Well it's about time...

Part of the letter I received today.

WOOHOO!

Still here.

I thought I'd mention I'm still alive.

We moved house last weekend, which I'm still recovering from I think. Husband has been really great in taking over most of the responsibility of the move so I can focus on my thesis. It seems to be paying off too - my supervisor seems to think I can probably submit my thesis NEXT WEEK. I don't particularly believe that yet though. I keep expecting something will come up, like some big unforseen-yet-obvious mistake that means I have to start my thesis again from scratch. My supervisor also warned me that when I finish I am unlikely to have some big feeling of joy and relief, but rather a feeling of unease. That is because it will too late to fix any of those possible mistakes and the examiners will be reading my thesis and judging it (me).

People have asked me what I plan to do when I finish. So far my answer has been: sleep and probably some existential crisis about what I'm supposed to do with my life. Husband's answer has been: BABIES! In all honesty though I really need to work on finding a post-doc job first - long before any baby-related options. 

Anyway. Perhaps I'll report back next week with the good news that I am in fact finished. Or I'll just avoid posting since I don't want to admit I'm still going. 

Or I'll just not post because I'm asleep.

[via]

Dear Teenage Lozzz123

So after enjoying both Kirsti and Gina's letters to their highschool selves, I thought I would jump on that bandwagon when I realised I had plenty to say to the teenage version of myself. How this younger me will actually get this letter however, I haven't decided. I'm either thinking time-travel phonebooth...

[via]

...or letterbox that can deliver mail to the past. 

[via]

(Highschool Lozzz123 loves Keanu Reeves, so it's only fitting that I should use the time travel movies he's been in as inspiration).

Dear Teenage Lozzz123,

Psychology Pet Peeve: "We Only Use 10% of Our Brains"

Do you ever remember being told that we only use 10% of our brains, and if we could only figure out how to use the 100% we'd be geniuses, and possibly psychic as well? Considering this concept (or parts of it) has been attributed to people such as Albert Einstein, I can see why it would be believed.

I thought it was one of those things that most people knew by now to not be true, so imagine my surprise when last year the movie Limitless came out, with the premise that you could take a pill to make you use 100% of your brain. To be fair, I haven't actually seen this movie, but hearing about it in the ads made my blood boil so I thought it best to avoid (Bradley Cooper, we're still cool though).

The truth is however, unless you've had some sort of brain damage - you use all of your brain! If you were using 10% only - which part are you using while the rest is switched off? If you think about even some of the things the brain is doing simultaneously - controlling your senses, accessing memories and thinking about the future, planning and executing movements including speaking and walking, regulating hormones, and oh yeh, making sure you keep breathing - well I'd be a bit concerned if my brain was only working 10%! Also, our brains take up a major chunk of our energy resources: up to 20%! If only 10% of it's working, that's a bit of an energy waste and could be considerably smaller in that case.

Like our friend Homer here! [via]

Now please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you're an idiot or making fun of you if you did believe this previously - to be honest, I kind of thought it might be true until the first week of my Psych courses where they specifically mentioned this is a myth. My pet peeve is more to do with poorly researched articles and movies perpetuating this sort of thing. It also seems to be a particular pet peeve of this guy, who actually wants you to contact him if you find someone stating this so he can correct (yell at?) them.

Ok gripe over!

Question for you:

- Do you have any pet peeves (doesn't have to be psychology-related, though if it is I'm sure I'll commiserate with you)? Feel free to share in the comments.

P.S. Albert Einstein in fact never said that.

P.P.S. To pester me, sometimes Husband says things like: "Oh I guess I forgot to do the washing up, because I only use 10% of my brain" aargh!

Something about work.

Well in what is basically completely copying from Little Missy Me who answered the following questions that came from here, I too have decided to jump on the bandwagon and talk about work stuff.

1. What is the worst job you have ever had?

I would have to say it's a tie, between the job I had at a bakery (which I've actually already mentioned here), and a clothes store. While at the clothes store I really liked most of the staff I worked with, I am really not cut out for retail. I kind of hate people (sorry people) so although I was supposed to approach each person who entered the store to greet them in a bubbly manner and make them spend all their money, I much preferred to go in the opposite direction and avoid them entirely, and just fold shirts and stuff. Even worse was when I had to work at the outlet version of the store which was super messy and the people were so cheap (would try to get you to give them a discount on a $5 item because it was the last one and not in their size - so what!?) and rude. Seriously, people wouldn't even say words to get my attention, they'd just click (one person even kind of hissed at me)! I was extremely satisfied the day I got to quit. Ok gripe over haha. 

