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The face of mental health in the Western world has certainly changed throughout time and history, revealing its fluid nature.  Mental illnesses have continuously been defined, redefined, disregarded, categorized, recategorized, and rated according to the perceived needs of a community of patients.  In the New York Times article The Americanization of Mental Illness, Watters explains that changes in the expression of mental health and illness across global cultures are due to, “…those who minister to the mentally ill – doctors or shamans or priests – inadvertently help to select which symptoms will be recognized as legitimate.”   The key word here in ‘inadvertently.’ What does Watters mean when

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            As someone who is studying in Japanese at Haverford College, I have always found language and its relationship with the brain interesting. I have always wondered what gives humans the ability to comprehend language and I have always wondered how this ability is different from any other animal’s ability to interpret sound. I have additionally wondered how the ability to hear could affect language comprehension. In other words, is having that “input mechanism” really necessary for understanding and creating spoken language?

 The human nervous system is made up of three overall types of neuronal connections. These connections link sensory neurons to the rest of the nervous system, the nervous system to motor neurons, or neurons within the nervous system to other neurons in the nervous system. Inter-neuronal connections are by far the most numerous of all connections in the nervous system, while sensory neuron connections are relatively sparse. Because of this disproportionate number of connection types, it is essential that the human brain be able to derive complex reactions from very few sensory inputs. The link between olfaction and memory provides a truly remarkable example of this ability. Olfa

Herman Marcia

Professor Grobstein 

Neurobiology and Behavior 

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 What is memory? What would life and behavior be like if humans could not remember? While learning about memory in my psychology class, I began to wonder what life would be like without memory and, therefore, what effect memory has on behavior. In this paper, I wish to highlight the importance of memory to behavior and life.