Verbal Communication: I can’t recall the numbers, but studies were reported that indicated that women communicated verbally much more than me. My personal experience can attest to that.

Nurture: They talked about how women nurture their babies which drew a comparison to last week’s reading. A mother described her experience while breast feeding as euphoric and even orgasmic. On page 5 of Human Development the author states: “The baby’s obstinate persistence in sucking gives evidence at an early stage of a need for satisfaction which…….should be described as “sexual.”

There was an interview by Ben Barres, a world renowned neurobiologist who used to be Barbara Barres, but underwent a sex change. Barres made the statement that it's easier to be male in the science world. While at MIT Barbara solved a complex equation and the professor told her that her boyfriend must’ve solved it. She was the only one to solve the equation, but didn’t get credit for it.

in their book "The Scientist In the Crib,Minds Brains, and How Children Learn", the authors talk about one facinating phenomenon. Up to about 7 months of age babies from any country can differentiate sounds like l and r. At ten months the American babies still could hear the difference but the Japanese babies could not tell the difference! The mom's and care givers of these babies had laid down a biased, native language tract for these children. I speculate what if all babies were taught multi-language to hard wire for all intonations. Also in the book they talked about an experiment that had a baby kitten's one eye covered for a period of time. Even tho this eye was fine the kittens brain would not "see" out of the covered eye when the eye was uncovered. How crazy is that. We talked in seminar about how our brain networks inside itself. I guess you use it or lose it.

I decided to start reading "The Ape and the Sushi Master" before the quarter started because of its captivating title. I have a friend who continually ridicules me for 'humanizing' my animals and this book continually refers to anthropomorphism, which is projecting our complex human emotions onto other animals, some animals who simply don't have the brain power to feel complex emotion. I couldn't help but incorporate my reading into my relationships with my pets even getting offended that the book dare to doubt my pet's (a 4' green iguana) brain capacity. I would never have thought a lizard could have so much personality and attitude. Then again, am I making all of this up because I'm projecting these personality traits onto her? If we so often do this inadvertently with animals, who says we aren't doing it to each other? Aren't we just a sophisticated, cultured animal? I often wonder if I really 'know' who someone is or if I'm making them out to be who I want them to be? Who hasn't dated someone and then looked back and asked, 'what was I thinking' or 's/he turned out to be totally different than I thought'? I'm also curious as to what pets other people have and if they too see their pets as more than just animals? Does each one seem to have different, distinguishing characteristics? My pets include the previously mentioned iguana, a 5 month old golden retriever, and 4 tree frogs. When thinking about my frogs, which even I can admit have limited brain function, I notice each one stands out individually in my mind. When I really think about the distinction between them, my analysis doesn't really go beyond feeding habits. Okay, I will wrap up. I can talk about my pets like other people can talk about their children. See you all tomorrow morning!

Mind Hacks

Science News reports on research that suggests that breastfed babies show measurable benefits in terms of action control and coordination.

The coordination of movement relies heavily on good general brain function. If you ever visit a neurologist for a neurological examination, you'll notice the majority of tests are to do with balance, muscle tone, movement and reflexes.

Hence, the examination of these functions can give a clue to how well the brain is developing.

A research team led by Dr Amanda Sacker set out to use these sort of tests to compare how breastfed and non-breastfed babies were developing.

To the researchers' surprise, [research collaborator] Kelly notes, children "were about 50 percent less likely to have a [developmental] delay if they had prolonged, exclusive breastfeeding when compared to those who were never breastfed." They defined breastfeeding as prolonged when it had lasted at least 4 months. Even babies receiving mother's milk for a short while—2 months or less—were 30 percent less likely to have a developmental delay than those who received solely infant formula, beginning right after birth.

The same team also recently reported results from another study that suggested that breastfeeding is linked to resilience in the face of psychological stress.

Link to Science News story.

Tonight on 20/20 they are looking at the topic of differences between the sexes. Just saw the preview for it and thought if may be interesting for members of the class to possibly check out. ou can check the previews for it at

abcnews.go.com/2020/

It sounds like it will be really informative to check out.

[Brought to front page by Rick]

College for individuals with disabilities is an incredibly specious form of discrimination. For those of us who are in college, conscientious attention to disability loving learning allows us to hear better the arguments of attentive, reasonable colleagues. I’ll ask we don’t refer to disabilities as limitations best eradicated. I am more than my disease and I am just like anyone else. The smart fostering of respectful learning begins here. I am happy to have a thoughtful learning community.

Billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen unveiled on Tuesday a $41 million computerized atlas of the 20,000 genes that animate the brain of the common mouse.

As the first of its kind, the privately funded atlas encompasses 85 million photos, 250,000 slides and a gigabyte of laboratory data on each gene.

A mouse brain, weighing little more than a teaspoon of sugar, may be hundreds of times smaller than the human brain, yet both require the activity of thousands of genes. Mice and men share almost 90 percent of their genes.

Read more from this article here.

If you are interested in this work, you should check out the website for the Allen Institute for Brain Science. There is a nice little video on the site that quickly explains what they are doing and why they are doing it. There is also a link to the brain atlas.

The thing I find the most interesting is that Paul Allen funded this project mainly out of an interest in determining the difference between organic brains and computers. It will have meaning that far exceeds abstractly comparing computer function to organic brain function, however.

The first thing I personally thought of while reading about this project is how computers and brains are now starting to act together more than ever.

An example of this would be brain implants.

While the EEG contacts the only the patient's scalp, brain implants are surgically implanted directly into brain tissue. Most implants are used in patients with Parkinson's disease or other movement disorders. They work by sending electrical shocks to the brain that result in improved muscle control.

But with a new implant called Braingate, communication moves in the opposite direction. An implanted sensor transmits the brain's electrical signals out to a computer-interface, allowing the patient to operate the computer with thought commands. (See "Hardwired with Braingate" sidebar for information on the first patient.)

Other neuroscientists are developing microchip brain implants to ease the distress of patients with Alzheimer's, strokes and other memory-impairment disorders. While use in human patients is probably 15 years off, the researchers are confident that their chips already accurately mimic the activity of neurons in the hippocampus (a part of the brain that re-encodes short-term into long-term memory).

Like the fMRI and the EEG/computer interface, it's likely that the brain-computer interface will have non-medical applications in future, especially when the wireless technology is perfected.

(AP) -- Boy or girl? Almost half of U.S. fertility clinics that offer embryo screening say they allow couples to choose the sex of their child, the most extensive survey of the practice suggests.

Sex selection without any medical reason to warrant it was performed in about 9 percent of all embryo screenings last year, the survey found.

Another controversial procedure -- helping parents conceive a child who could supply compatible cord blood to treat an older sibling with a grave illness -- was offered by 23 percent of clinics, although only 1 percent of screenings were for that purpose in 2005.

For the most part, couples are screening embryos for the right reasons -- to avoid passing on dreadful diseases, said Dr. William Gibbons, who runs a fertility clinic in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which assisted with the survey.

"There are thousands of babies born now that we know are going to be free of lethal and/or devastating genetic diseases. That's a good thing," he said.

However, the survey findings also confirm many ethicists' fears that Americans increasingly are seeking "designer babies" not just free of medical defects but also possessing certain desirable traits.

Find this article here.

Our program will be participating in a "World Cafe" on the topic of Identity. There are two readings for this event: We The People by Illich and Brown, and Who Am We by Sherry Turtle.

The World Cafe will take place in the TESC Longhouse.

Snooze your way to high test scores - being-human - New Scientist

If you are trying to commit something to memory, take a nap. Even a short daytime snooze could help you learn.

A good night's sleep is known to improve people's ability to learn actions such as mirror writing. REM sleep, when most dreaming occurs, is thought to be particularly important.

The role of sleep in factual learning has been less clear. Now Matthew Tucker at The City University of New York and his colleagues have shown that even a nap with no REM sleep can help.

Volunteers were told to memorise pairs of words (a test of factual learning) and to practise tracing images in a mirror (action learning). When they were tested straight afterwards and 6 hours later, those who had been allowed a nap of up to 1 hour before the re-test scored 15 per cent better in the factual test than the non-nappers, but no better in the action test (Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, vol 86, p 241).

"Traditionally, time devoted to daytime napping has been considered counterproductive," the researchers say. It now seems sleep is "an important mechanism for memory formation".

It looks like we'll be meeting in Sem II C3109, and the college has been so accommodating as to take a picture of our room! Here it is:

Five minutes with Liz Spikol

Q: What positive things do you have in your life that you wouldn't have gained without your experience of mental illness?