2. Have you ever been fired?

Yes. Though I like to think that none of those situations were actually my fault, but actually due to this guy who I think was a job curse, or a harbinger of firings, if you will.  

3. What would your dream job be?

Well I think it would be a psychology academic (which I'm currently on track to be if I ever finish my PhD!), but also to be able to be a clinical psychologist and see clients too (which does require more uni, but I'm ok with that!). However, after I went to the zoo on the weekend, I also would be pretty happy working with gorillas. They are awesome, and it's a good excuse to include another gorilla picture!  

More of my zoo pictures here and also on my facebook page.

4. What did you want to be when you "grew up"?

I was a pretty ambitious kid. I was under the impression that doctors and lawyers were the most prestigious and smart-people professions, so I was happy to be either of those. However, psychology started to stand out to me as a teenager (which I spoke about a bit here) as the profession I really wanted to be involved in when I grew up. Something about it just clicked when I was looking into it, that made me think 'this is what I'm meant to do'. Also I do realise psychology is kind of a 'helping people' profession, and I've just stated earlier that I hate people - this is obviously a bit contradictory! So to clarify, I think I'll say I hate people out in public, who often seem to be selfish, loud and annoying (and clip their nails on public transport. Seriously this happened on the train on Sunday on the way to the zoo). However the workings of people's brains, and how things can go wrong (and how to fix it) really really fascinates me.

5. How old were you when you got your first job?

I think 16 or 17? It was towards the end of high school. It was at a little cafe/deli and I didn't mind it, except for the cleaning. However, this was the start of the job curse and I eventually got fired because they ran out of money to pay me (though now I think of it, perhaps that was just their nice way of getting rid of me because they thought I was crappy?). 

Well on the topic of work, maybe I should now go do some, hey! 

Is your hand an alien?

No, not like ET. [via]

Is it weird that I have a favourite syndrome? I really don't wish to make light of what I'm sure is a difficult situation, but I truly find Alien Hand Syndrome (AHS) fascinating. It also probably doesn't help that there are documentaries about it that have terrible/amusing re-enactment scenes (I love dodgy re-enactments). So what is it and how does it happen?

 

I should note this is really quite rare; according to this BBC article in 2000 there were at that time approx 40 people with an Alien Hand. Basically, although it can occur due to brain damage (and possibly even a prion disease), it is most well known for occuring following a surgical procedure called a corpus callosotomy. Some people have seizures that are so severe that medication does not help. As a last resort (though to be honest I'm not sure how often this happens now), surgeons will sever the two brain hemispheres at the corpus callosum - the part of the brain that allows the two hemispheres to communicate with each other. Doing this means a seizure will only be localised to one hemisphere and the seizure can no longer spread to the entire brain. This means the effects of the seizure will be far less debilitating for the sufferer. However this often brings with it a curious side effect: sometimes parts of one side of the body will at times no longer seem to be under the person's control. As the left side of the brain generally contains most of the language functions, and the right side does not, when they are separated it is hard to consciously understand what occurs on that side - hence the behaviour of the left hand seems inexplicable and disobedient (yes I said left hand - this is because the hemispheres of the brain control the opposite side of the body). As such their hand appears 'alien' to them and does all sorts of bizarre behaviours. 

No, not like Thing either.

Anecdotes include a person with one hand trying to get dressed and doing up buttons, with the alien hand simultaneously trying to undress them; one hand trying to put a cigarette in their mouth and light it, while the alien hand slaps it away "I guess he doesn't want me to smoke!"; and enter the terrible re-enactment - the alien hand trying to drive the person off the road (at ~5 min of this youtube clip of an AHS documentary, though consider watching the whole thing, pretty interesting). 

