Describe three methods that psychologists use to study the brain. Identify the potential advantages and disadvantages of each method that you describe. Lesions Provide a Picture of What Is Missing: This is one way that psychologists use to study the brain. In this method, they will be studying if a human brain is live or damage. One of the major advantages of this method is that the brain can be fully studied and disadvantage is that by the time they study the brain, it may not be active anymore. For example, testing or studying the human brain after the strokes fall, automobile accidents, gunshots, or tumors. Recording Electrical Activity in the Brain: Another way of psychologists uses to study the brain by studying the electrical activity created by the firing of its neurons. In this method psychologists used one that can be used on living humans, is electroencephalography (EEG). This can be so useful method because an EEG can show if a person is asleep, awake, or …show more content…
anesthetized as well as it can be used for reading, writing, and speaking. A particular advantage of EEG is that the participant can move around while the recordings are being taken. Since EEG do not provide a very clear picture of the structure of the brain, we can this as a disadvantage of this method. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): This is another way that psychologists use to study the brain which is a procedure where magnetic pulses are applied to the brain of living persons. The main propose of this method is temporarily and safely deactivating a small brain region. Number one advantage of this method is that it allows the researcher to draw underlying conclusions about the influence of brain structures on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. However, this method does the impossibility to stimulate deep brain structures directly. Trichromatic theory: There are three kinds of cones in the retina, each of which responds to a specific range of wavelengths blue-violet, green, and yellow-red.
The proportion of each of the three cones types that are active determines our perception of color. Evidence suggests that trichromatic theory accurately describes color processing in the retina itself. Opponent-process theory: Color-sensitive receptor cells are linked in pairs: black-white pairs, yellow-blue pairs, and red-green pairs. If an object reflects blue light, it will simultaneously excite the blue sensitive receptors and inhibit the yellow-sensitive ones. The opponent-process theory explains color vision at the level of the ganglion cells and in the cortex. It provides a good explanation of afterimages. When the yellow-sensitive component of the yellow-blue pairing, for example, becomes fatigued through continued stimulation, only the blue component is able to respond, shifting the perceptual balance toward that
color.
The three primary colors - as far as light is concerned - are red, green, and blue. In order to "see" images, the human eye enables light to stimulate the retina (a neuro-membrane lining the inside of the back of the eye). The retina is made up of what are called rods and cones. The rods, located in the peripheral retina, give u...
Penfield’s recherce and brain stimulation he was able to map the brain and its functional organization in living people. During his experiments he found that sending a shock to certain parts of the brain would have different reactions. By using this method Penfield was able to find the cause of epilepsy seizers and destroy it. In one case the patient would smell burnt toast right before a seizer, he used this knowledge to probe the limbic system to recreate the smell. None of this would have been possible without the map he created, the map was so influential that it is still used today. However, we no longer need to cut open the skull to see what inside, thanks to modern medicine MRIs are used to see what’s going on in our
The human eye requires both rods and cones for normal vision. Over 100 million rods are located in the periphery of the human eye, and about 6 million cones compose the fovea. Rods, the more sensitive of the two to light, are not able to differentiate wavelengths, thus cannot detect color, and perceive shades of grey, black, and white. Cones, on the other hand, are of three types, containing particular pigments. They are categorized as red, blue, and green depending on to which wavelength they are most sensitive. These cones are what render color vision to humans.
One of the most important (and most interesting) conclusions of the biology of vision is that color is not technically generated by physical reality. Color appears to be a mental construct, and therefore, everyone views color differently. The rationale one is often given for the color of particular objects is the following: light consists of all colors. When light strikes an object in absorbs most of the wavelengths of light, but those that it reflects correspond to the color one sees.
Throughout history the way we live, the way we interact with other people and the way and reason we create art has been carefully structured by countless factors that we encounter every day of our lives. Many of these factors can be grouped together and categorised as 'Psychogeography', the term coined by French theorist Guy Debord in 1955. Debord's definition described the term as 'the study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions & behaviour of individuals’(1), in his work he deeply considered the effects that physical structure in the environment has on the way humans interact with each other and the space they inhabit. Guy Debord was a part of an organization that encouraged and supported the ideas of like minded artists, theorists and intellectuals called the 'Situationist International' (SI), whose ideologies were of prioritising the study and discussion of real life; temporal subjects that concerned modern society. A principle cultivated by the SI that closely relates to psychogeography is the idea of dérive ("drift"). Debord illustrates the theory of dérive as an environmental distraction, 'In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there'(2). Dérive alludes that when humans detect changes in elements of our geographical surroundings natural instinct causes us to change our paths. Debord also describes the act of dérive in a way that connotes the idea of invisible auras that surround individual locations, "The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the spa...
