--Original published at Kate's College Blog

Media Production Project: Curcumin Improves Mood and Memory

Summary:

Researchers studied a very hot topic in mental health today: is there a way to improve memory and mood? Researchers at UCLA explored this question by conducting a research experiment that answers this question by using doses of curcumin to improve memory and mood in adults. Curcumin is found in turmeric and has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. The researchers hypothesized that having a daily consumption of a certain form of curcumin, memory and mood will be improved in people with mild, age-related memory loss.

The research performed was a double-blind, placebo-controlled study which included 40 adult volunteers between the ages of 50 and 90 years old. The participants were randomly assigned to receive either the placebo or the dosage of 90 milligrams of curcumin twice daily for an 18-month trial. All 40 participants received a standardized cognitive assessment at the beginning of the study and at 6-month intervals after that. The participants curcumin levels in their blood were also monitored at the start of the study and after the 18-month trial. Thirty of the forty volunteers underwent positron emission tomography, or PET scans, to determine the levels of amyloid and tau in their brains at the beginning of the study and after 18 months.

The participants who took the curcumin doses experienced significant improvements in their memory and attention, while the participants with the placebo did not. The people taking the curcumin improved in memory tests by 28 percent over the 18 months. Those with the curcumin intake also showed mild mood improvements. The PET scans also showed significantly less amyloid and tau signals in the amygdala and hypothalamus in those with the curcumin doses. These results can suggest that taking a safe form of curcumin could provide meaningful cognitive benefits over the years, however more research needs to be conducted in order to generalize these claims to the population. In regard to the results of this experiment, they can be concluded to the targeted population of 50 to 90-year old with mild, age related memory loss.

Original article: 513 words

My summary: 337 words

Reflection:

I found it easy to summarize my news article due to it already being pretty short, I could easily see what the important information was and how to translate that into my own news article. When I wrote my summary, I connected my article back to the 5 critical questions and checked off if I answered the question or not. Being in the journalists shoes I found to be more difficult, cutting out less important information to fit the word limit. I also found it to be more difficult after I went down the questions, because I then had to add information to the summary in order to answer all 5 of the critical questions. However, in the pop culture article, not all 5 critical questions were answered, so in my summary I included more information that went along with the questions while the news article did not. Both my summary and the news article included the main ideas though, for example how the study was conducted, the variables, and the results. I wanted my readers to be able to grasp the main ideas of the research, understanding the study with common terms and details. I also had to sacrifice some information to not go over the word limit. For example, I chose to leave out that four people had mild side effects of nausea because it did not seem like a pivoting point made in the research study, it was just thrown in at the news article at the end and was very random. My perspective of journalists has evolved positively over this series of projects. I gained insight on how journalists write and the steps they take to follow the 5 critical questions, the differences between scholarly and pop culture articles, and the reliability of different sources.

Citations:

Small, Gary W., et al. “Memory and Brain Amyloid and Tau Effects of a Bioavailable Form of Curcumin in Non-Demented Adults: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled 18-Month             Trial.” The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol. 26, no. 3, 13 Oct. 2017, pp. 266–277., doi:10.1016/j.jagp.2017.10.010.

University of California – Los Angeles. “Curcumin improves memory and mood: Twice-daily supplements boosted cognitive power over 18 months.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 23 January 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180123101908.htm>.

--Original published at Hope's PSY105 Blog

Many people believe they will not be affected by news stories; they believe they will keep their same opinions no matter how many news stories they read or what the opinions of the articles are.  Researchers Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton decided to find out with college students, who believed their opinions would not change, but the opinions of their peers would.

The first time they met their group, they received feedback on different political issues.  They then gave them two weeks to forget what they had read and what they had given as their own opinions.  When the students were brought back, they were presented with different information that would persuade them one way or the other then questioned their opinions.  Many people gave their answers and did not believe their opinions had changed in that two weeks with the persuasion presented to them.  However, when asked if they believed other people’s opinions had changed, they said yes.  Those who said other people had changed their opinion had changed their opinions themselves.

The thought that their own opinions had not changed was largely due to egocentric bias.  With egocentric bias, people believe that they are not as easily influenced as others.  They believe that while their opinions on topics have not changed, others have changed significantly enough to notice a difference.  The problem is with a person’s own egocentric bias, they do not think they can be affected.  Even after opinions have clearly changed, these students believed outright that they were steadfast in their opinion, but their peers could not do the same.

