The Bryn Mawr community proudly and vocally offers an open and accepting space for all walks of gender and sexuality, offering its students an opportunity for personal exploration and growth, both as participants in and/or supporters of the queer community.  Simply living on this campus is an experiment in the complexity of gender and sexual identities, and the variation from individual to individual.  Even general terms defined today, such as lesbian, gay, bi, or heterosexual are not inclusive enough to adequately “label” all forms of sexual orientation (not surprisingly many people would prefer not to be labeled), and gender identities serve as an even greater example of complexity.  One identity in particular, that of transgendered individuals, specifically transsexuals, poses a particularly intricate mix of gender and sex “norms,” prompting questions about both the mental and physical aspects of the self in creating identity.

It happens to all of us occasionally. As you walk down the hallway you see a familiar face—someone you have recently met—you reach into your brain expecting a complicated series of synaptic firing to bring forth the name person in front of you only to be disappointed. Although you know it is there in the recesses of your mind, you cannot summon the name of your new acquaintance. You settle instead for the ubiquitous nod and the word “hello”.

Where failure to occasionally recall the name of new acquaintance may feel uncomfortable, it typically does not create huge difficulties. For me this scenario happens all too often. Names of acquaintances and friends of less than a year’s duration frequently elude me at pivotal movements. Although my problem with name recall is worse for personal names, I also occasionally experience difficulties recalling the name of specific objects or “common names”. Indeed my friends and colleagues are familiar with me using the most round-about ways to identify specific people or objects. Physicians and psychologists have several clinical terms to describe this word-finding problem. Anomia is one general term for problems with word finding or recall that occurs with no impairment of comprehension or the capacity to repeat the words; the terms anomic and nominal aphasia are also used. (1)

Sleeping is something everyone does each day without consciously thinking about why it is so important. We know we are tired before we sleep and if we don’t sleep, but have we ever stopped to think about what our dreams do? Dreams are part of every night’s sleep whether we remember them or not. They are an integral part of our daily rest cycle.

There are five main stages of sleep. Stage I only lasts a few minutes and is characterized by the individual being somewhat awake and aware, but very relaxed. Stages II and III are deeper levels of sleep but the individual will still wake easily. Stages II and III only last for about 40 minutes before Stage IV sleep begins. Stage IV sleep is difficult to wake someone from and is characterized by decreased blood pressure, heart rate, movement and breathing. This type of sleep helps the body recover physically from the day. Stage IV sleep becomes longer if one engages in a lot of strenuous activity and is usually the type of sleep recalled in the morning. After Stage IV sleep is achieved for about 50 minutes, the individual starts to move back down through the levels of sleep back to Stage I. REM (rapid eye movement) sleep begins at this time and is distinguished by “frequent bursts of rapid eye movements…autonomic activity, muscular twitching, dreams and profound muscular relaxation” (2). Both genders experience irregular heart rate and irregular blood pressure as well as increased gastric secretions during REM sleep, while males also experience erections. The cycles of sleep do not last for the same amount of time all night; “Everyone goes through an average of four or five cycles of sleep each night, each lasting from 90 to 100 minutes. Stage IV decreases and REM sleep increases progressively with each cycle, so that most Stage IV sleep occurs early in the night and most REM sleep during the last few hours before arising” (2).

Aditya Vora                                                                                                                                     Neurobiology and Behavior 2007

Paper 2                                                                                                                                                                       April 10, 2007 

Personality is arguably one of humankind’s most complex and fascinating features. Unfortunately for academia, centuries of philosophical musings and psychological studies have shown that personality is also one of the hardest aspects of human nature to conceptualize, exacerbated by the fact that it is also difficult to give it a definition that everyone can agree upon. Putting disagreements aside for the purpose of the discussion at hand, in this essay term “personality” will be defined as an individual’s sense of self, and from this how that individual then interacts with his or her cultural environment. Knowing that every one of 6.5 billion human beings on the planet is in possession of this incredibly intricate feature, a question that may follow is “From where, exactly, does personality arise?” While some argue that personality is a result of genes inherited from an individual’s parents, others claim that it arises simply from the way one is raised. This age-old “nature versus nurture” argument has plagued behavioral scientists and parents throughout the ages. However, perhaps some clarity can be gained on this issue by taking a step back and looking at the even broader picture, that is, what is the mechanism that gave rise to personality in the first place? If personality is taken to be a function of the brain it can then be said that, at least from the perspective of a neurobiologist, personality is a biological aspect displayed by an organ of the body. This said, one may ask, “By what mechanism do all other biological processes arise?” Thanks to Darwin and other contributing scientists, we know the answer to this question is, of course, evolution by natural selection. Thus it must be that human personality, just like any other part or function of the human body, was formed and shaped and is continually formed and shaped by the process of natural selection.

This semester, I designed and participated in a praxis class entitled Abuse and Relocation in Shelter Environments. My field work takes place at PACCA, the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Association. After working with dogs in a poorly funded shelter in Mérida, Mexico last year, I thought that I would be mentally prepared to launch myself into work in the U.S. However, what I discovered in Philadelphia is that cruelty towards animals in this country parallels the cruelty I found in Mexico. Every week, I see new evidence of abuse and neglect: starvation, scars, open wounds and overwhelming fear. I have learned about mange, pit-bull fighting, animal branding and pressure sores, which are abscesses that appear when a bone begins to protrude from the skin of an emaciated animal. As I conduct research about animal abuse and the people who commit it, I wonder where cruelty originates. Is there a template for cruelty laid down in the human brain? Is it something that is unique to our species? Why do human beings find pleasure in deliberately inflicting pain on other living things?