What can be done about this 'wayward' hand? In case of brain injury, it is possible that with time and recovery it will gradually come back under the control of the person. However in other cases where the connection has been permanently severed, this may be less likely. There has also been a study that tried antipsychotic medication and botox injections to control 'limb leviation' frequency in the alien hand; however the antipsychotic was found to cause a psychotic episode (yes strangely that can happen), and I'm a bit unsure what I think of the botox idea - isn't it just paralysing the arm? As such management techniques may be better: for example, occupying the hand with other tasks such as grasping an object.

I remember seeing some of the abovementioned documentary when I was younger, and it further cemented my love for psychology and neuroscience. Also with AHS comes some intriguing philosophical questions: Does the less dominant right hemisphere actually have a different (potentially more primal) personality that is usually under the control of the more rational left hemisphere? Does AHS refute free will /are we really in control of our own actions? Do you love poorly-acted re-enactments as much as I do? Ok the last question isn't so philosophical but important nevertheless. 

P.S. If you're interested in more information please feel free to ask me, as I obviously love talking about it! This 'stuff you should know' clip on AHS is cool too. 

P.P.S. For no real reason I can think of except all the cool kids are doing it, I now also have a facebook page. So please 'like' it for updates and special extras*!

*content may not be special or extra.  

Are you finished YET?

Seriously, how is it SEPTEMBER already! Where has the year gone?? Before I know it, it will be Christmas. It also means that it is nearly the end of the 3rd year of my PhD. Which is weird. In the last couple of weeks quite a few people have started to ask me the dreaded question: "So when do you think you will be finished?". I had actually hoped I could dodge that question for at least a few more months. I understand people are just asking out of interest (which is nice of course), but this is what I hear when I get asked that: "you SHOULD be finished soon - so hurry up!"

It's easy at this point to think about how much I haven't accomplished in this time - mostly due to some unexpected delays in running experiments (seriously, sign up 1st year psych students - I need participants!). The truth is however, in this time I still have actually learnt a lot. Just this week, I gave a lecture for the 3rd year Psych course, I submitted a paper to a journal (which is in a lot better shape that the last time I tried to submit it somewhere I think), and I also updated my C.V. and realised how much experience I've gained at teaching and presenting at conferences. The thing that surprised me the most, is actually how confident I have become that I am able to do these things, and that what I have to say is important. It definitely is also easy to just focus on the experiment/thesis side of things; but if you do that, you forget that a PhD is much more than that - it's an apprenticeship to becoming an academic. 

So although, no, I'm not ready to finish up very soon (probably another year I think), I can still be quite pleased with how much I've grown this past year. That makes it just that little bit easier to not freak out at the 'dreaded question', and look forward to what is to come.

Even still, I think I might purchase this shirt just in case.

Lie to Me

[I'm a bit sad this show was cancelled; source]

Unfortunately, lie detection isn't always as easy as it is made out to be on TV and in the movies. A lot of lie-detection methods aren't overly reliable, and as such many aren't admissible in court proceedings. However, at the conference I recently went to in New York (details here) I got to hear about some exciting lie-detection research that is very promising.

Early warning signs your child may turn into a nerd.

[via]

Rainier: (talking about the new movie he's in) My son returns from a fancy east coast college and I'm horrified to find he's a nerd.
Kent: Hahah, I'm laughing already.
Rainier: It's not a comedy. 

Case Study: L, started off as a seemingly normal child, but as time went on started to become a little too interested in spending all her time reading. Favourite books were those teaching about science, and often led to impromptu experiments such as making a barometer. Attempts to get her involved in sport were soon considered futile. Often claimed when she grew up she wanted to be a doctor. Her favourite poster was not of a celebrity, but of the solar system. Would often stay awake worrying about what was there before the universe started. Even though she received roller blades one Christmas, she turned out to be much more excited about the microscope set she had begged for. She could then be seen for hours outside collecting specimens (mostly leaves because bugs are gross), dissecting them, and staining them to look at under the microscope. There was a period of optimism once she became a teen that she would turn out normal (with a short duration of being interested in girly things like lip gloss and backstreet boys), but alas, these disappeared once she decided to read psychology textbooks for amusement. She is now a PhD candidate, and all hope is lost for her not being a nerd.

You too can buy a microscope set for your nerdy kid here. Though why encourage it, really.

As illustrated in this case study, you can see that the nerdiness only grew worse with time. It is important to recognise nerdy behaviours early on and act accordingly.  