By using political articles and trying to persuade the students, they changed their views on issues such as gun control, trade wars, and health care.  This matters because if a candidate running for office is able to persuade voters with small bits of propaganda, it could significantly affect the results of the election.  This has been demonstrated many times before in times of war and in voting processes, but it often occurs in one’s subconscious.  People do not realize they are changing their opinions, but the more propaganda they see, the more their opinions change one way or the other.  The research also found that although someone may have one opinion, if they are easily persuaded and changed, it matters interpersonally.  Someone who says they feel one way but is easily persuaded another opinion may not be trusted.

While not all of the critical questions were answered in this article, I sympathize with the journalists in not answering all of them.  For a seemingly informal article, one might not believe that all of the critical questions need to be answered, but when claims are supported by research, the critical questions should be answered.  The article was specific in saying how the experiment was conducted, who was involved, and what the results were.  However, they generalized the information they gathered to the general population.

Journalists have a difficult time with news articles, particularly ones that involve extensive research.  Showing that college students believe they are not affected by different media stories but their peers are does not always prove true for the general population.  It would be difficult for the researchers to survey everyone in a population, so I can understand that they would not be able to find information for everyone.

Works Cited

Hyman, Ira E. “You’re Vulnerable, but I’m Immune.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 31 Jan. 2018, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-mishaps/201801/youre-vulnerableim-immune

--Original published at Emily's Blog

Media Production Project (original: 444 words) (new: 404 words)

Summary:

What is the obsession with drinking coffee in the morning? Alberto Ascherio of Harvard School of Public Health believes, “Drinking coffee offers a boost of energy and a lift in well-being. This short-term effect is what drives the consumption of caffeine,” The question remains, does drinking coffee affect our mental health? Alberto Ascherio and his team were also curious about this because coffee is the highest consumed caffeinated substance in the world. So, Ascherio and his team studied 50,000 women with a mean age of 63 to see the effects of coffee consumption on their depression rates. After eliminating those who were currently clinically depressed, there was a total of 50,739 women. The team checked in on the women every two years and assessed their coffee consumption with questionnaires. Surveys were also sent to the women to assess their depression rates, social interactions, physical health, mental health, exercise rate, their consumption of decaffeinated coffee, and their consumption of other caffeinated substances. This data was averaged together and included in their research. From this information, the researchers split up the data into categories based on how much coffee they consumed daily. The results of this study show the regular coffee drinkers reported lower issues with obesity and other health-related issues including depressive symptoms. To check for inconsistencies in their calculations, the team created more categories involving the women who became clinically depressed during the study as well as one assessing the consumption of decaffeinated coffee and caffeinated substances other than coffee. The women who had become depressed over a 10-year period of the study showed results of less coffee consumption than others. Comments were added by the team at the end of the report explaining the risks of using coffee as an anti-depressant mainly due to its addictive tendencies. They explained some of the strengths of their study including the large sample size, assessment of outside variables, and repeated measures of consumption. The team is careful to note this study was observational and thus cannot prove caffeine or coffee aids in possible risks of depression. They noted the bias in which the study included women with mild depressive symptoms, possibly those with sleep issues, and the possible inconsistencies in the reports of the women’s caffeine consumption. In conclusion, this study shows results which support the claim that caffeine consumption through coffee may possibly prevent and/or treat depression. So, feel free to keep drinking coffee, ladies!

Reflection:

Although my summary was shorter than the original article, I chose to leave certain aspects out. From the scholarly article, I did not include why they chose to study women over men. This is because about 20% of women are affected by depression in their lifetime. Also, women are more likely to become depressed than men. I did not include the time which the study took place which was from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. The audience understands the team reached out to the women and gathered data every two years which is more important than what period in which the study occurred. Another part of the scholarly article which I chose to leave out was what specific caffeinated substances, other than coffee, the researchers chose to add to their study. These include tea, soft drinks, and chocolate.

In the pop culture article, I chose to leave out some of the quotes and other outside sources which the author put in the article. This includes talking about the study done for men in Finland to test their coffee consumption. While this is evidence supports the argument that coffee lowers depression rates, it is not an important part of the experiment. My summary is not similar to the original pop-culture article because it contains more specifics about the experiment including how the women were chosen and what the process was of conducting the research. The pop-culture article fails to answer many of the five critical questions as they do not share about how they operationalized their variables, how they selected the participants, and what groups they assigned. They did include some information about whether there would be causal claims and the conclusions were generalized to the correct population of women.

