Category Cognition And Development

Post Of The Week – Tuesday 27th July, 2021

1) Neocortex And Cerebellum Here’s Hank Green talking about these two areas and why they might be important for what makes us uniquely human. This is useful for showing us how neuroscience changes as assumptions are challenged. 2) Disorders In our course, we study Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as an example of a pathology. In doing […]

Post Of The Week – Saturday 17th April 2021

1) Understanding The Neuroscience Of Autism Grainne McAlonan speaks here about the neuroscience of autism in this podcast. She explains how individual differences can be understood. Her research tries to understand how genetic differences are then influenced by environmental factors, focusing on sensitive periods of development. It’s an example of how the nature-nurture debate has […]

Post Of The Week – Saturday 10th April 2021

1) Meet Your Microglia This video from SciShow Psych is well worth watching. When we study Biopsychology, we focus on neurons. There is a good reason for that. We have known about them for well over a hundred of years, we can detect their activity using EEG and can see them in post-mortem studies of […]

Post Of The Week – Saturday 3rd April 2021

1) Online Apps For Depression One of the strengths of CBT for depression which we consider as part of our course is that CBT can be adapted for online use, making it accessible for people who might not want to see a therapist face to face. This article suggests that such therapy can be effective. […]

Post Of The Week – Saturday 27th March, 2021

1) Genes For Autism When the human genome was published 20 years ago, people thought it would be possible to identify genes for particular conditions. This has turned out not to be the case but the idea persists as an assumption. This article explains the problem. There are genetic variants associated with autism but these […]

Post Of The Week – Sunday 21st March 2021

1) OCD And The Adolescent Brain We’ll be looking at biological explanations of OCD in Year 1 next week. Here is an article about OCD and the adolescent brain. It contains ideas about how OCD in adolescence might be researched. 2) Change The Story This is a link to a fund raising campaign for the […]

Post Of The Week – Saturday 27th February 2021

1) Human Genome In working on the Biological Approach in Year 1, I have been trying to explain how developments in brain imaging and in genetics in the 1990s led to the belief that it would be possible to offer sufficient explanations of behaviour and disorders in terms of biology. This article explains how, in […]

Post Of The Week – Sunday 21st February 2021

1) Characteristics Of Depression We’ll be looking at clinical characteristics of depression in Year 1 in the next few weeks. This article explains how loss of interest and pleasure in activities is a characteristic of depression. It also explains why reactivating such activities is beneficial. 2) Nicotine Replacement Therapy We’ll be looking at this as […]

Post Of The Week – Saturday 13th February 2021

1) Social Cognition We’ll be look at this as a sub-topic in Year 2 after half term. Here, Barbara Sahakian and colleagues look at the impact on young children interacting with each other because of pandemic restrictions. It’s a story about nature and nurture. It is also a story about the connection between social cognition […]

Post Of The Week – Saturday 6th February, 2021

1) Steven Pinker’s Lectures These are for his introductory course in Psychology. They are great, especially for AS students as we make our way through Approaches. Lecture 2 – Psychoanalysis And The Behavioural Approachl https://harvard.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=bc3f3706-b0a3-4657-99f5-acbd0026b6ef Lecture 3 – The Multilevel Cognitive-Biological Approach https://harvard.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=4cf43826-87b9-4389-997d-acc200d51558 Lecture 4 – Evolution Of Mind And Brain https://harvard.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=72e35c99-79a2-49a0-8a1a-acc400d02e4f# 2) Ethics Of […]