February | 2012 | kristinbell.org

The Auditory System: 6th Drawing for Neuroscience Class

February 20, 2012 at 12:55 am | Posted in Art, audio, audition, auditory system, basilar membrane, Biology, Brain, cochlea, drawings, ear drum, ears, hearing, Heschl's Gyrus, Kristin Bell, Medicine, Mental Health, Mental Illness, neuroscience, ossicles, Psychiatry, Psychology, Science, sound, tectorial membrane | 2 Comments

This last week we were learning about the auditory system in neuroscience class. These are the drawings I came up with for the assignment we had to do. He said that they didn’t have to be anatomically correct and could be schematic, so the second picture is more of a schematic drawing.

Schizophrenia and Possible Social-Emotional Brain Processing Deficits

February 18, 2012 at 3:44 am | Posted in amygdala, fMRI, inferior parietal lobule, Kristin Bell, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Psych Meds, Psychiatrist, Psychiatry, Psychiatry Denial, Psychology, Psychosis, Research, Schizophrenia, Social-Emotion Processing | 2 Comments

As reported in Schizophrenia Research, vol. 134 (2012) 118-124, Prerona Mukherjee et. al. presented their study that showed lower connection activity levels from the amygdala to the rest of the brain, specifically, to the inferior parietal lobule, for people with schizophrenia as compared to controls. The study involved 19 participants diagnosed according to the DSM-IV with schizophrenia and 24 controls matched for demographics like educational level, region, and age.

The study involved pre-assessment of symptoms and scanning the participants with an fMRI machine while they were shown fearful, neutral and baseline faces. Data was collected and analyzed showing that the participants with schizophrenia displayed reduced connectivity when shown fearful faces. The regions that were implicated involve social-emotional processing that is vital to social interactions.

The study supports the view that there may be a “functional disconnection” in brain regions that support and interpret social cues and emotion processing information for people with schizophrenia. This information also mirrors the symptoms that many patients with schizophrenia present with such as paranoia, flattened affect and lack of correct social cue processing.

Decorating to Entertain Myself! HAHA

February 18, 2012 at 12:54 am | Posted in Bed, Bedding, Bedroom, Cats, Cleaning, Collection, Color, Colorful, Cute, Decorating, dolls, Duvet, Fashion, Flowers, Fun, Hello Kitty, Kawaii, Kitties, Kitty, Kristin Bell, Lamp, PBTeen, Pendant, Pillows, Sheets | Leave a comment

Decorating My Bed

A Different Outfit For My Bed

Hello Kitty-fied Lamp

Star Pendant

Zoey Yawning :)

I enjoy decorating my room now and then with new and/or old things. Here are some pics of the things I’ve been decorating. :) A lot of stuff I have gotten at PBTeen Teen Bedding, because I like the colorful stuff they have (even though I’m clearly not a teen!). I usually don’t pay full price for stuff, but wait for sales, and they do have some awesome sales sometimes! The other thing I enjoy about PBTeen is that most of the time their colors mix and match together, so even when you buy completely different things they go together! The rest of my room is a hot mess, but at least my bed is super-comfy! lol

More Calculus Homework! :)

February 14, 2012 at 11:48 pm | Posted in Calculus, Calculus Example, definite integral, displacement, distance, Kristin Bell, math, Mathematics | Leave a comment

Here is another page of Calculus homework. I thought it would be fun to add the rocket as my projectile, and then I felt compelled to add the moon, Earth and Sun! hahaha. We were working on definite integrals and finding distance traveled and displacement.

Chinese Patients with Schizophrenia, Their Siblings, and Facial Emotion Processing

February 14, 2012 at 10:48 pm | Posted in Academic, Chinese, facial emotion processing, Kristin Bell, left middle frontal gyrus, neuroscience, Prefrontal Cortex, Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychosis, Schizophrenia | Leave a comment

A study performed by Hui-jie Li et. al. based in Beijing, China and published in Schizophrenia Research vol. 134 (2012) tested 12 patients with schizophrenia for facial emotion processing. In the study, 12 of the non-ill siblings of the patients were also tested along with a control group of 12 people who were matched for demographic variables like IQ, age, gender, and education levels.

The researchers were especially interested in evaluating whether or not the patients with schizophrenia had deficits in facial emotional processing like other studies from Western populations have indicated. In essence, this was a replication study paired with a cultural component to test if facial emotional processing deficits are universal or not.

The data obtained from 8-minute fMRI scanning sessions where participants were shown 20 happy faces, 20 fearful faces and 20 neutral faces (at different times with different time intervals) were analyzed and it was found that the patients with schizophrenia showed abnormal activation of the “social brain neural circuit.” In addition, the sibling participants showed slight abnormalities that fell between what the patients with schizophrenia displayed and what the control group displayed. This result led researchers to hypothesize that there might be a deficit even in the non-ill siblings that the patients’ brains are trying to compensate for.

During the study the control group showed greater activation in various brain regions that processed the happy faces, but the patients with schizophrenia showed greater activation than the controls in the left middle frontal gyrus when processing the fearful faces. The sibling participants also showed greater activation than the controls (but less than their siblings with schizophrenia) when processing fearful faces, but had similar activation responses to controls with the happy faces.

The results of the study are similar to previous studies done to test for facial emotional processing in people with schizophrenia indicating that there are universal deficits in facial emotional processing that patients with schizophrenia must compensate for.

Medial View Human Brain: 5th Drawing for Neuro Class

February 5, 2012 at 3:41 am | Posted in Academic, Art, Brain, cerebellum, Colorful, drawings, Education, frontal lobe, gyrus, Illustrated, Kristin Bell, Medial view of human brain, medulla oblongata, neuroscience, occipital lobe, parietal lobe, Prefrontal Cortex, Psychology, temporal lobe | 2 Comments

I’m not quite sure if I got all of the parts in the right spots for this one. It is pretty hard to draw from multiple images and get everything in one pic. This is supposed to be the medial view of the human brain. :) Click the pic to enlarge.