I did include the five critical questions in my summary though I did not specifically restate them. The researchers operationalized their variables by measuring how much coffee they consumed every two years and putting the women into groups based on whether they were clinically depressed if they exercised daily, and if they were having frequent social interactions. Ascherio and his team chose their participants by using 50,000 volunteers who were not clinically depressed at the beginning of the experiment. The team assigned the women to groups based on their coffee consumption per day as well as their physical and mental health throughout the study. The method the researchers used did allow for causal claims because it was set up to see whether coffee affected women’s health. The research could not prove this causal claim because there is not enough evidence and there are many other variables possibly influencing the women. The conclusions of this study are generalized to women which were the participants being studied.

Journalists have specific deadlines for their work and a certain word count they must stay under. This causes the articles they write to miss key information which could be crucial to the audience’s understanding of the article. The pop-culture and scholarly articles were vastly different from each other. Other than the pop-culture having similar statistics and referencing Ascherio as the main researcher I would not have known the two articles were about the same study. This causes me to pause and look at media articles more in depth. I will look to see if they have answered the five critical questions of research and whether there is an original study which was done to support pop-culture articles conclusions.

Works Cited

Ascherio, Alberto, et al. “Coffee, Caffeine, and Risk of Depression Among Women.” Archives of Internal Medicine, vol. 171, no. 17, 26 Sept. 2011, pp. 1571–1577.

Steenhuysen, Julie. “Coffee linked with lower depression risk in women.” Reuters, Archives of Internal Medicine, 27 Sept. 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-coffee-depression/coffee-linked-with-lower-depression-risk-in-women-idUSTRE78Q3GK20110927.

--Original published at Emily Garvin's Psych Blog

Emily Garvin

Original News Article: (543 words)

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180112091206.htm

SUMMARY:

The article “Longitudinal Association of Amyloid Beta and Anxious-Depressive Symptoms in Cognitively Normal Older Adults” provides evidence for the connection between anxiety symptoms and early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative condition that affects connections between cells in the brain and leads to memory loss. Eventually, patients with this disease experience a loss in cognitive function and are unable to carry out daily life activities. Researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital examined how increased anxiety can be an early indicator for the development of Alzheimer’s disease by analyzing data collected from the Harvard Aging Brain Study.

Research participants of the Harvard Aging Brain Study underwent testing to evaluate brain activity necessary to make conclusions of the link between emotion and Alzheimer’s disease. Tests included baseline Pittsburgh compound B (PiB), positron emission tomography (PET), measures of amyloid beta, and annual examinations with the 30-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Researchers analyzed the PiB binding of a participant and used their score as a predictor of their GDS score or cluster. The participants were followed for five years and included 270 community dwelling healthy men and woman between the ages of 62 and 90 years old. Any potential participant with a mental health diagnosis other than mild depression were excluded from the Harvard study. Researchers concluded that elevated amyloid beta levels also occurred in patients who live in established communities and have anxiety symptoms and ultimately increased their risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers also caution that further longitudinal studies are needed to verify and replicate this finding.

REFLECTION:

For the scientific article summary, I opted to provide a concise summary of the research study. I included the general information about Alzheimer’s disease, the unique method of analyzing data from another study that was used, and the conclusions of the study. I did not use the five critical questions of reading research to frame my summary.  While these critical questions are useful, the research study that I selected was not a typical research study. The researchers used data collected from a different study. They did not interact with the participants directly. Using the existing data saved both time and money, but the limitations including participant selection were not controlled by these researchers.

