August 30

APA Style Lite For College Papers

Referencing and style guides Trackbacks (0)

 APA Style  Lite for College Papers is a concise guide to crafting research papers in the style of the American Psychological Association (APA). It is based on the current edition of the APA Publication Manual (corrected printing, 2009) while incorporating guidelines for "Material Other Than Journal Articles" found in the last edition. APA Lite succeeds the APA Crib Sheet developed by Professor Dewey in the 1990s and revised by the Abel Scribe collaboration in the current century. Doc Scribe is not affiliated in any way with the American Psychological Association--this style guide is free! © Copyright 2000-2010 by Dr. Abel Scribe, PhD
ArrowAPA Style Lite PDF.  Everything on Doc Scribe's website is free including the PDF version of this webpage.

http://www.docstyles.com/apacrib.htm

August 25

Scitable

Neurosychology including neurological disorders Trackbacks (0)

Scitable is a free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world's leading publisher of science. Scitable currently concentrates on genetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich complexity of living organisms.

How Does the Eye Work?

In today's episode, Dr. Reza Dana of Harvard Medical School and the Schepens Eye Research Institute talks to Adam about the structures within the human eye that allow us to see. The eye is a fascinatingly complex organ — comprising the cornea, iris, and retina (to name but a few) — that takes in and converts light into electrical impulses and sends them on to the brain via the optic nerve. Much like the internal workings of a camera, proper eye function requires the coordination of many moving parts working in concert. But the eye, and thus our ability to see, is susceptible to a variety of maladies, such as insufficient blood flow, inflammation, and tumors. Dr. Dana and other ophthalmologists work hard to discover treatments for eye maladies that can restore vision to affected eyes. Join Adam as he learns about the principal parts of the eye, as well as what goes wrong when vision becomes impaired or is altogether lost. [05:40]

 

Judging Other People's Intentions

In today's episode, Dr. Liane Young of MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences talks to Adam about the neurological basis for judging another person's actions. Typically, when we observe the actions of an individual, we also discern something about her intentions — that is, her mental state when carrying out these actions. Modern imaging technologies reveal that a certain region of the human brain behind the right ear, the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ), is highly active when considering the mental states (e.g., thoughts, beliefs, desires) of others and thus diagnosing their intentions. A team of researchers in the Saxe Lab at MIT have designed an experiment wherein the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), when applied to a subject’s RTPJ, can effectively “turn off” the moral judgments made while evaluating the merits of certain actions. When the RTPJ is “turned off” by TMS, actions, such as the failed poisoning of one person by another, are no longer gauged according to intentions; rather, they are based solely on consequences (i.e., if the act of poisoning failed, it isn't judged as immoral.) Join Adam as he learns how the use of TMS can reveal the neurological driving force behind judging motivations. [05:51]

The Evolutionary Roots of the Reading Brain

In today's episode, Dr. Maryanne Wolf of Tufts University's Center for Reading and Language Research talks with Adam about the human brain's ability to read. Although reading is an essential part of our daily lives, it is a relatively new ability that our species developed roughly five thousand years ago. Researchers like Dr. Wolf emphasize that the act of reading is vastly complex, and requires that we engage many different parts of the brain because no single area within the brain is responsible for reading. With the advent of new text display technologies that may distract us from the type of attentional focus required by reading, there are many open-ended questions about how deep-reading processes may be transformed by these technologies. Join Adam as he learns how long it took the human brain to learn how to read strings of letters, as well as the challenges the brain will face in the decades to come. [05:42]

Morals and Gray Matter

In today's episode, Dr. Joshua Greene of the Moral Cognition Lab at Harvard University talks with Adam about morally-based decision-making and the brain. Although matters of morality are often considered abstractly, there are ways to examine the brains of people while they make moral decisions, and to collect data about brain activity in parallel with these decisions. In this way, Dr. Greene asserts that we can better understand which brain circuits drive different types of decisions, especially those involving moral judgment. Join Adam as he learns what's involved in performing research about the science of morality. [05:43]