Psycholic

Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Defense Mechanisms - Sep 2012

Withdrawal

Have you ever tried to escape from troubles? It happens to me all the time when there are too many things to do, or when I feel too upset to face it. Temporary withdrawal can be a nice time-out to our life. If you think you can’t go on, try to sneak out and enjoy a dessert from a coffee shop.

Picture: Venus Lai

Remember, you can’t sneak out from your life forever! Overuse of withdrawal may lead to avoidant personality disorder, whose sufferers avoid social interaction and evaluation from others. So, get back to work when you are ready, or else you will find yourself lag behind when you want to catch up.

Venus Lai

Reference:
Withdrawal (defense mechanism) - Psychology Wiki (2012). Retrieved September 1, 2012 from http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Withdrawal_(defense_mechanism)

Avoidant personality disorder - Psychology Wiki (2012). Retrieved September 1, 2012 from http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Avoidant_personality_disorder

Contributions - Sep 2012

Dear Editor,

Recently I am fascinated by a TV program called “Test Your Brain”. This is a special series introducing the cognition of our brain, which is very much related to cognitive psychology. I think it would be right up in Psycholic’s alley, so I am writing up this contribution.

Image: natgeotv.com

“Test Your Brain” is a special series of National Geographic Channel. It contains three episodes only, and respectively they talk about perception, attention and memory. Stroop test and change blindness are examples of the topics they included. With entertaining and tricky demonstrations, it shows us how we are faked by the magicians and professionals. Many of the demonstrations have really come out of left field to me. Moreover, it uses detailed explanations to tell us the specific parts of brain related to the sensory illusions, which is somewhat related to biological psychology.

Image: downloadha.com

Watching the program is just like playing a brain game, to see how intelligent or stupid our brain is. I can still recall in one demonstration about perception, the demonstrator told us to watch carefully how he poured the water from two bottles alternately. I did as he said, and I totally neglected the absurd background, with three staff wearing animal suit walking around. When the “highlighted” demonstration is played, I stared with wide-eyes.

I would like to recommend this program to all psychology students and fans of psychology, as it applies the knowledge of cognitive psychology. It widens my horizon in the field. Currently this series is played on Pearl, on 3rd, 10th and 17th Sep at 21:30. If you have missed the program, you can still watch it with the following links:

http://v.sogou.com/v?query=test+your+brain&w=06009900&p=&_asf=v.sogou.com&_ast=1346756350&sc=index&sut=2554&sst0=1346756354559

http://video.baidu.com/v?word=test+your+brain&ct=301989888&rn=20&pn=0&db=0&s=0&fbl=800

Test Your Brain’s official site:

http://natgeotv.com/hk/test-your-brain

Yours Faithfully,

Venus Honey Lai =]

Psych-Action - Sep 2012

Organiser: Dept of Psych, CUHK
Name of Activity: Body and Brain Interaction in Decision-making and Emotion
Speaker: Prof Savio Wong, HKIEd
Type: Seminar
Date: 25th September, 2012 (Tue)
Time: 11:00 am
Venue: Room 619, Sino Building, Chung Chi College, CUHK

Organiser: Ctr on Behavioral Health, HKU
Name of Activity: The Transformative Nature of Grief and Bereavement
Speaker: Dr Joan Berzoff
Type: Seminar
Date: 10th October, 2012 (Wed)
Time: 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Venue: Rm 202, HKCSS Duke of Windsor Social Services Bldg, Wanchai

Sora Siu

Laugh Out Loud - Sep 2012

Ekman suggests that there are 6 universal facial expressions to convey emotions, for instance, people from America or New Guinea can also recognize those facial expressions accurately.

Can you match the facial expressions in the following photo to emotions listed in the chart?

A.Surprise B.Happiness C.Anger D.Sadness E.Disgust F.Fear

Photo: Michael, 2011

Please send the answers with your NAME and CONTACT NUMBER to salford.psy.hk@gmail.com on or before 30th September, 2012. Those who got all correct will enter our lucky draw to win special prize!