Within this reflection, I will now use the five critical questions of reading research to compare and contrast my summary and the pop culture article. The researchers operationalized the variables by defining specific depression symptoms. They applied these definitions to the data set by examining changes with each symptom over five years. Relying on the existing data set from Harvard study limited the study by only analyzing normal or average men and women who have no known psychiatric disorder and are between the ages of 62 and 90 years old. I included this information in my summary, and the pop culture article also specified the exclusion criteria. Both my summary and the pop culture article did not provide the complicated statistics from the research article. The average person with limited understanding of the statistical modeling would comprehend that information. My summary and the pop culture article are directly based on the research study with no signs of pseudoscience. Both my summary and the pop culture article also explain to the audience how the researchers did not conduct the research or assign participants to the Harvard Study. The method used allows for causal claims, but only I mentioned how it limits the study by excluding anyone who had a history of mental illness other than mild depression. The pop culture article did not include this information. The results indicated that when anxiety symptoms increase the amyloid beta levels also increase. My summary and the pop culture article include that more longitudinal studies are needed to verify and replicate this finding. They have the correct generalization to geriatric participants living in established communities.

After completing each of the class assignments, I have a better understanding of how a scholarly article is interpreted and reported by a journalist for a broader public audience. The pop culture assignment enabled me to critique an article that reported the findings of a research study. I found the article informative and interesting. Next, the scholarly article assignment provided me with the opportunity to read the lengthy research study and compare it to the pop culture article. The scholarly article provided more detail of how the study was conducted as well as the statistical evidence and analysis which led to the conclusion. I understood why the complicated statistical analysis was not included in the pop culture article, because most people would not be able to comprehend the information. Finally, the media production assignment forced me to act as the journalist. I had to decide what should be included in the summary for someone who has never read the scholarly article. It was particularly difficult due to the way that the study was conducted and the complicated statistics. I decided to provide enough information to be as concise and accurate as possible.

--Original published at Sarah's Blog

Could you be showing information about yourself on your social media without even realizing it? As technology has advanced, social media has become more prevalent in our society. It has integrated itself into our daily lives, becoming a main source for information and self-expression. Recent studies have shown that your social media profiles and posts could be sharing more about you than you would like.

A study done in 2017 discussed Twitter users and how their posts could be used to detect potential depression or posttraumatic stress disorder. The researchers split the study into two trials: one focusing on depression and the other on posttraumatic stress disorder. They used a survey to obtain participants for both trials. For the depression trial, they had a total of 204 participants. Of those, 105 people were diagnosed with clinical depression, and 99 people did not. For the posttraumatic stress disorder trial, they had 164 participants, 64 of those being diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. The participants had to use Twitter and be open to sharing their social media information for the study.

The research team used two algorithms to analyze the posts made by each user. One used the tweets to distinguish “healthy” users from users with depression (or alternatively, users with posttraumatic stress disorder). The other research method was able to distinguish some of the indicators of mental health issues by analyzing the user’s posts for language changes. Assigning words a score, the researchers used these scores as a way of determining when the participants’ symptoms were more apparent. They found that depressed users used more “negative” language, like using the words “death” and “never”. Healthy users used more “positive” language, like “beach” and “happy”. They also found that there was a correlation between the number of words and the onset of depressive symptoms. This research was accurate about 9 out of 10 times.

Even though this specific study can only be generalized to Twitter users, researchers hope to be able to use this study and other studies conducted to hopefully advance knowledge on this topic and looking into possibly using this as a way to help diagnose mental illnesses earlier.

Reflection

Before doing the first two parts of the project, I had judgements of the pop culture article. I thought that the information that the journalist wrote would be incorrect or not fully correct. Sometimes this is true, but after reading both the pop culture article and the journal article and then trying to write an article of my own, I have realized just how difficult it is. Journalists have to take very long and complicated research articles and condense them, so the everyday person is able to read and understand. Some journalists also have to work under word limits, like we had to for this assignment. With this study, I believe I was able to summarize it pretty well without getting near the word limit, but it is possible that with other studies with more information that it would be more challenging. It was also challenging to distinguish what pieces of information were the most important. There were so many different sections of the journal article that were hard to understand with my knowledge level of psychology and research. Journalists have to make sense of the scientific research and then decide which details are important and which ones are not. I believe that some of the facts can get lost in the “translation” and sometimes journalists specifically word things so they are more interesting to the reader. This can change the meaning of the article and can be misinterpreted as a result. Overall, this project was a challenge and I understand how journalists may have challenges as they write articles such as this one, but I will always read the journal article along with the pop culture article to make sure I get a full picture of the research.