Possible outcomes of having a nerd as a child may include: them having a PhD, winning a Nobel Prize, making millions of dollars from patenting an awesome idea ... scary stuff.

Cool and/or nerdy apps

Since I recently bought an iPad, and also own an iPhone (no apple did not sponsor this post) I thought I would mention a few apps that I think are pretty cool - but keep in mind that I am a giant nerd (and have never proclaimed otherwise). As such you may not find them as interesting as I do if you aren't as similarly nerdy. 

Star walk even works in daytime!

Star walk - hold the iPad up to the sky and it will tell you what constellations you're looking at! This app is extremely well made, and very fun to use. It is very pretty - everyone I show makes this noise: "ooooooooh" - but this app also is very clever and makes me feel like a back up career in astronomy is possible yet!

Pocketshrink - this one is specifically for iPhone. The point is that you can use these apps to diagnose yourself with 3 different disorders: ADHD, Panic disorder, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). I generally think using the internet or an app to diagnose yourself is a bit dodgy - however I actually know some of the people involved in developing it, so have reason to think it's fairly legit (Hint: if you're using your iPhone to check if you have NPD, and also at the same time using it as a mirror, you probably do have it hehe).

Ted - "riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world". Ted talks involve a huge variety of speakers on a wide range of topics, and are well worth watching if you want to be challenged, entertained, or amazed (or all of those). I was excited to find out Ted also comes in app form, so you can take it wherever you go and watch when you have a spare few minutes.

Wikipanion - Although I constantly warn the students I teach to never cite Wikipedia as a reference, I do actually use it a lot to start my search on a topic. Wikipanion makes this very easy when trying to search from my iPad. It is very easy to navigate, and quite intuitive. Much better than trying to search the website from the iPad or my phone. See also Howstuffworks - This app includes over 40 000 articles, and 12 000 videos, as well as quizzes. Informative and also amusing.

Brain Pro - The anatomy of the brain is simply amazing, and this is a great app to explore this. You can view the brain from different angles, at different depths, and using different brain slices. You can make little pins pop up on all the different brain areas (just like when I was in neuroanatomy in uni) and each pin will give you information about what that brain area does. There are also quizzes (that aren't easy I'll tell you that much!), not to mention that it's just really pretty. Awesome.

[pic via]

Some of these apps I've mentioned are free, and a couple are on the slightly pricey side, but I do think they are worth getting. As you can probably tell, I did go a bit app crazy, and my credit card definitely noticed! At least the ones I've mentioned are somewhat educational!

What are some cool and/or nerdy apps you think are worth checking out?

The Husband Questionnaire

Even though my blog is 'science, spouses & silliness' I think I tend to focus on the silly part the most. So today instead I have decided to talk about the spouse part. While reading through a friend of mine's blog: Lord Girl - I came across a challenge (based on this website) to work at making my husband more of a priority. Obviously I think any successful relationship is a two-way street, but it's not going to work at all if I try to change his behaviour instead of looking closely at my own. But of course I had to put my own psych spin on it and have thus come up with my own questionnaire for him to fill out: The [husband's name] Questionnaire.

Here are a sample of some of the questions:

As if I didn't already know what he'd like me to cook!

• What are your favourites out of the meals I've cooked?
• What are some meals you'd like me to try cooking for you?
• What things do I do that make you feel the most respected?
• What things can we do to make our house a haven?

Also I wrote a list of things I do in our house and relationship and have asked him to rank order them in terms of importance so I know which I should prioritise. For example, there is no point in me spending ages cooking elaborate meals for him every day, if say he'd really just prefer I use that time to spend with him!

A true psych questionnaire requires administering it to many many people to be able to do statistics on what the average person is like. However in this case I don't care about the average person - just my husband (who could be a total outlier for all I know)! Though I do think that I can check test-retest reliability by asking the same questions again in a year's time haha. However priorities do change so the reliability might be low too but that's ok!

Gosh I am just unable to escape being a nerd, hey.