A: I've absolutely gained a sympathy for people who are, for lack of a better term, frail in some way. I have a deeper understanding of the way people arrive at undesirable places in their lives. I never look at a person and assume I know everything about them. I assume I know nothing, which means I'm not judgmental. The illness has also given me perspective.

After suffering that way and coming so close to death, nothing really bothers me. If I survived that, what can hurt me now? I feel fearless. My two mantras when I'm nervous about something are, 1) "What's the worst that could happen?" 2) "Will I even remember this in a year?"

Q: If you could add your own chapter to the 'training manual' of psychiatrists, what would it say?

A: Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. I would just write that over and over again until it achieved a brainwashing effect.

Check out Liz's blog here.

Noam Chomsky On The Spontaneous Invention Of Language

Q: If we were to take a handful of children and put them alone on an island, would they develop their own language?

A: Well, there are a couple of cases which indicate that. Of course, we don't experiment on humans, so we don't have an experimental answer. But there are a couple of natural experiments--which have just happened--which seem to indicate that's exactly what occurs. There's one fairly recent case, and then one from years ago.

Forget flashcards, let's play!

The drive to keep American education competitive on the global stage has led some parents and preschools to drill toddlers with flashcards. But many early childhood experts, rebelling against that tactic, are on a mission to swing the pendulum back toward play. Play is more conducive, they say, to the flexible thinking and lifelong learning demanded by globalization.

"For preschoolers, learning has become 'Learn the one right answer,'... So we have a lot of toys built for passive children," says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a Temple University psychology professor and an adviser to PlayWorks. Rather than see children as empty vessels, developmental psychology has for decades endorsed the idea that "children need to be active explorers in their environment," adds the coauthor of the new book "Play = Learning." While many children's museums dedicate a place for young children to learn through play and discovery, PlayWorks has taken innovations to the next level and incorporated research on child-development into every detail.

Article: Play = Learning: A Challenge for Parents and Educators

I've just been alerted by the bookstore that they've made a mistake in ordering one of the books for Human Development (Fall, 06). The book that was ordered was:

NOTABLE SELECTIONS IN RACE AND ETHNICITY.

The book that they SHOULD have ordered (and are now rush ordering):

NOTABLE SELECTIONS IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.

If you bought the wrong book, the bookstore will exchange it for the correct one (whether you have a receipt or not).

The complete list of books that we will be using this quarter is:

1) Diessner, R & Tiegs, J. (Eds.) Sources: Notable Selections in Human Development. McGraw-Hill Higher Education

2) Bloom, P. (2005). Descartes' Baby. Basic Books.

3) Harris, J. R. (1998). The Nurture Assumption. Free Press.

4) de Waal, F. (2001). The Ape and the Sushi Master. Basic Books.

PLEASE NOTE: Descartes' Baby (#2) will NOT be available in the bookstore (another snafu). Please order this book on-line.

Star Trek: Is Commander Data a Person?

To begin our exploration of this question, we shall consider an interesting thesis, advanced in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation ("The Measure of a Man"). In that episode one of the main characters, an android called "Commander Data," is about to be removed from the Starship Enterprise to be dismantled and experimented upon. Data refuses to go, claiming to be a person with "rights" (presumably, this includes what we are calling the moral right of self-determination). He believes that it is immoral to experiment on him without his consent. His opponent, Commander Maddox, insists that Data is property, that he has no rights. A hearing is convened to settle the matter. During the trial, the attorneys consider the very same questions that concern us here:

* What is a person?
* Is it possible that a machine could be a person?

How Elizabeth Spelke Peers into the Infant Mind.

Over the past three decades, Spelke has created a series of ingenious studies that have given us a picture of the baby mind which is far different from the long-standing view of it as, in William James’s famous formulation, a "blooming, buzzing confusion." As Spelke likes to say, there are some forms of knowledge that humans get "for free." Even at two and a half months, she argues, infants apprehend certain laws of the physical world -- for example, that objects are cohesive and distinct and cannot pass through solid surfaces, and that they move along expected trajectories unless something obstructs them. Contrary to the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget -- who believed that babies were born with sensory capacities but with no real knowledge, and who theorized, in 1954, that infants lacked a sense of "object permanence" -- Spelke says that even newborns understand that things still exist when they can no longer see them. Babies, in her view, have a sense of other people as "goal-directed agents" who are capable of forming intentions and acting on them. And humans are endowed with a natural sense of geometry, an ability to orient themselves in space.