Psychology Class Part I

I promised myself I would start writing down every cool thing I learned in psychology class each day, but it hasn't happened yet. I guess I'll just try to remember some now...

The stage of sleeping in which you dream you're falling is called "light sleep" and it's the first stage of Non-REM sleeping. It only lasts a few minutes, but falling off a cliff sure does scare the crap outta me!

Although your brain is active during REM, your voluntary muscle control is taken away. So if you're fighting Mr. T in your dream, your brain stops you from looking stupid on the couch.

Dreams, according to Freud, are unconscious, forbidden thoughts that need to escape. Example, you secretly wish the lunch lady would keel over and in your dreams, she really does.

The state of a car in your dream is meant to symbolize the state of YOUR health. My teacher explained that a friend of hers always told her about his dreams and spoke of one where he saw his old, beat up truck. She explained that the car's appearance related to a person's health. He didn't think anything of it. Years later, he was diagnosed with liver cancer and always remembered that dream. Kind of eerie, but it may or may not be true. Depends on what you believe in I guess.

Smell is the strongest trigger of memory. Studying with a candle burning or cookies baking helps you study better. On test day, when you think of that smell, you think of the answers for the test. (Also, studying before bed is a way to ace a test.)

A libotomy procedure involves the frontal cortex being seperated from the brain, therefore making a person dull. All personality is taken away. (SEE: Last 20 minutes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.)

The Bobo Doll experiment, conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura, showed that kids who were exposed to violent behaviors were more likely to act violenty themselves, compared to children who were exposed to normal, non-violent behavior.(Wikipedia Link)

Your brain generates 25 watts of power while you’re awake--enough to light a light bulb.

All of the above are some of the things I learned so far in my psychology class. It's pretty fun, actually, learning about your brain and body. I've always wanted to know why we do certain things. Maybe my little tidbits each day can help you learn something you never knew.