Productive June Recap

[this is a pre-planned post as I'm currently in NYC being super productive at a conference!] 

click to enlarge

As I've mentioned earlier, it's become somewhat of a tradition in the PhD office to have 'Productive June' - a time of attempted increased productivity to make up for the lacklustre efforts of the preceding months. It involves guilt-inducing propaganda posters and everything. Since it's almost over, I thought I would give a bit of a recap of how it went for me, as well as give you some productivity helpers and hindrances. For me, Productive June went fairly well; I did a lot of work on analysing results for my experiment, and putting them together for my conference talk. There were some less-than-productive days in there too, but I feel I made up for that somewhat by working on the weekend a couple of times. How was your Productive June?

Now onto some productivity helps and hinders:

Fear of Flying - Part 2: Causes

[via]

Why are some people afraid of flying whereas others have no problem with it? For me personally, I had a particularly turbulent flight once and quite a few people on the plane were visibly and audibly concerned (including myself and the friend I was sitting next to). However it can be for a whole host of reasons.

Sometimes it is a bi-product of having another anxiety problem, such as claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces), acrophobia (fear of heights), or agoraphobia (fear of panic attacks in public). In these cases it's not flying in particular that is the issue, but more that being in a plane brings up these other problems. These issues would need to be tackled first, and then you might find that flying isn't so bothersome after that. As such it is probably outside the scope (at the moment) for me to talk about these in great length. Generally though, being a bit nervous about flying isn't a problem, but it's when it starts to interfere with your life (e.g. passing up on a job promotion because it would require frequent air travel, or not going to a loved one's wedding due to flying) that you know that you might need to do something about it. Here are some common reasons why people are afraid of flying...

Fear of Flying - Part 1: Introduction

If you know me, or read this blog even semi-regularly, you'll know that I'm going to New York on Friday. The question I've inevitably been getting for the past couple of weeks has been: are you excited? 

[source]

I get to look at some famous landmarks, do tonnes of shopping, and meet some of my academic idols at the conference I'm going to - but honestly, the answer is NO. I'm not excited. In fact, I'm kind of dreading it. Once I'm over there I know it will be great, but it's the getting there (and back) that is the problem. It takes nearly an entire day on the plane to get from Sydney to NY (including a brief stop at LAX). Based on previous experiences I know I won't be sleeping much, or even reading or watching movies to distract myself. I'll be staring out the window and also carefully watching the flight attendant's faces for any signs of disaster (and constantly praying nothing bad happens)!

This might come as a bit of a surprise, considering I study psychology, and I know for a fact that this is an irrational fear. I have actually flown quite a few times - especially recently when Husband and I went to Europe for our honeymoon. Obviously, we were totally fine, and I actually did sleep a bit on the flight home through turbulence. However Husband was there the whole time so I could also check his face to see if he was worried, and he wasn't. This time, I'm totally by myself, and there is nobody to tell me I'm being irrational. Although I will tell myself that I'm sure (many times), I'm not very good at listening to myself!

So for my own preparation I'm writing a couple of posts (it was only going to be one but then I realised how much there is to cover) about why this is irrational and why I will almost definitely be fine. Hopefully if there are some people out there that have similar concerns I can help you a bit too. If you don't have problems flying, well either feel free to skip these posts, or keep reading so you can understand a bit more about the people who do, or just a bit more about fears and phobias in general.

Stay tuned...

My Experiment Worked!

...well kind of. I haven't finished collecting data yet (stupid saliva being a biohazard delaying my experiment), but since I have to present what I've got so far at the conference in NY I've had to analyse it already.

Professor Frink, my favourite nerd

And things actually happened! While you might expect that when you have a reasonable idea, and test it, that it should work out as expected, this actually happens a lot less than you'd think. Then you have to set out to look for why things didn't happen how you wanted. So for this to work is very exciting (well for me at least). In short (see here for longer explanation of my experiment), people that experienced a greater cortisol (stress hormone) change following watching a film, were more likely to have false memories of the film a week later. Also, those who experienced a greater cortisol change were also more likely to report more distress symptoms in the following week too. HOORAY! Well, not hooray for people having distress symptoms (nothing too bad don't worry), but considering I thought they'd be related and they are, I'm very happy. Hopefully that made sense and you can see why I'm excited.

Or you can see why I'm a giant nerd.

Annoying Friend/Co-worker/Spouse? Operant Conditioning to the Rescue!