He suggests that when analyzing colors and their role in brain processes, we are misinterpreting the way it should be understood. When we speak about these sensations that are synonymous with the brain processes, it should be said as “There is something going on which is like what is going on when ____,” (149). In the case of seeing red as mentioned before, the statement would appear as “There is something going on which is like what is going on when I have my eyes open, am awake, and there is an emission of red cast from an object, that is, when I really see red." Ultimately, I do not believe this response is an adequate answer to the objection. It appears that Smart is merely altering the linguistic nature of the question rather than providing a solution to the problem. This “something” neutralizes the difference between a brain process and a sensation without giving a sound reason as to why or how they would be considered identical rather than
This essay examines the advantages and disadvantages of using a method primarily for gathering research on human subjects that can be examined for later use. It will give a basic outline of the methods of investigation, their uses and their suitability. I will also look at the scientific method as a whole and examine the criticisms of this method using the writings of Hume and Popper.
Color Vision Development in Infants: The Responsibility of Cone Types and Wavelength in Order of Color Development
The experimental design of the research involves the organization of an experiment to effectively test the study’s hypothesis. In addition, it involves setting up proper manipulations and measurements of an experiment. To test this specific hypothesis, the researcher will need significant resources, such as direct scanners, to test and analyze the variables. The variables in the study will include the plasticity of the human brain during different life stages and the age differences between individuals. The experimental design includes independent and dependent variables, which the researcher will thoroughly test and
Some researchers hypothesize that each color triggers certain hormones eliciting different responses. Biologically, we (with the exception of those who are colorblind) perceive color the same. However, it
...t differences in colour therefore relies on the sensitivity of different types of cone cell within our retina. This is what enables us to see the full spectrum of visible light from blues into the deep reds. It is evident from studies with dogs, birds, snakes and other animals that having a different number of cones, or having these cones sensitive to different wavelengths causes a completely different perspective of our colour world. As a result Dichromatic or Monochromatic humans who are missing a certain type of cone(s), or even trichromatic humans with a cone sensitive to an anomalous wavelength can be labelled as colour blind. Whilst these ‘colour blind’ individuals are usually still able to detect differences in colour across the visible spectrum of light they ultimately see the colour world in an abnormal way to an individual with a normal visual system.
There are 3 different types of cone cells in the human retina “the L, M, and S cones” that can respond only in certain wavelengths of light “short, medium, and long lengths”. Through the opponent process the color experience is measured from those three distinctive signals. With the knowledge of the univariance principle, we need to always take into account that the firing cells always depend on the number of photons absorbed. The three responses of the three different cones are determined by the respective photoreceptor proteins having the ability to absorb the photons of the many different wave lengths on light. So, for example, an S cone cell contains a photoreceptor protein that more readily absorbs short wavelengths of light (i.e., more "blue"). Light of a longer wavelength can also produce the same response, but it must be much darker to do
Unlike other psychology fields, biological psychology usually deal with biological functions of human brain. It tends to study how different areas of brain influence human behavior and how neurons associate with one-another. Social and cognitive psychologists mainly study the human behavior through social or interpersonal aspects, which the research methods in these fields usually correlate with observation and analysis, such as experimental research and survey research. However, the research methods in biological psychology are tend to be more scientific with numerous laboratory examinations than other psychology fields. Due to one of the central purposes of biological psychology is to understand human behavior in biological perspectives,
Naor Raz, G. (2001). Understanding the role of color object representation; Evidence for multiple levels of interaction.
Color constancy is of great biological value since it allows the adaptation across differing scenes and the identification of objects under different lighting conditions (Faruq, McOwan, & Chittka, 2013). A study by Jin and Shevell (1996) examined color constancy in relation to color memory hypotheses. Their results support the surface-reflectance hypothesis which states that the color recalled from memory depends on the spectral reflectance properties of the object but not on the spectral power distribution of the illuminant. Other studies focused on the neural mechanisms behind color constancy, identifying 3 major such mechanisms: cone adaptation, spatial comparisons of cone and cone-opponent signals, and invariant cell responses (Foster, 2011). It is worth noting that a number of studies have found color constancy either to be imperfect or that the experimental results varied so much, that constancy does not exist (Foster, 2003). Despite the fact that illuminant metameric failure clearly contradicts color constancy, and that the mechanisms mediating color constancy still remain unclear, the general consensus is that such results cannot be used as an argument against color constancy (Logvinenko, Funt, Mirzaei, & Tokunaga,