CSB #8: Our Own Experiment!

Do you really feel what you think you feel?

My lab partner, Hannah, and I created, conducted, and wrote about our experiment together, although our writing is a little different. You can visit her blog here.

When you feel an emotion, does your heart follow the pattern of that emotion, or is that just your mind rationalizing and saying what it is supposed to feel? You see a random picture and your heart jumps or twinges or maybe does not even react at all. Whichever the case, your heart’s reaction is the true emotion you are feeling because of the long-trained “fight or flight” thought process in the brain. If your heart rate increases or decreases matching the emotion stated for that certain picture, then the person stated what he or she actually felt. If not, he or she rationalized with him or herself and told you, the scientist, what he or she was supposed to have felt. Remember this is about how much the test-subject is true to his or her own feelings; it is not to measure the person’s personality. Our hypothesis was that there would only be a few big changes (ex: leap for fear and excitement, and, after research, drops for sadness).

Keep in mind that these are pictures, the test subject’s reaction are not entirely to the actual circumstance of the picture, instead they are to the picture (i.e. seeing a real-life tarantula versus just looking at a picture of one). We chose the ten pictures to try and encourage certain emotions. Afterwards, we showed the subject the pictures again, this time asking them to write down what emotion they felt for each picture. Then, we studied the graphs in relation to which picture the subject was seeing at that point in time, what emotion they felt, and tried to make connections. Below are the pictures we used.

Our basic procedure was to ask the subject to sit in front of the heart rate sensor, hold the hand held device displayed below. Here, a test subject, is holding the device and the object taped to the table is the sensor. To collect the data, we used Vernier Logger Pro and connected it to the laptop, recording the changes in hear trate as well as the heart beat in BPM, shown in the screenshot. We had them close their eyes for 25 seconds to allow the heart rate to register and then they looked at the pictures for 5 seconds each while recording their heart rate. Afterward, they wrote down what they thought they felt for each picture after having studied it for a minute. This is the key - it was not the first reaction that they wrote down. When analyzing the data, some discrepancies between actual heart rate and the heart rate the said emotion should have prompted made us look more closely at what might be happening in the subject's mind.

Below is the screenshot of data collection.

This picture shows the heart rate sensor and general setup.

Before we interpreted the data, we had to organize it. We averaged the results to make two graphs, one for the “average change” in heart rate for males, and the other for females. They are displayed below.

Basically, the after-reactions of the subjects had been filtered in many cases. The "fear" example is a particularly good illustration of the logical, analytical mind versus initial emotion. Not a single subject felt fear, although, after deliberation, they all said they did. This is not to say that they were lying - once they were allowed to study the picture, the brain may have connected the image with something they have seen in real life. Real spiders certainly cause fear in many people, so once the subjects connected these two things, they said they felt fear. It was almost an illusion in that way. However, there were no really big increases in heart rate generally, which leads to the tentative assumption that pictures don't really instill strong emotions in terms of "fight or flight" because it is not an "in the moment" experience - it simply makes the subject recall previous experiences, and most people do not have changes in heart rate over small, mostly insignificant memories.

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Reading the graphs: boys that correlated (blue), boys that didn't correlate (red), girls that correlated (green), girls that didn't correlate (purple).
In the graphs above, more girls correlated for fear, while more boys correlated for sadness and excitement. Oddly enough, even though most individuals did not correlate for sadness, the averages most certainly did. However, the experiment overall proved our hypothesis (there were significant jumps, for the most part, for the pictures we specified) and showed something we never expected: people often deceive themselves into thinking that they felt a certain emotion when they actually felt something different. Does a picture of a spider scare you? Or does your brain remember the spider you saw on your ceiling and trick you into "feeling" scared?
URLs for the pictures we used:

1) http://stormgrounds.com/media/Fluffy-Puppy.jpg

2) http://memory.loc.gov:8081/learn/collections/slavery/images/whip.gif

3) http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRqD1pimRTi6Jw61GfeQQWAhGWflue

