All Articles by Jared Tanner, MS
Mr. Tanner has an M.S. degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate in clinical psychology with an emphasis in neuropsychology. His interests are mainly neuroimaging and neuroanatomy. He spends his research time looking at the structure of gray and white matter in the brains of people with Parkinson's disease. With a focus on neuropsychology, he is also interested in how normal and abnormal brain structure relates to cognitive and behavioral functioning.
Essential Tremor and Parkinson’s Disease
Parkinson’s disease (PD) and essential tremor are both primarily movement disorders. The symptoms are commonly confused with each other, mainly because essential tremor is not as well known as PD even though essential tremor is more prevalent. High-profile people like Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali raised our awareness of PD in the 1990s just like Pres. Ronald Reagan did with Alzheimer’s disease in the 1980s. Because of this, essential tremor is not as well-known to the general public even though more people suffer from it than from PD.
What is Intelligence?
Intelligence has been discussed throughout much of human history. Socrates gave one definition of intelligence: “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.” Intelligence over the years has been defined as such diverse things as understanding others, knowledge gained, who you surround yourself by, what you accomplish, and the ability to reason. Before the 19th century, intelligence was solely in the realm of philosophy. Franz Joseph Gall, who started the phrenology movement, sought to localize intelligence (among other things) in the brain, which was in turn measured on the skull. While many of the ideas of phrenology were inaccurate, the idea of quantifying individual differences and localizing those differences onto the brain was an important one. Over the years, researchers started using better methods of research and understanding individual differences.
Rogue Limbs – Introduction to Alien Limb Syndrome
There is a rare neurological condition called alien limb syndrome in which a person has one or more limbs that will often move without conscious control. Little is known about the exact cause of this rare and interesting disorder. The person usually can have conscious control of the limb at times but not always. A classic manifestation of this syndrome is when the left arm, for example, will reach out and grab objects, fiddle with clothing or other body parts, or just move straight up or out and stay there. When asked by a neurologist to perform a specific action with the good arm, the alien arm may often hinder or impede the action of the good arm. The arm then often needs to be wrestled back to a resting position by the other arm.
Reduced Empathy Following Traumatic Brain Injury
Empathy is the ability and quality that allows humans to feel and understand what others are experiencing. It literally means “with [em-] suffering [-pathos]” as in suffering along with someone else. Empathy is not just emotionally suffering; it is also cognitively understanding what another person is going through; walking in their shoes, per se. Empathy connects people with each other and helps bind societies together.In one recent study in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society the authors found that 31% of normal adults exhibited low emotional empathy scores on the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES).
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