The United States (and much of the rest of the world) times work and school days in relation to the 24 hour solar day. In order to be awake at socially acceptable times for work and school, then, a person's internal clock, or circadian rhythm, must also conform to the 24-hour day. Common thinking holds that cycles may vary considerably within that 24 hour framework- hence "night owls" and "morning people"- but no one can completely diverge from the 24 hour pattern.

How many times have you been in class or at a meeting when the moderator or professor sets a deadline for a presentation and everyone moans about how early that deadline is, yet on the day of the presentations there is a line to go first?  It seems as even though these individuals did not feel that they had enough time to finish the presentation, but everyone cannot wait to get it done and present at the first possible moment!  Why is it this way?  I always want to go first and not simply because I think I will get a better grade or be on the professors’ good graces, it is because I want to get it done and over with!  If presenting, or other things of this nature, is painful and traumatic to us physically and mentally, why do we continue to want to face these challenges head on instead of trying to avoid and run from them?  What is this supernatural force that causes us to have superhuman will power and attack these painful threats head on?  Dread.  The dictionary describes dread as a noun and a verb: (v) to fear greatly; be in extreme apprehension of, to be reluctant to do, meet, or experience, (n) terror or apprehension as to something in the future; great fear (1).

Many of my drug using, sex crazed friends have said at least once that having an orgasm and doing a line of cocaine create the same feelings within the brain. I am able to understand why there is a chemical change when participating in a sexual act, but I cannot comprehend how people can be addicted to pornography, which has virtually no interaction with the viewer. Sexual acts that one partakes in, like all activities that one partakes in, changes the chemical reactions and firing rates in the brain; so why is it that viewing pornography, which is a mainly optical activity, can change the brain, and even more than that, create an addiction? Simply put, pornography addiction is the “abuse and overuse” (1) of various types of pornography; however, on a deeper level it is a very complicated subject. It raises both medical and social questions, and it is uncertain if the answers to these questions will ever be agreed upon. It is one of the few addictions that are just considered to be a psychological addiction; possibly because of that, most doctors do not consider it an actual addiction, but instead as a sub-condition of obsessive compulsive disorder (1).

Far from his monastery in Dharamsala, India, the Tibetan monk "His Holiness" the Dalai Lama delivered a speech just last year in Washington D.C. entitled "The Neuroscience of Meditation" at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting (1). One may naturally ask, what do the Dalai Lama and his ancient practice of meditation have to do with the current, developing field of neuroscience?

The answer: quite a lot.

However unlikely a pairing, the Dalai Lama has recently drawn attention to how meditation and spirituality positively affect the brain, in terms of both short- and long-term results. The Dalai Lama's involvement with this project all started with the work of University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscience researcher Richard Davidson, who, since the early nineties, has contributed much to the understanding of the interrelation between meditation and brain activity, as well as the potential consequences and applications of such developments. Primarily concerned with the brain's ability to change over time, otherwise known as neuroplasticity, Davidson has broken new ground in the field of mind-body medicine through his research (2).

The Dalai Lama himself has provided Davidson with Tibetan Buddhist monks to serve as test subjects in Davidson's studies. When asked to meditate on "unconditional loving-kindness and compassion", the brain of the monk in question produced marked gamma activity, which is typically too weak to notice (1). In the following research that ensued, monks generated gamma waves up to 30 times stronger than ordinary college students (1). In the vein of Davidson's interest in neuroplasticity, it seems possible to train one's mind to think meditatively over an extended period of time. And perhaps through the strong effects of positive meditative thought, one could counter—within oneself and within one's mind—certain emotional and psychological disorders.

Furthermore, University of Pennsylvania radiology professor Andrew Newberg, author of the book Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, has conducted similar research on the subject of meditation and the brain activity of Tibetan monks (3). Newberg's investigation consisted of the monks meditating for about an hour, then when their meditation peaked at a transcendental high, each monk was to pull a string, releasing an injection of radioactive tracer into their bloodstream. Through the injection of this tracer, Newberg and his team of researchers were able to detect how the marker moved to certain active parts of the brain. According to the subsequent findings, gleaned from scans of each monk's brain during meditation, an increase in activity was found around the frontal region of the brain, in which attention on specific tasks are processed; on the other hand, a decrease in activity was found around the area at the back of the brain, where one's processing of orientation and spatial awareness occur (4).

Regarding the results of his study, Newberg found that "During meditation, people have a loss of the sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time and that was exactly what we saw." He concluded, "When someone has a mystical experience, they perceive that sense of reality to be far greater and far clearer than our everyday sense of reality. Since the sense of spiritual reality is more powerful and clear, perhaps that sense of reality is more accurate than our scientific everyday sense of reality" (3).

The very notion that, even after the brain fully develops and one reaches adulthood, the brain continues to evolve or, as the case may have it, regress (i.e. Alzheimer's disease) is a remarkable one. The average person is constantly forming new connections, associations, and links within the brain. The Tibetan monk is doing the same, just with increased efficacy and power. Moreover, the possibility that one has the fundamental ability to possess greater agency over one's own brain capacity through mediation and deep contemplation is striking.

This begs the question: what other sorts of activities or actions significantly and directly affect the brain and that which the brain produces? Now that we know meditation affects more than mere body and bodily health, could this kind of reflection also have even more to do with the brain than the scientific literature suggests? If so, will we ever be capable of knowing this and how? Davidson, Newberg, and the Dalai Lama, among others, have certainly left the door open with regard to these questions. After all, perhaps science cannot explain everything of the spiritual.