One of the courses I tutor in Psych relies heavily on learning principles such as operant conditioning. The (very) basic premise is, if you want a particular behaviour to increase, reward it. If you want a behaviour to decrease, punish it. The most classic example is teaching a rat to press a bar in order to receive food. Obviously once it learns bar press = food, bar pressing behaviour steadily increases. You might even be able to teach a rat to do this for food:

[via]

This year students had to apply these principles to themselves in order to increase studying and decrease procrastinating, to varied success. I am currently in the process of marking their reports about it (which also vary in level of success).

The reason I am mentioning this though, is that recently Husband has been dealing with a very difficult co-worker who is very grumpy. I thought - why not try to shape his behaviour into a more tolerable version? 

Marking on a Saturday - BLERGH.

[source]

So this semester I have been involved in teaching two courses - a Forensic Psychology course for Criminology Masters, and also 2nd year undergraduate Psych. It just so happens both had their major assignments due within a week of each other. So guess what I get to do on my weekends. Well actually at the moment the answer is procrastinate, of course. 

The one thing that has opened my eyes from marking though, is the variety of students that take the courses. When you're actually doing a course you really can only go by how much effort you're putting in to your assignments. So it's interesting to see the range of assignments from intimidatingly awesome (where I feel like they should be marking MY work, not the other way around), and unfortunately to the other end of the spectrum - laughably horrendous. I of course don't go into marking hoping to laugh, but sometimes it's either that or cry out of frustration. Year after year I go into a LOT of detail about what I'm expecting from the assignments, and year after year there are people who just don't listen to me and do it all wrong. So perhaps now you can understand why I'm off to sweep, do the washing, and whatever other chores I can think of!

This comic sums it up pretty nicely (click to enlarge)!

I applaud you if you actually stuck around for that whole gripe of mine. I'll write about something more interesting next time, I promise (well actually it's subjective as to whether you'd find it interesting but I can only hope hey)!

UPDATE: 3pm, lots of cleaning done, not so much on the marking however. Oops.

You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

[source]

- Homer Simpson. 

I am a chronic quitter. Seriously, here is a list for you:

• Piano: I quit because the lady who taught me was mean - she would yell "NO" at me whenever I hit a wrong note
• Karate: I got up to white belt, yellow tip (basically the lowest besides the white belt alone). 
• Tennis: wasn't good at serving
• Japanese: The teacher was mean
• Drama: I don't remember why I quit this one, apparently I'm quite adept at being dramatic (I'm sure Husband would agree!)
• Debating: I only wanted to be first-affirmative speaker (so basically just doing a speech without any debating)
• Swimming: I didn't like diving (I can actually swim, but never did learn how to dive properly, belly flops all the way)
• Hockey: Well I actually liked hockey, but I dislocated my knee during the first game. That sure was painful, and awkward. An ambulance had to come take me off the field. Maybe one day I'll play it again.
• There is actually more, but this is starting to be embarrassing and I think you get the point.

SPIT.

The current experiment I am conducting involves looking at susceptibility to false memories after viewing a stressful or neutral film. One of the variables I'm interested in looking at is the hormone cortisol, which gets released into the body when a person is stressed. The short version of one of my hypotheses is that since excessive cortisol levels can impair memories, if people are more stressed and release more cortisol they might have worse memories for some aspects of the film. This may make them more likely to accept false information about the film into their memories, which I'm going to implant - muah ha ha haaaaa.

spit collection supplies from here

What this means though, is I need to collect saliva samples to run analyses to look for differences in cortisol levels. This IS as gross as it sounds. Participants spit down straws into tubes, and I store them in the fridge until I can freeze them for later analysis. You'll be happy to know I wear gloves. The most disgusting part is definitely the spit noises! Oh and floaties.

What I am excited about though - is spit camp. This is a whole day where you get to learn the saliva analysis techniques and even get to test your own sample. It was initially suggested by one of my associate supervisors that I go to one in Europe while I was there on my honeymoon. The sad thing is I actually considered it - luckily my primary supervisor told me not to! So instead I have worked on one being organised here in Sydney, and it is next week! It will be a very long day - 9am to 5pm at Macquarie Uni, but I really am looking forward to it. :)

I told you I'm a giant nerd!