Venus Lai & Stephanie Szeto

References:
Michael. (2011, June 6). The Channels of Emotion: Not (Just) in the Face! Retrieved August 10, 2012, from Psych Your Mind: Applying psychology to everyday life: http://psych-your-mind.blogspot.hk/2011/06/channels-of-emotion-not-just-in-face.html
Smith, E. E., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Fredrickson, B. L., & Loftus, G. R. (2003). Atkinson & Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology (14th ed.). California: Wadsworth.

_________________________________________________________

The answer of 10th issue, August 2012
1. Social Facilitation = C
2. Social Inhibition = A
3. Group Think = D
4. Group Polarization = B

答對上期問題而被抽中的讀者是
Joanna Cheung

幸運兒可得到
記事簿及面膜各1份

由於參加者眾多，其他參加者將獲得安慰獎以作鼓勵。=）

特此鳴謝 www.sunnysideup12.com 的贊助

Andrien Photography - Sep 2012

Warren Adrien Tang

PsyPanacea - Sep 2012

Write to Panacea and you might be answered! We want to wipe that frown off your face. Remember, all askers remain anonymous. Just drop your question into our mailbox, or write to us at salford.psy.hk@gmail.com. The Goddess awaits your worries and woes.

Kristen Pereira

Dear Panacea,

Photo: news.nationalgeographic.com

My pen pal lives in a village in Indonesia. The more I get to know her, the more I learn about her life of fear. She has witnessed countless natural disasters, floods and earthquakes. Her family has suffered much loss. What’s more is that they have no certainty about the future in a country where anything can happen. It pains me to see her state. My family has decided to help her in material ways, but in addition to that, I really want to help her by being a good friend and offering emotional support as well. I think we can relate well since we’re the same age and have similar personalities. I really hope you can help me to help her.

DisasterMode

Pickpocket - Sep 2012

Limbic system is distinguished into “Honest Brain” and “Lying Brain”. The former was discussed last time. This time, the totally opposite one will be shown to you, “Lying Brain”.

The Lying Brain and Honest Brain (2)

The Lying Brain

Cerebral cortex is the last evolved part in our brain, so it is called neocortex, means new brain. It is also called thinking or intelligent brain because it is responsible for advanced cognitions and memorization. The existence of the cerebral cortex separates humans from mammal as most of the human’s cerebral cortex is used for thinking. This part of our brain sent Armstrong to the moon since humans acquired calculation, analysis, interpretation and intuition abilities, so cerebral cortex is an important part of the brain and full of creativities.

__________________________________________________________________

Photo: cbc.ca

<<Case Share>>
In 1999 December, an American customs officer with high alert stopped “Millennium Bomber”. When Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who lived in Canada, was about to pass through the borderline to America, a customs officer, Diana Dean, noticed he was nervous and sweating. So she asked him to get out from his car for advanced interrogation. After he got out, he tried to run away but got caught again before explosives and timers were found on his car.

Analysis
The nervousness and sweating the officer noticed are the response from the brain when people face pressure. This case can demonstrate how one’s emotions are presented through NVB and body’s responses, which the limbic system of Ressam showed them to the officer even he tried so hard to hide them.

___________________________________________________________

Even the limbic system of “Millennium Bomber” made the body sweating so much, his cerebral cortex still had million ways to hide his own emotions and intentions by answering to the officer “I don’t have anything in the car”.

Our cerebral cortex can let us easily tell our female friends that we like their new dresses and male friends that their new hair styles look cool; even we do not think so. In this way, cerebral cortex is full of creativity to lie and we can only look into the most truthful response from limbic system.

