On brain age and development

Between the ages of 20 and 90 we lose around 10% of our neurons; this comes out to about 85,000 neurons perishing every day (Ward). Is this a bad thing? Neurons are the highway on which brain function travels. Wouldn’t it make sense that having more of them would essentially make us smarter, and more functional beings?

While this may indeed be the case, I would venture to say that there’s a possibility that it is not the case. It very well could be, and I would assume this to be true, that as we grow and learn and mature, so does our brain. This learning may as a side effects shed extraneous, loose functioning neurons in favor of a stronger connection with a more equipped neuron. Maybe when we need more neurons because just like us, our brains are exploring the best and fastest ways to function.

I recently read an article that discussed a study using a simple finger, piano exercise. They found that this exercise, performed two hours a day, for five consecutive days, not only improved performance of the exercise but also “resulted in an enlargement of primary motor areas representing the finger muscles” (Slagter, Davidson and Lutz). Just imagine that over the next 70 years your brain is going to record everything you do, and will experiment with new pathways in which it can send information. I am 22 years old, so I consider myself well on my way to developing a stream line well lubricated and functioning brain, with no excess weight.

Bibliography

Ward, Jamie. (2010). The student’s guide to cognitive neuroscience. New York: Psychology Press.

Heleen A. Slagter, Richard J. Davidson, and Antoine Lutz (February 10, 2011). Mental Training as a Tool in the Neuroscientific Study of Brain and Cognitive Plasticity. PubMed. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3039118/

Cognitive Science and Graphic Design

Here's a response to some of your comments.

Some people might hear my double majors and think they're like oil and water (usually that comes after asking what cog sci is). What can I hope to accomplish with both of these, and do they connect or even overlap?

Yes, they can! For my cog sci classes I have taken a liking to creating artwork that complements my research papers, with topics such as prosopagnosia and mirror neurons. Prosopagnosia is a favorite topic of mine, as it deals with the mental as well as the aesthetic. When I took Cog166 we mentioned the gestalt principles, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts, while I also heard of them in the aesthetic sense in my art class. In art as well I have begun to think of it more cerebrally, more of how it can be interpreted by others and the world.

As to how these two fields can combine, there are actually a few answers. With the classes I take for cog sci, I can be a developer (or designer) of applications to help mentally impaired learn. I can create websites that people can understand. I can help in the visual realm, by learning what humans see when they see an image and the symbols that can be used to speak to my audience.

What I have found to bring the two together is another line of work, human-computer interaction. Our graduate HCI program is designed to teach us not only why our technology works for us, but how we can design it better. To me, nothing seems to bring my fields together better than studying usability and design, since the two ought to go hand in hand, and in this program they do.

So see what's out there. You may think that whatever your major is, cognitive science can't possibly benefit you. Cognitive science is all that we are; how can that not help?

Overcoming Intimidation (Thank you kafelacraft…for the nice segue!)

My first computer science course was CSC212 –Principles of Programming with Professor Early. For me, as a beginner, I found that this course was reasonably demanding, but a fun challenge. The information about the most standard concepts (such as algorithms and data structures) were broken down and lucidly explained. Even as the concepts grew more intricate, the learning became systematic. When I was stuck in a rut or thought that trying to figure out computer programming was going to “shorten my life-span” (as my friend Trevor would say), I looked to my resources. For example, I took full advantage of the computer lab portion of the course. That is the time slot that is allocated to you for help and progress. Also, the Computer Science Association (CSA) offers weekly help sessions throughout the year. Their knowledgeable members helped me to find my way through assignments by asking appropriate questions and offering explanations that kept me focused and pointed in the right direction. At times they were more like a support system of friends who were there to meet me with enthusiasm and pull me out of any discouragement I may have been feeling. Since then I’ve learned about a certain outlook towards educating computer science to others which aims to make it less esoteric and stresses the importance of the KISS Principle. As Ted Nelson (pioneer of information technology) notably stated, “Any system which cannot be well taught to a laymen in ten minutes, by a tutor in the presence of a responding setup, is too complicated.” Keep it simple, stupid. Perhaps knowing this will help you breathe easier if ever you choose to join the major.

When did I fall in love with it you ask? Well...love is such a strong word. Haha, okay no really, I learned to love the rewards in the accomplishment of tedious, detail-oriented tasks and felt proud of the progress and strides I made, one step at a time. It feels good to break through, or crack the code, if you will.

My advice for computer science courses, as should go for any course, is to stay on top of the subject matter from day one, because everything builds and branches off from the basics. Oh, and it’s always a good idea to save your notes!

Road to CogSci - Question Answers

Hello again everyone! I’m sorry I never got to answer the questions some of you had on my last post. Therefore, this post will be mostly about answering those questions. And probably some extra stuff too…

The biggest question I got was what I was going to do with my life (job-wise) after I graduate. Well, with my graduation quickly approaching, as I am supposed to graduate in December, I have had to think about this a lot! I’m not going to lie, but be brutally honest with you; there are not a huge amount of jobs available to Cognitive Science majors. This is basically because the Cognitive Science field itself is a fairly new field of study. I’m not saying that it is impossible to get a job, it’s absolutely achievable, but it probably won’t be as simple as someone who is going for a degree in Business Administration. This is literally the hardest thing about the cognitive science major. The cool thing though is that CogSci is a very quickly moving and up-and-coming field of study, and new jobs are being created every day which deal with Cognitive Science. Who knows, maybe by the time you graduate, CogSci related jobs will be as popular as Computer Science jobs currently are! So please, PLEASE, do not let this fact scare you away from the CogSci degree. I honestly have no regrets making Cognitive Science my major and plan to use it to its full potential and take it as far as I can in the future.

However, there are also many other roads you can take after you receive a degree in CogSci. I have recently been shown the path to a master’s degree in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). If you know you want to get your masters, then this is an excellent step forward that will absolutely build on the Cognitive Science degree and allow you to learn some new things as well. If you would like more information on HCI, the link is simply www.oswego.edu/hci. I encourage you to check it out and see if HCI is a good possible masters program for you.

Cognitive Science is, in my opinion, one of the best majors / minors a person can have at Oswego and I strongly suggest that you at least give it a try. The classes are actually interesting and sometimes even fun! The people who are in the CogSci program are awesome and we try to help each other wherever and whenever we can. As I said, Cognitive Science is an up-and-coming field which will definitely be much more popular in the world very soon. So try it! I promise you’ll at least learn something cool, and I hope you like it as much as the rest of us do.