Sources:

Evans, Cameron. “Identifying Depression Based on Social Media Posts.” Psychology Today. 20 January 2018. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainstorm/201801/identifying-

depression-based-social-media-posts

Reece, A. G., Reagan, A. J., Lix, K. L., Dodds, P. S., Danforth, C. M., & Langer, E. J. (2017).Forecasting the onset and course of mental illness with Twitter data. Scientific Reports, 7(1). doi:10.1038/s41598-017-12961-9

--Original published at Anneka's Blog

Mothers undergo many changes as they embark on the journey of pregnancy and motherhood, but unbeknownst to them, their brain may be going under significant changes to help with childcare.

A five-year study carried out by Elseline Hoekzema and 12 other researchers, published December 2016, shares research on the brain’s grey matter (GM) during pregnancy. Results revealed a decrease in GM across various regions of the brain. Researchers claim these reductions occur in areas that enrich emotional skills, facial recognition, and social skills and ultimately mothering.

Twenty-five women wishing to become pregnant and 20 control women, informed by word of mouth and flyers from a fertility clinic in Spain, participated in the study. Prior to conception and two months following delivery, both groups of women underwent a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and cognitive tests to study pregnancy effects on GM regions and cognition. Researchers found drastic GM reductions in the pregnancy group predominantly in the anterior and posterior midline, prefrontal cortex, and temporal cortex of the brain-areas involved in social behavior, and decision making. Reductions were also in the hippocampus, surface area, and cortical thickness. The control group had no GM change. The cognition tests yielded no correlation between cognition and pregnancy. Two years following, eleven women who had not had a second pregnancy underwent MRI testing again to analyze the endurance of the reductions. All reductions remained except for those in the hippocampus.

Researchers also tested the mother’s relationship to their child to analyze the correlation between the GM reductions and mothering. Researchers used the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale, and they found the size of the reduction correlated to whether the mother had more positive or negative reactions towards the baby. fMRI scans showed the most active brain regions when looking at pictures of one’s own child had GM reductions.

To make sure results were not impacted, researchers tested multiple variables for their effect. Conception and delivery methods, multiple births, and the baby’s sex had no effect. Male groups had no GM reduction limiting the brain change to pregnancy versus parenting. Studies are not without flaws. The sample population was made up of highly educated women in Spain and cannot be generalized to the public. Time spent with the child between delivery and the post-testing and lifestyle changes were also not considered. Additional research is needed to discover the diminishing molecule structure. While results show support, they do not prove a cause and effect as the participants cannot be ethically randomly assigned into groups.

This study gives the foundations to delve deeper on brain changes during pregnancy. Only future research can give us a better understanding on the vast power of our brain.

Word Count: News Article (1126), Own (444)

Reflection

I did not find summarizing the article too difficult. Having summarized the article twice already in the other two sections, I had a general knowledge of the article. In addition, the high word count of The New York Times article gave me ample room for my summarization. I did though try to keep it as brief as possible. Condensing is something I still need to work on because I have the tendency to overthink what is important. For example, I wanted to include the information about how there were also grey matter reductions during pregnancy in rats and similar reductions during puberty as other evidence of large grey matter changes. I decided at the end to not include it as my summary was sufficient without it. I kept in mind some of the questions posed for the pop article critique to help guide my writing. Since this post is on my public blog, it should be worded in terms that are understandable to the public. While writing, I added the five critical research questions to give an accurate description of the scholarly article. It gives legitimacy to the research. The questions also guided my writing in comparison to the news article. The news article left out some information regarding three of the questions. In my summary, I gave more depth into participant selection, generalization, and operationalization of grey matter. In comparison to the news article, the research article content is similar. I also did not include some of the information they included from the scholarly article, because I did not see the information as crucial to add. One example is the theory of mind discussion, and puberty. Another contrast is the news article included interviews with different scientists.

After this project, I have more respect for journalists and writers. It is difficult to discern from fake attention-grabbing news to what is legitimate in the media, and I am skeptical at times. I have learned anything published takes a large amount of work. I recently had work published in my school’s newspaper and literacy magazine through my first-year seminar and there is a great deal that goes on behind the scenes with editing and submitting. For sharing a scholarly article, the journalists have to first find an article, read it, and then summarize it. With all the technical terminology, I had difficulty understanding my article at times, and I applaud journalists for their ability to condense the article in an understandable article especially lengthy study articles. They would also have to submit the work to the editor, and revise. Their article may not even be published at times. Overall, this cumulative assignment exposed me to the world of journalism, article analysis, and creation of one’s own article.

News Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/health/pregnancy-brain-change.html

Scholarly Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.4458

References

Belluck, P. (2016, December 19). Pregnancy changes the brain in ways that may help mothering. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/

Hoekzema, E., Barba-Müller, E., Pozzobon, C., Picado, M., Lucco F., García-García, D.,…Vilarroya, O. (2017). Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. Nature Neuroscience, 20, 287-296, doi:10.1038/nn.4458

--Original published at Brittany's Thoughts

Summary

In the United Kingdom, bromances among young men are becoming much more common. In a study done at the University of Winchester in the United Kingdom, the researchers found that many young men do have bromances. The researchers Stefan Robinson, Adam White and Eric Anderson all work at the university as professors. The young men they used for the study were all second-year students in the sports department. There were 29 participants in total. The men were interviewed about their relationships with their previous and current bromances, as well as any past or current girlfriends.

From the interviews, the researchers discovered that the men all categorized their bromances as like a romantic relationship without any sexual contact. They found that the men valued their bromances very highly and that they trusted their secrets and insecurities with them more than their girlfriends as well. The men stated that their bromances are less judgmental than romantic relationships because their bromance partner would judge them less for their embarrassing qualities. Many of the men also felt that they could be their true selves with their bromance partners, but that they could not with their girlfriends. All but one of the men even admitted that they cuddle with their bromance partner, an act that is platonic in nature for them.

This study does not apply to the general population though due to the lack of diversity in the sample. There still is something to say about the fact that almost thirty men in the same department all have or do engage in a bromantic relationship. Also, the fact that most of them value it over their romantic relationship is also quite a find. The researchers believe that some of these relationships could be maintained after college. They also noted that many of the bromances may be broken after marriage due to the constraints that can come on any friendship after a marriage.

Reflection

It was not hard for me to summarize the article. I picked out all the main points that the article had made about the findings and how the research was conducted. The article was not a difficult article to summarize. It made quite a few points in its findings, but it did not have so many that I had to sacrifice a large portion of the important information for it. My summary was only a third of the size of the article. This is mainly because the article restated some of the same points multiple times or talked about portions that were not incredibly significant to understanding the results of the study. I did leave information out, but it was information that was not vital to the understanding of the results. I stated the most major findings from the study that I felt were most important. I can understand how it would be hard because of the amounts of information in the journal article itself. It has so much information that it can be very hard to comb through, especially with all the technical parts of the research and results. Journalists do have a difficult job, and I would have trouble as a journalist since I am typically a very wordy writer about many things. Doing the three assignments has opened my eyes to the career of a journalist, and it has changed my mind about them. I have less of a negative idea about journalists now since I understand how hard it can be to write an article accurately.

Pop Culture article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/201710/bromance-over-romance-say-men-in-new-study

Scholarly Article: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320363210_Privileging_the_Bromance_A_Critical_Appraisal_of_Romantic_and_Bromantic_Relationships?enrichId=rgreq-a91efad07fe1837fee9befaf7fdf5855-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyMDM2MzIxMDtBUzo1NTM2MTY5NTMwOTAwNDhAMTUwOTAwMzk3NTEwNw%3D%3D&el=1_x_3&_esc=publicationCoverPdf

--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

What is the reasoning behind adolescents making reckless decisions? According to one study, the key to this is the enhanced striatal activity (activity in the corpus striatum) in their brains. This activity in the brain is generally linked to negative outcomes such as risky behavior and alcohol abuse. While this seems as if it could be detrimental and harmful to young ones, it also shows positivity. From the same study we can see that the enhancement of this activity is adaptive for learning, and shows adolescence is the peak phase for feedback-learning performance.

Over a five year span, 736 fMRI scans were taken across 299 people from the ages of 8-29, none of which were allowed any form of psychiatric diagnosis or psychotropic medication. These scans focused on the levels of striatal activity in three regions: the dorsal caudate, the ventral caudate, and the accumbens. In terms of sensitivity to learning signals, all three regions show a spike in the adolescent age area, with adults and children being lower. Then, they contrasted positive and negative learning during the same tests. In the dorsal caudate, it showed and even flatline across all ages tested. The ventral caudate shows a steady decline as age increases, while the accumbens displays a high level for children then adolescents plummet, and adults start to rise again. In general, the results do show adolescents respond the best (of the age groups) to feedback learning.

