In our second Unit of our STEAM course Disease, we learned about mental disorders. This Unit we learned about different kinds of mental disorders, learning disabilities, and mental illness. We also learned about different brain waves and when they distinct. With this information we learned how to plot these on a graph and solve a piecewise function. Another thing we learned about was the DSM-5 This is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition. This is a manual of many mental disorders that have criteria used to diagnose people. Although we didn't have any field experiences in this unit, we did have lots of class activities and discussions. For this project, we had to pick a mental disorder. I chose False Memory Disorder. We then had to create a lesson and simulation to try to get our classmates to feel the effects of the disorder. We also had to graph the brain waves that we thought our lesson would evoke. We then graphed these as a piecewise function. We filmed the lesson so we could document the experience. I thought this action project was awesome. This action project led me to see an aspect of the medicine field I wasn't exposed to before, this made me curious and want to learn more about neuroscience which I think is extremely interesting field to dive into. Well I hope you enjoy!
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation describes the condition as a person's identity and relationships are affected by memories that are factually incorrect but that they strongly believe. In other words false memory disorder is a predicament in which a person's identity centers on a memory of a traumatic experience that is false but that the person strongly believes occurred.
Signs of false memory disorder included in the DSM-5:
Significant memory loss of specific times, people and events
A sense of detachment from your emotions, or emotional numbness
The person must be distressed by the disorder or have trouble functioning in one or more major life areas because of the disorder.
I wanted to dive in deeper with a person who struggles with false memory disorder in order to make my simulation as accurate as possible. So I watched a video of a person who deals with this disorder. Rebbeca Suger was 20 year old woman who dealt this disorder and has gone to court with a serious accusation that wasn't true. When she was 14 she accused her father of sexual abuse later to find out it was all made up. One thing that spoke to me was when she said, "the mind creates your reality". This made me realize how reality is made up of people imagination and beliefs which I found very fascinating.
Brainwave is an electrical impulse in the brain, they are the root off all our thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Specifically looking at a brainwave graph we have different types of brain waves that are associated with different states of consciousness, like being asleep or awake or even meditative states. In a brainwave graph we have: Gamma waves that is hyper brain activity, which is great for learning, Beta waves are your thinking waves where we busily engage in activities and conversations, Alpha waves is a relaxed state of mind seeping into meditation, Theta waves are the creative waves that drifts you into daydreaming down into sleep, and lastly delta waves that occur in deep dreamless sleep engaging in nothing but deep sleep. Everyone goes through there daily life engaging in these brain waves, but people who are diagnosed with false memory disorder tend to use some more than other in long periods of time. False memory disorder is mostly effected by Gamma waves, scientists observed electrical activity in their brains to determine whether specific brain waves were associated with successfully storing and retrieving memories. Researchers found that a fast brain wave, known as the gamma rhythm, increased when participants studied a word that they would later recall.
This is the lesson plan I wrote to simulate False memory Disorder with my classmates, I include a video to demonstrate the process in order for anyone to understand and try it out themselves.
This is a video demonstrating the simulation I presented that stimulates their mind (hence the tittle). This video is a "brain game" that takes them into a staged robbery to figure out who were the culprits. In order to solve this case as a witness its very important to remember every detail, but as we find out its very hard to remember certain events even if it was just seconds ago. This shows how False Memory works in a way that your mind makes up certain actions thinking they actually happened.
Here is a graph of the presumably measure of the brain waves my classmates might feel throughout the activity.
GA, "Brainwave Graph", 2018
This Flyer spreads the word about False Memory Disorder.
No comments:
Post a Comment