Affective neuroscience

The graduate program, Cognitive and Affective Nueroscience, at Rice University encompasses interest on the topic of emotional regulation and its impact on mental health. On the faculty page of the Psychology department, I noticed that Dr. Bryan Denny was researching said topic and I am interested in working with him. My interest also spans to a curiosity about the impact that cultural upbringing has on emotional regulation skills. I believe that I have the qualities required for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience because I have been able to learn about emotion regulation and development throughout my courses in the education department and child and family studies department. I have also observed emotion regulation and development through working as a Teaching Associate, Teacher’s Assistant in a summer camp, and Library Assistant in the Learning Resource Center. It is my curiosity and empathy that make has led me to search for a career in psychology. My ultimate goal is to use the knowledge I gain from research…

“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”- William of Ockham. Occam’s razor; A principle in latin which translates to “No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary” (90). In the novel ‘The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time’ by Mark Haddon, the main character named Christopher Boone is a high functioning mathematical savant. It is stated in the back of the book that he “has no understanding of human emotions.” This is false. Christopher has the…

Although fighting for a belief is a noble act, people are never the same upon returning. Louise Erdrich makes this imperceptible idea into a concept that all readers perceive after reading the story. In “The Red Convertible,” Louise Erdrich uses symbolism of the red convertible to show how war can negatively affect one’s personality. The red convertible symbolizes Henry’s emotional state throughout the story. Before the war, Henry is a free man whose emotions are expressed outwardly, but upon…

Self-evaluation levels of children who wet the bed aged six to fifteen, were compared to those of their peers and to those of their parents. Results showed that enuresis children compared themselves no differently to their peers, but parents of children who wet the bed reported psychosocial difficulties in their children, suggesting that more communication between children and parents is needed with an importance in discussions that promote encouragement and positive reinforcement of…

I’ve never been able to explain my major in neuroscience without the someone asking me, “Oh, so you’re going to study diseases and disorders, like Autism and Alzheimer’s?” I’ve now realized that it isn’t their fault at all. I mean, that’s all we people in the neuroscience field ever really talk about anyway. It’s basically like telling a construction worker, “Oh, so you’re going to destroy buildings and use explosives?” The study of neuroscience isn’t merely focused on the disorders and…

The memory works in a process of three stages- encoding, storage and retrieval. This enables humans to learn new material, store the material and then retrieve and extract it at a later date when necessary (Eysenck & Keane, 2010). However, many psychologists have researched the effect of emotion on these stages of memory processing. Many have been interested in the idea of emotion affecting the ability to accurately retrieve past events due to many alternating factors. Some argue that matching…

Introduction This report is going to study the differences between orthodox medicine and complementary therapies for the treatments of conditions that affect different systems of the body. Next, the attitudes of the population towards complementary therapies will be analysed, as well as their psychological effects and contra-indications. The sources of information that claim the benefits of complementary therapies will be evaluated to know their reliability. Finally, it is going to be evaluated…

began during an independent research project in the second year of my master’s degree at Bangalore University. I was in awe when I realized how extraordinarily complex the neural mechanisms that support memory formation are and yet these profound neural events may be “undone” if the memories are not retrieved. Furthermore, I learned that memories can be embedded in chains, or “engrams”, composed of antecedent and subsequent events and may lack specific retrieval ‘checkpoints’. Despite having…

Building New Pathways In The Brain It was once commonly accepted that a person’s brain ceased to change after reaching adulthood. Science believed that each part of the brain had its own specific function, and if a certain part was completely damaged, nothing could be done about it. This led to a belief that treatment for many brain conditions was impractical and unjustified, or that even changing our character was unfeasible. But new discoveries in neuroscience have shown that the brain is…

In author Matthew Lieberman’s “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect,” he expounds on his research in social neuroscience, where he reveals how essential our need to interact and connect with others around us is and the role that the lack of social interaction is playing in our everyday lives. He goes on to explain that this need to be social is as, if not more, important as our physiological needs, such as food, water, and shelter. Lieberman uses various forms of data collected from…