When I first saw the journal question “What color is the sky” I immediately thought that this was a tricky question because the sky has no defined color. However, when we shared our journal entries with the rest of the class, I realized that even if I have always believed the sky has no color…
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Mass Hysteria: Anybody’s Illness
I’ve always had an interest in mental disorders and the effects they can have on a person. My interest in psychological disorders was furthered after we researched and “diagnosed” Van Gogh with his own mental disorder. I’ve always been fascinated with how the mind can become sick like the rest of our body. However, there…
Art Therapy for Incarcerated Suffering from Mental Illness
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of 2005, more than half (61%) of prison and jail inmates had a mental health problem, the majority of them (24%-40%) suffering from major depressive or mania symptoms. Major depressive disorder is characterized by persistent episodes of depression with loss of pleasure/interest in life, and mania (manic…
A Spectrum Beyond the Eye
One topic in this class that immediately intrigued me was tetrachromacy. I’ve always had the question of “What if what I view as blue, someone else views it as what I see as purple?”. A question like that may sound ridiculous to an adult who has had no background in the dynamics of vision…
Where Did Van Gogh’s Mind Go?
There is a lot of mystery around what ailed the renowned painter Vincent van Gogh. Some doctors think he had epilepsy, some think he had manic depression or schizophrenia, and others think he had a mix of both conditions. Personally, I believe van Gogh had temporal lobe epilepsy, which led to manic depression. According to Dr. Blumer,…
Stigma on Personality Disorders
The progressive world that we know today is characterized by constant new scientific discoveries, such as cures to long standing diseases and discovering the intricacies of the human genome, as well as an ongoing cultural revolution: everyone must be treated with fairness, and be viewed in the same way, no matter a person’s race, ethnicity,…
Learning by Doing
One of the journal prompts that we received in class was about the different methods we had used to learn about the structure of the retina. I found this topic to be particularly interesting because it made me think about how the process of learning can be achieved through multiple mediums; and different mediums can…
Is Nearsightedness a Genetic Defect?
When I was in high school, I started to notice that if I sat far away from the board, I couldn’t read the words as well as I could if I were closer to the board. I thought it was normal that things were slightly blurry if they were far away because humans are not perfect,…
Alcohol, the Brain, and Relationships
Researching the impact that alcohol can have on the maintenance of relationships is an important topic because alcoholism is a prevalent issue in our society that is affecting many people. This could possibly be prevented through further research on the effects that alcohol can have directly on relationships, as well as educating the public on…
different ways of seeing
There are millions of species of animals that inhabit this earth, including us. We come in all different shapes and sizes, with different behaviors and anatomies. But one of the most incredible things about us is that we all work. There is not one single way to survive. Some of us walk on two legs,…