Extra - Sep 2012

明報在八月十七日介紹了我校的心理學課程，有幸我們的總編輯黎欣珩及副總編輯司徒素雪亦在訪問之列。她倆解說 Psycholic 由來之餘，還談到創作這份心理學月刊的得著與對將來發展的期望。

總編輯黎欣珩十分高興能集合一班擁有共同理念的同學一起創作 Psycholic。相片來源：明報
Venus Lai, Chief Editor, feels happy to work with psychology comrades on publishing Psycholic. Photo: Ming Pao

The newspaper, MingPao, introduced our program BSc (Hons) Psychology on 17th August 2012. It has been our greatest pleasure that MingPao has interviewed our Chief Editor, Venus Lai and Deputy Chief Editor, Stephanie Szeto. The two heads of Psycholic talked about the origin of this psychology newsletter, the gains of publishing it and their anticipation towards its future development.

副總編輯司徒素雪志在推廣有趣的心理學現象予大眾認識。相片來源：明報
Stephanie Szeto, Deputy Chief Editor, loves to see the interest in psychological phenomenon is growing on the community. Photo: Ming Pao

Pillars in the Making - Sep 2012

“Easy”, “Difficult” or “Slow to warm up”??

Development of emotion

Photo: gagasisterhood.com

Do you know what emotion is? It can be associated and considered reciprocally influential with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation. Sometimes it can also be influenced by biological factors, e.g. hormones. But do you know when emotion actually occurs? According to a survey done in the USA, most of the parents found that their babies show five distinct emotional expressions: interest, surprise, joy, anger and fear. We can simply divide them into three types of babies; easy temperament, difficult temperament and slow to warm up temperament.

Three types of babies

1) Easy temperament babies

There are around 40% of babies belong to this type of temperament. They are even- tempered, and they are typically in a positive mood, quite open and adaptable to new experiences. Their habits are regular and predictable.

2) Difficult temperament babies

There are around 10% of babies belong to this type of temperament. They are active, irritable, and irregular in their habits. They often react very unwillingly in changing routines and they react very slowly to new people or situations.

3) Slow – to – warm – up temperament babies

Around 10% babies are samples of slow to warm up temperament. These children are quite inactive, somewhat moody, and can be slow to adapt to new people and situations. Unlike difficult child, they often response to novelty mildly, rather than in negative ways.

Photo: babywisemom.com

Vicky Wong

Reference:
Firchow, Nancy M.L.S.. "Your Child's Temperament: Some Basics". http://www.schwablearning.org/articles.asp?r=495.

Psycovery - Sep 2012

Dementia 的新譯名

相信有留意上一期《心‧發現》的讀者都知道筆者介紹了腦退化症的致病原。以往， Dementia 是被譯為「老年癡呆症」，而「腦退化症」這個新名稱是為了釋除公眾對該病症的誤解及標籤。可是，「腦退化症」這名稱過於簡化，忽略了病變的過程，亦會令大眾誤以為這是一般年老的退化。適逢《精神疾病診斷與統計手冊》的第五次改版 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-V) ， Major Neurocognitive Disorder 將會取代 Dementia 作為這個病症的新名稱。而經過香港的主要學會商討過後， Major Neurocognitive Disorder會暫譯為「認知障礙症」。

癡呆症的曙光

這項發現為老年癡呆症患者帶來新曙光。
Photo: doctorssupport.org

筆者上期介紹了β澱粉樣肽 (Aβ, beta-amyloid) 組成的低聚物，能夠在腦部擴散，破壞神經元，最後聚集成澱粉樣蛋白斑塊 (amyloid plaque) 。最近，科學家在白鼠試驗中發現，移除其中一種酶 (enzyme) ，能夠有效降低蛋白斑塊的產生。

研究的關鍵是發現，只要移除一種名為 jnk3 的酶，就能夠降低白鼠大腦中的 Aβ蛋白多達百分之九十，證明了高活性的 jnk3 會導致高產量的 Aβ 蛋白。研究人員透過控制白鼠的基因，成功改變 jnk3 酶的活性，除了減低了Aβ 蛋白外，亦發現白鼠的認知能力有顯著的改善。

一般來說， jnk3的活性在正常人中偏低。而在阿滋海默氏症 (Alzheimer’s disease) 的患者中發現， jnk3 的活性比在正常人中上升近三四成。這項發現將有助了解該症的機制，將來研發有效根治或預防阿滋海默氏症的藥物。