Author: gsk5116

Classical conditioning is when an organism learns to associate stimuli. This involves an unconditioned stimulus that naturally elicits a response, an unconditioned response that is a naturally occurring response, a conditioned stimulus that is originally irrelevant but when associated with an unconditioned stimulus triggers a conditioned response, and a learned conditioned response. Soon after classical conditioning was discovered, people started to believe that any association could be learned equally well. American psychologist John Garcia disproved this with his research on taste aversion. He experimented on rats by pairing taste, sound, and sight with radiation and measured nausea. What he found was that taste was strongly associated with nausea and that sight and sound did not work as well. This proved biological preparedness, which is the idea that people and animals are inherently inclined to to form associations between certain stimuli and responses, to be true. The phenomenon of taste aversion can be seen in humans who have aversions to food if they become sick after consumption.

I have experienced taste aversion in my life with celery. When I was a child I would eat celery every day at daycare. One day after eating celery along with other food, I got food poisoning and ended up getting really sick from it and vomited the rest of the day. To this day, I cannot eat celery without feeling sick, even the thought of celery makes me nauseous. This taste aversion formed because my mind now associates the taste of celery with the awful feeling of sickness I felt when I had gotten food poisoning and had been sick. This relates to classical conditioning. The unconditioned stimulus in this case is the other food that gave me the food poisoning and the unconditioned response is the sickness that I felt. The conditioned stimulus is the celery because it was originally unrelated to me feeling sick but after my mind associated it with the other food that made me sick it triggers a conditioned response of feeling sick.

Often times forgetting is caused by a failure to retrieve information. This can happen due to interference. When retrieving information that is stored in our long term memory, interference is something that can makes information inaccessible. There are two types of interference that exist. They are known as proactive and retractive interference. Proactive interference is when old information learned in the past hinders the recall of newly learned information. Retroactive interference on the other hand is the opposite. This is when new information learned more recently hinders the recall of older information.

Both proactive and retroactive interference have affected my ability to retrieve information. When rushing the business fraternity I am now a part of, we were required to learn the names of all of the brothers and were verbally tested on it. One of the brothers looked very similar to another guy I knew in high school and this caused me to only be able to recall the name of the kid I knew that looked like this brother when tested on the matter. This is an example of proactive interference. This is because I had learned the name of this kid I went to high school with and when I was asked to remember the name of someone new I had met that looked similar, I could only remember the name I had learned before. An example of retroactive interference that I have experienced recently has been remembering the passwords and emails combinations needed to log into different websites. After Penn State required me to change my Canvas password, I started using that new password for everything instead of the password I would use for everything before. Now I have a hard time remembering which password I used to create an account on specific websites. I also created a new email that I have used to create some of these accounts which makes it even that much harder to remember. This is retroactive interference because the new passwords and emails I am learning are hindering my ability to remember which passwords and emails I used for accounts I had previously set up.

The brain has a number of structures all with different functions. Yet these different structures work in unison to allow humans to function the way they do. Four of the prominent structures of the brain are the brainstem, thalamus, cerebellum, and limbic system. The brainstem is the oldest part of the brain. It begins where the spinal cord enters the skull and is responsible for automatic survival functions. The thalamus is considered the brain’s sensory switchboard and is located at the top of the brainstem and it directs messages to the sensory areas in the cortex. The part of the brain attached to the rear end of the brainstem and commonly referred to as the “little brain” is the cerebellum. This part of the brain helps coordinate voluntary movements and balance and is involved in learning skills. The limbic system is the donut-shaped group of neural structures at the border of the Brainstem and cerebrum. It is associated with emotions fear, aggression, and drives for both food and sex.

When my younger brother Landon turned ten years old he was diagnosed with a structural brain disease at the base of his skull and cerebellum called Chiari Malformation. Because of this parts of the tissue of his cerebellum were pressed into his spinal canal pinching it. This damaged this part of his brain causing him to experience extreme chronic headaches. After he was diagnosed we recognized a number of other symptoms he had been experiencing that we had not originally known were associated with his headaches, which was the only symptom we had noticed before the diagnosis. Because the cerebellum coordinates voluntary movement, Landon had struggled playing baseball, the sport he loves, and even had a hard time hitting a baseball off a tee at the age of five and six. He also had trouble speaking due to the lack of coordinated voluntary movement of his mouth. Landon eventually had a surgery that involved removing a small portion of his skull to relieve pressure and rid him of headaches.