I didn’t know how hard it would be to write an article for this study. I judged the pop culture article pretty hard off of not putting enough information in there, but I felt I only added little to know info. I think it was just a basic to-the-point study, and all of the other things added in are just fluff. I think a decent amount of the information I brought forward was also put in the pop culture, with my article adding slightly more detail. I have a little more respect for journalists after writing that. Taking a psychological study and trying to turn it into a nice article for the public to read is pretty hard. This is especially hard when you have to try to answer the five questions of psychology without them being answered in the study you are using. My article shows that striatal activity and feedback are the two variables measured via fMRI. Two big unknowns are how they select the participants, and the doubt for causal claims. We assume the conclusion is generalized toward the right population since it was targeting adolescents throughout the study.

Citations

Leiden, Universiteit. “Adolescent brain makes learning easier.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 December 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171221122925.htm>.

Peters, S., and E. A. Crone. “Increased Striatal Activity in Adolescence Benefits Learning.”Nature Communications, vol. 8, no. 1, 19 Dec. 2017, pp. 1–9. Nature, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-02174-z.

--Original published at Collin's Blog

Is love at first sight actually real? According to most people it is a common way of knowing whether the person you meet is meant to be the love of your life. Love stories all start with a couple meeting each other for the first time and knowing from the beginning they laid eyes on each other that they were meant to be together. This scenario is depicted in the media constantly through movies, tv series and traditional love stories. This idea is not completely wrong, however as described by the Triangular Love Scale love at first sight does not meet the criteria for true love. The true criteria being that the relationship needs to exhibit passion, commitment and intimacy. In love at first sight encounters, only passion experienced whereas there is no time to create and intimacy or trust that would lead to a committed relationship from a short interaction.
A series of studies done by Zsok, Haucke, De Wit and Barelds was conducted to test whether individuals felt true love at first sight in different scenarios. Four separate studies were conducted to collect results. The first study was an online study using 282 people, where pictures of potential romantic partners were shown to each participant. Participants were asked to report any feelings of attraction upon seeing the pictures. The next series of test were conducted in a similar manner on a smaller scale with only fifty participants completing the online study. The third study was face to face dating where participants met each other randomly in groups and at the end of the session were asked if they felt any attraction or feelings of love at first sight with anyone else from the group. Lastly a speed dating study was done where participants would meet one on one and were able to have a more personal connection to each other. At the end of the studies, the results showed a few interesting correlations within the data.
The first was the obvious that people were more likely to report feeling love at first sight towards beautiful or good looking potential partners. Also, it seemed that men more frequently felt love at first sight than women, even though in all of the studies there was a higher percentage of female participants than males. Next, usually the feelings of love were not mutual, where one partner would feel great lust for another participant while that participant had no feelings of attraction to the other. Finally, it was concluded that love at first sight was not truly love. Instead, it may have been lust, a great sexual passion for a partner without commitment or intimacy being present in the relationship. To support this conclusion the participants who had experience love at first sight were asked what made them feel so attached to their potential partner. Most replied that they had felt a physical attraction for them but had not developed any kind of commitment or intimate relationship with the other. With time these kinds of relationship traits can come with time therefore it would be impossible to feel true love at first sight with someone who does not share any intimacy within their significant partner or feels committed to only that person. The only trait they feel is a physical and sexual attraction that is made during the first few moments of meeting their partner. This would lead to the conclusion of the study to be, love at first sight is rather a strong lusting passion for the partner, since it does not meet the full criteria of the triangular love scale.

Reflection:
While summarizing the news article I found it challenging to incorporate the details of the experiment and all the evidence that the study had answered the five critical questions for reading research studies. The scholarly article of the study gave each individual study in a lot of detail, however having a limitation on my article’s size, I could not incorporate some important aspects of the results of each study. Also, I could not include some of the specific methods the researchers used to collect the data from the participants. It could have been useful for the readers to know for example, that the groups formed in the third study were organized so that there would be roughly an equal amount of male and female participants in each group while also keeping the selection of participants to each group random. This made the study valid and generalizable in the sense that random assignment was incorporated into the research requirements. Some smaller details like the participation size for all studies and the method of recording the surveys taken by the participants are also useful information for the audience to know but could not be incorporated into the summary of the news article.
Otherwise, I believe I incorporated enough of the information from the research study into the news article summary for it to be valid. Also, by leaving out some of the unusful information given by the original news article, it made the research findings much more believable. An example of this was rather than using celebrity relationships as an example of people experiencing love at first sight, I only included the results from a variety of participants who had anonymously answered the surveys to the study. This decreased any chance of participant lying on the surveys. By quoting specific well-known celebrities it is more likely that the results given to the research group would have been filtered so that it would not hurt the celebrity’s own public image.
Original News Article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/201801/is-love-first-sight-real
Scholarly Article: file:///C:/Users/Collin’s%20Laptop/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe/TempState/Downloads/For%20Collin%20G.pdf