JHGg__YlzLNSlXqFzyuKX&t=1

4) http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/tsunami_victims_sm.jpg

5) http://www.dreamstime.com/peaceful-waterfall-thumb2698604

6) http://www.presidiacreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/81.jpg

7) http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.papermashmusic.com/filess/Mar/dance-party-laser_0.jpg

8) http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://jasonschaeffer.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/polar-bear-on-a-peak-of-an-iceburg.gif

9) http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.beccabondphotography.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/playing-in-field-1024x614.jpg

10) Users/15hannahb/Desktop/crying-tears-of-joy-208913.jpg

CSB #7: Goodbye, Communication

While Alzheimer's Disease is probably one of the best-known forms of dementia, there are many equally bad types that are not as prevalent. One of these is primary progressive aphasia, which affects the brain's language center. Aphasia is a "loss of ability to understand or express speech, caused by brain damage," according to the dictionary on my dashboard. While PPA is often mistaken for Alzheimer's, it is clearly different in several ways. First, it chiefly affects the brain's language center and only attacks memory after some time. Also, in Alzheimer's, the patient him/herself cannot recognize that he/she is affected by the disease, and it is often family members to identify the symptoms. However, those with PPA usually detect a deterioration in their ability to communicate before people around them sense a difference. Some similarities are that it shortens lifespan (most patients live to 67) and is a from of dementia. Sadly, frequent misdiagnoses of the disease result in incorrect treatment, which sets back the fight a long way. According to Dr. Duffy, head of speech pathology in Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, "early intervention is important."

With the language-harming effects of the condition come an even worse symptom: the deterioration of communication. The wife of patient Steve Riedner compares it to raising a child again. Riedner can "open the car window, then not know how to close it," and even recommended forms of communication like the iPad, which has apps that can talk for a person, were no help in his advanced stage of PPA. Even sign language does not work, as it utilizes the same area of the brain.

In terms of treatment, there is nothing that can even begin to revert the process of language-center failure. However, treatment usually focuses on saving the stronger parts of the person's communication and leaving the weaker elements behind. As I mentioned earlier, computers, picture icons, and iPad apps are recommended as alternate forms of communication. Dr. Mesulam, the first person to recognize the disease in today's world, says that it affects "word-finding, object naming, syntax, phonology, morphology, spelling, or word comprehension." He goes on to say that the disease comes gradually, over years.

Note: Some definitions to clarify, all from my dashboard dictionary.

Syntax: the arrangement of words to create well-formed sentences in a language

Phonology: the branch of linguistics that deals with systems of sounds in a particular language

Morphology: in linguistics, the study of the form of words

My thoughts: this is truly a terrible disease, and even more unfortunate is that it is not recognized and valuable time is wasted on unnecessary forms of treatment. It would completely terrifying, as the affected person, to realize that you could not speak with the coordination of old, that the numbers started to look like a jumble on the page, that your own notes began to read like gobbledegook. Another awful aspect is that communication itself is difficult, and after the early stages of PPA, cannot even be achieved by some patients. One aspect that was surprising to me was that it was not seen to be a new and different disease sooner, especially since, in some ways, it was so clearly different from others (i.e. the patient knew before his/her companions). When, I wonder, will cures for dementia begin to appear, or more effective forms of treatment? It is up front with the most horrible illnesses today in all of its shapes and forms.

Resources:

Brody, Jane E. "A Thief that Robs the Brain of Language." The New York Times.
N.p., 2 May 2011. Web. 3 May 2011.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/health/03brody.html?ref=science>

Stults, Michael G. "Dementia in Our Kids - The Uninvited Thief." Niemann-Pick
Children's Fund, Inc. N.p., 26 Mar. 2010. Web. 4 May 2011.
<http://www.npcfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/dementia-brain.jpg>.
Source for image.