Click here to watch and read about the ‘Game of Death’ where contestants on the show did not realise they were taking part in an experiment to find out whether television could push them to outrageous lengths. The game involved contestants posing questions to another “player”, who was actually an actor, and punishing him with 460 volts of electricity when he answered incorrectly………..
Click here to watch a mockumentary that students created for homework.
Here is a nice overview of a range of non-intrusive brain imaging that are used in a number of your core studies such as Maguire, Dement & Kleitman.
The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between eye movements and dreaming.
The study had three hypotheses:
1. There will be a significant association between REM sleep and dreaming.
2. There will be a significant positive correlation between the estimate of the duration of dreams and the length of eye-movement
3. There will be a significant association between the pattern of eye movement and the context of the dream
Procedure/Method
The nine participants were seven adult males and two adult females. Five were studied intensively, while only a small amount of data was collected on the other four just to back up the findings of the main five.
The participants were studied under controlled laboratory conditions, whereby they reported to the laboratory just before their usual bedtime. They had been asked to eat normally but to avoid caffeine or alcohol on the day of the study. The participants went to bed in a quiet, dark room.
An electroencephalograph (EEG) was used to amplify and record the signals of electrodes which were attached to the participants face and scalp. Two or more electrodes were attached near to the participants’ eyes to record electrical changes caused by eye movement. Two or three further electrodes were attached to the scalp to record brain activity which indicated the participants’ depth of sleep. The participants then went to bed in a quiet, dark room.
The end is CUT OFF so here’s the rest of the narration:
“The question becomes: What happens when you allow both hands together to try and solve the problem? And what we find out is that they fight over each other. One hand knows how to do it and one hand does not. And so they more or less squabble. And the reason for this is that the hemispheres are disconnected. The right hemisphere controls the left hand and the left hemisphere controls the right hand and these are almost mutually independent systems as if two people were fighting over performing th task. One knew how and the other d one would fight for dominance over the situation. What have we gained from this research into split-brains? It is now possible to localize in one half brain, basic mental processes like learning and memory. This cuts the complexities of brain research almost in half so that in the future we can expect to achieve deeper insights into the mechanics of how the brain really works.” END
Click here to play the Pavlov’s Dog game and access related reading based on some of the scientific achievements of Ivan Pavlov, who was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Even though the first image that comes to mind with Ivan Pavlov is his drooling dogs, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his pioneering studies of how the digestive system works.
Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), as a measure of autistic traits in adults.
Click here to link to the test. The average score from a control group was 16.4, and 80% of those with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher.
This is not a diagnostic test – and many people who score above 32 and who meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger’s have no difficulty in functioning in their everyday lives.