Week 5: Anything Blog

The quote, "And that, simply through hard work and memorization, you can change the actual structure of your brain (no chemicals needed)," was interesting to me. Therefore, I clicked on the link which led me to another page about how we can change the structure of our brain.
According to the page, we can change our brain structure simply by doing the same thing repetitively, or by doing something different from the usual. There are no drugs or any other strange treatments involved in this. This also explains why many times psychotherapy works as well or even better than drugs on mental disorders. Psychotherapy helps you think and act differently, causing your brain to function differently, leading to a change in your brain structure.
In the year 2000, studies were done on taxi drivers' brains. It was discovered that taxi drivers who drove longer had a larger and more developed posterior hippocampus, which stores a spatial representation of the environment. Not only that, but this research shows that even adult brains, which have stopped growing in size, can also change. All that is needed to change the structure of the brain is repetitive working or doing something different from the usual.

Personality Tests

Jung Typology Test - My results for this test was that I am a ESTJ type person. This means that I am a supervisor-like person. According to the results, I am a moderately expressed extravert, moderately expressed sensing personality, slightly expressed thinking personality, distinctively expressed judging personality. I do not think the results are completely correct and therefore, the test is not entirely valid.
Personality Lab - For extraversion, I got a 60/100. For agreeableness, I got a 70/100. For concientiousness, I got a 81/100. For neuroticism, I got a 40/100. For openness to experience, I got a 75/100. This sounds like me so the test is valid.
EQ Test - It says my EQ is 48 and very high, but it does not give any other explanation. I do not think it is a valid test.
Big 7 Personality Test - I scored a high on all of the seven except for prudence, in which I scored a medium. I believe that this test is valid.
Big 5 Personality Test - Other than my emotional style being low and my expressive style being medium, my other 3 were high. I believe this test is valid also.

Week 3: Personality Disorder

Dear Mom and Dad,



College life sucks. I thought it would be better than high school, but it is not. There is only one word to describe my life: depressing. My life is so empty. There is nothing to do, so life seems meaningless. Sometimes, I feel really happy, but only a few hours later, I go back into this low gloomy feeling. Oh well, I'm used to it. Oh yeah, sometimes I enjoy cutting myself. It seems to relieve me from my stresses in life. Also, I learned that drugs have an amazing ability of making me feel free and happy - maybe I should use them more often.... Anyways, talk to you later.

Your son,
Wayne Choy

Famous People with Disorders

Beethoven had severe mood disorders which limited and damaged, but also helped his career. This mood disorder caused him to abuse his son, while trying to exploit his son's potential in music. In 1813, he even attempted to commit suicide but failed and returned three days later.

The severe mood disorders may have came from his father's alcoholism severe penalties, and loud, harsh teachings when Beethoven wouldn’t understand. When Beethoven wanted to play music with Mozart, Mozart had already died a year earlier. Practically every goal, every dream of his, was obliterated; Beethoven's unfortunate life hit him hard and left him unstable, leading to a mood disorder.

Beethoven's disorder also helped him sometimes. This mood disorder also brought random intervals of happiness to Beethoven. Most likely, without these spasms of happiness, Beethoven would not have had any desire to live any longer than he did. This also stimulated his creative side which allowed him to compose the wonderful works he made throughout his lifetime.

This disorder destroyed Beethoven's relationships. One time, he even through a platter of food at a waiter's head; his friends even agreed that when angry, Beethoven would become like a savage beast. Beethoven had to constantly drink alchohol in order to satisfy himself. Since opium was the only other drug available to him, Beethoven had to rely on alchohol so much that it would eventually destroy his liver and kill in early 1827 at the age of 56.

Sources: http://www.mcmanweb.com/beethoven.html, http://lifechums.com/2008/06/07/mood-disorders-series-disabled-legend-ludwig-van-beethoven/