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Just before I start my readings for my latest upcoming Psych report, I thought I would take a minute to note just one interesting thing I have learnt from each of my two Psychology units at uni this year.
From Personality Psych, I learnt: that one of the strongest evidences for the Activation-Synthesis hypothesis (that the brain generates a dream story by combining motor activation with other elements [as opposed to Freud's dream theory {where repressed wishes are made conscious through codes in dreams}]) is REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder. It basically refers to the absence of motor inhibition during REM sleep. Patients of this disorder have narrated experiences where they have been woken up by their partner and found that they had in fact gotten out of bed in their sleep. And "in every one of the many cases reported, the subjective dream experience has been isomorphic with the actual physical movement" (McCarley, 1998, p. 129).
From Social Psych, I learnt: that babies need sufficient visual stimulation to properly develop. Children who have spent their first few years in Romanian orphanages where there were just blank white walls and the kids didn't have many toys were often cross eyed (same with other stuff, as in lacking in walking skills / walking was awkward if they were just left in a crib and didn't crawl around, coz those muscles weren't used). Another example of when this happened was in the 1980s when people tried to be posh and keep their nurseries white to match the rest of their houses - their kids ended up not getting enough visual stimulation and being cross eyed. So don't be posh... your kids need COLOUR AND SPINNING THINGS AND FUN FUN TOYS!
Oh and perhaps most interesting of all, From That 70s Show (I forget the episode, but it's in Season 2 and Eric and his sister were just yelling insults and stuff at each other when Eric revealed that Laurie was born with a tail) I learnt: that humans can be born with a tail. Wikipedia says: "Human embryos have a tail that measures about one-sixth of the size of the embryo itself. As the embryo develops into a fetus, the tail is absorbed by the growing body. The developmental tail is thus a human vestigial structure. Infrequently, a child is born with a "soft tail", which contains no vertebrae, but only blood vessels, muscles, and nerves. Modern procedures allow doctors to eliminate the tail at delivery. The longest human tail on record belonged to a twelve-year-old boy living in what was then French Indochina, which measured nine inches (229 mm)." SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN WITH A TAIL!
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