--Original published at Rachel's Blog

CTE can be defined as chronic traumatic encephalopathy which is a disease that affects the nervous system.  Previously, Alzheimer’s disease was linked to professional football players and military veterans due to bombs and explosions, but an earlier study showed that constant hits to the head can result in this disease, even in the absence of a concussion.  The most serious cases of people who have this disease is usually people who played contact sports and had repeated head injuries while playing.

To conduct this study, the brains of four deceased athletes who were 17 or 18 years old were analyzed. The commonality between the four athletes is that they all played football, and they all passed away between the time frame of one day to four months of having a head injury related to the sport. After all four brains were analyzed, there was visible changes to the brain that included leaking blood vessels and abnormal buildups of the protein tau, which can be linked to CTE disease.  These four brains were compared to four other brains of athletes the same age who have not had any head injuries before passing away, and when analyzed, there was no change to their brain. Their findings from looking at the brains under a microscope was that once they experienced a head injury, it caused the brain to change.

Even without a concussion, if someone has a head injury, this can still have an effect on the brain in the way it changes.  The problem is not the concussion, it is the side effects from the concussion that are making it questionable how it affects the brain.  They are currently trying to find a way to detect earlier in life if someone has the disease so that they could be treated. They are also trying to figure out how genetics and exposure to head trauma play a role in determining this disease.   

This same experiment was performed on mice in that they let mice experience a similar trauma that humans would experience when playing football.  It was called the “blast model” and this model was to simulate a head trauma. The results of this showed that the outcome was very similar to the human brain in that the mouse brain changed similarly to how the human brain changed after experiencing a head injury, and it helps to determine if this is what triggers the CTE disease.  Also, researchers found that the only way to determine if someone has the disease would be from an autopsy after they have passed away. Also, this disease can affect young athletes and can progress for the rest of that individuals life time.

Reflection:  Overall, summarizing the research article was a bit challenging because there was a great amount of important information given in the article.  A lot of the information from the scholarly article was not used because the original document was very large, and filled with the many experiments performed and the results.  I decided to just use the main tests that were presented in the news article, but I also made sure to incorporate more in depth results from the scholarly article.  For this article, it was important to just pay attention to the key details because most of the article was hard to understand, and I felt that maybe the average reader would not fully understand the findings since they were stated in scientific terminology.  There was also a lot of research that supported the findings, especially research that related to the brain, and there was multiple statistical results that were also not used because they were hard to understand.  Another thing that I tried to include in my summary was the answer to the five critical questions when analyzing research.  I did this because when writing the summary for the scholarly article and the news article, it was important to try to see if these five questions were answered.  It was important to try to include these five answers to the questions in the summary because these answers are essential when analyzing the research.

My perspective of journalists has changed in that I now see how much work is required for a news article.  It takes a great deal of knowledge for the author of the article to try to make sense of the journal article, and to analyze it and put it words that the average reader would understand.  Also, I realized another challenge that these authors may face is interpreting the article and being able to accurately portray the findings, without changing the meaning of the results.  When reading the scholarly article, it was noted that a few times there were differences in results between that article and the news article.

Kounang, Nadia. “Repeated Hits, Not Concussions, Linked to CTE.” CNN, Cable News

Network, 18 Jan. 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/01/18/health/cte-concussion-repeated-hits-study/index.html.

Tagge, et al. “Concussion, Microvascular Injury, and Early Tauopathy in Young Athletes after

Impact Head Injury and an Impact Concussion Mouse Model | Brain | Oxford Academic.”OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 18 Jan. 2018, academic.oup.com/brain/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/brain/awx350/4815697.