Social Pain

When a person comes up to you and hurts your feelings in a certain way, have you ever stop to think where is this pain coming from? Or when a romantic breakup with your significant other hurts you within your stomach tied into a knot or you have pain within your body, what kind of pain is this? Is there even such thing of this cause? People have different varieties of pain within our bodies. Physical pain, emotional pain internally and externally. But in this certain case it’s internal. What is this called exactly your thinking?

Yes, it’s called social pain.

Hurting people’s feelings in some way do resemble physical pain; in such ways not only that it is considered real life pain in another type of way.

According to the book, it states that you can relieve this social pain with the pain- relieving drug acetaminophen, which is also known as Tylenol. This is interesting because the everyday medication issued for other purposes, may fix social pain. I wonder if any type of medication can also be administered for example, Advil, Motrin, Excedrin, and Ibuprofen to relieve the pain.

I find this very fascinating because I’ve never really thought of where the social pain really came from within our bodies. Hurting people’s feelings in the smallest thing, can take effect in social pain. I guess when someone really states they have a broken heart over a break up; we now know more or less what it really is.

Experimenters that did research by monitoring people’s brain activity. Thus, during this task it was found that a significantly increased activity in the cingulate cortex was being activated during this process. All in all, they recorded that the cingulate cortex responds to the emotional aspect of pain.

 

 

Episodic Memory

Imagine yourself at an elderly age sitting in a rocking chair as a grandpa/grandma. Your grandchildren come up to you and ask you where did you meet grandpa/grandma? You sit back and start thinking. You recall that very moment of the time/place you were at in details. This is example of Episodic Memory.

Episodic Memory is a single of personal events. This type of memory involves a remembrance of specific events, experiences and situations. Episodic Memory is also known as autobiographical events. This associates with times, places, who, what, when, where, why, emotions. In all, it’s a collection of past personal experiences that occurs at a particular place and time.

Some more examples of episodic memory are events that happen for the first time such as going to a place for the first time, having a first kiss, first lover. Researchers say that this type of memory plays a role in your self-identity.

In the book, it mentions about H.M. how he had severe impairment of episodic memories. When he had surgery, he could not recall any experience that he had after his surgery.  Although he could describe facts that he learned before his operation, he could relate few personal experiences. This is very strange to me because how the past experiences he remember that made an impression on him.

In this video it describes episodic memory in children and how we as adults don’t really remember previous to the age of two.

In this video it shows the experiment in how the range of age children of 2-6 remembers where each toy was located in two different rooms. For some reason, the children age of 2years old found it more difficult to find the toy in the box. In compared to the children of 6years of age know immediately where it was located. So the question is, why is the process of memory not the same young child compared to a young toddler? As we get older, does the process of memory progresses of episodic memory episodes?

Personally, I believe the episodic memory events are what makes our events special in our lives. Remembering those first time moments of our lives are once in a life time.

Split- Brain Procedure

 

The split brain procedure is very interesting when it comes to how people undergo an incision that cuts their brain in half. This is also known as Corpus Calloscotomy. The reason so is because the split brain procedure consists of severing the corpus callosum in our brain.  In doing so, we split the right and left hemisphere from connecting. This procedure is done for patients that suffer epileptic seizures within their life.

You’re probably wondering what? Is this even possible? Indeed so. People that suffer from major epileptic seizures throughout their lives, see this procedure as a leeway to get away from the sufferings. Having this procedure done, not only separates the two hemispheres, it makes them control their own behaviors for our body. Initially, the right side of the hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of our body, artistic ways, makes our rational decisions, and reveals the hidden desires of a person.  In compared to the left hemisphere, this controls the right side of the body,  our logic and reflects the person’s rational goals when giving orders. In some rare consequence cases, some patients end up in having a split personality.

Wow, imagine having these two different split personalities in your mind?

Personally, when I took one of my psychology courses I learned about this procedure. It was very fascinating because my professor had mentioned a past scenario that happened to patients when this procedure started to go public back then. One incident that he had read about was one of the first patients that underwent this procedure ended up insane. His personality changed, his actions were different, and he couldn’t control what was happening to his body and mind.

Here is a video that demonstrates information about this type of procedure and a story of this lady.

 

 

Overall, we really underestimate our mind of what it is capable of . We really need our both hemispheres combined in able for them to communicate with each other to control our body. Even though this procedure is good for stopping epileptic seizures for patients, should there be an other way for patients to undergo a different procedure or way without effecting their lives?