Posttraumatic Stress Disorder -- PTSD

What is PTSD?

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can occur after you have been through a traumatic event. A traumatic event is something horrible and scary that you see or that happens to you. During this type of event, you think that your life or others' lives are in danger. You may feel afraid or feel that you have no control over what is happening.

A life-threatening event can develop PTSD. These events can include:

*Combat or military exposure
*Child sexual or physical abuse
*Terrorist attacks
*Sexual or physical assault
*Serious accidents, such as a car wreck
*Natural disasters, such as a fire, tornado, hurricane, flood, or earthquake.

After the event, you may feel scared, confused, or angry. If these feelings don't go away or they get worse, you may have PTSD. These symptoms may disrupt your life, making it hard to continue with your daily activities.

What are the symptoms?

Symptoms of PTSD can be terrifying. They may disrupt your life and make it hard to continue with your daily activities. It may be hard just to get through the day.

PTSD symptoms usually start soon after the traumatic event, but they may not happen until months or years later. They also may come and go over many years. If the symptoms last longer than 4 weeks, cause you great distress, or interfere with your work or home life, you probably have PTSD.

There are four types of PTSD symptoms:

*Reliving the event
*Avoiding situations that remind you of the event
*Feeling numb*Feeling keyed up

What causes PTSD?

Briefly explain how memory and emotion relate to PTSD.

Emotion and Memory = Flashbulb Memory?

Brown & Kulik (1977)

                                       
The aim of the study was investigate whether dramatic or personally significant events can cause "flashbulb" memories. The procedure was that the psychologists assessed the memories of 80 American people for the circumstances in which they learned of public events. They demonstrated that flashbulb memory is more likely for unexpected and personally relevant shocking events. They concluded that dramatic events can cause physiological imprinting of a memory of the events. The weakness was the data was collected through questioner, so it couldn't verify the accuracy of memories reported. 

                      

     


Neisser & Harsch (1992)          
In 1992, they asked 106 participants to answer the questions about circumstances of the challenger space shuttle disaster. Thirty two months later, they asked the same question again to the participants, and compare the results with original one. The finding showed that memories were not accurate, it showed the memories had in fact dimmed. Of 220 facts from the original questionnaire, 150 were wrong. They concluded that the Flashbulb memories are not reliable. 

  




Talarico & Rubin (2003)
This study is about that on September 12, they gave 52 students a questionnaire about their memory of September 11, and an ordinary event of their choosing from the preceding few days. They divided into three groups, and each group return for follow-up questionnaire session after different amount of time: 7days, 42days, and 224days. They were asked the same questions about their memories about both ordinary event and flashbulb memory. They found out that people have strong memories of September 11 than any other day. Therefore, they concluded that flashbulb memories are just like with other memories. 

Seneca and Lazarus

Facial Expressions of Emotion Are Innate, Not Learned

 

I read the article, Facial Expressions of Emotion Are Innate, Not Learned. The article says that facial expressions of emotion are innate. According to a new study, facial expressions of emotion are hardwared into our genes which the article says that facial expressions of emotion are innate, not learning how to express the emotions. The study demonstrates that sighted and blind individuals use the same facial expressions, producing the same facial muscle movements in response to specific emotional stimuli. Psychology professor David Matsumoto compared the facial expressions of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games. Sighted and blinded athletes manage their expressions of emotion in the same way, even though blinded people had no way to watch and learn to express the emotion as like as sighted people. Therefore, it demonstrates that the facial expressions are innate.

I had a reason that I chose the article, because before I read this article, I thought that people would learn how to express the facial emotions. However, my thought was wrong. This article was interesting to me.  

Emotion, Gender and Culture

               

Emotion and Gender                     

There is recent research shows that different between men and women. There are 55 cultures demonstrated that women tend to be more emotional, agreeable, extroverted, and conscientious than men. Women read other people's emotional reactions better than men, they receive emotional from verbally or visually. Women reported experiencing love and anger much more intensely than men did in another assessment of gender differences in emotional response. Those women also smiled more when recalling memories of happiness or love. Lastly, men and women respond to stress in different ways. Women display greater sadness or anxiety than men.


Emotion and Culture
There are two studies of research, participants viewed group photographs comprising one central and four background figures. Researchers influenced the facial emotions and asked participants to determine the dominant emotion of the central figure. The study found that 72 percent of Japanese participants reported that their judgement was influenced by emotions displayed by all the figures in the group, while a similar percentage of North Americans reported not being influenced by the background figures at all.

Emotion

The word emotion includes a wide range of visible behavior, expressed feelings, and changes in the body state. We are experiencing the emotion and we can feel the emotions. Emotions are very complex to express them; we use a variety of terms, besides gestures and attitudes. The words are limited to express the feeling. Therefore, the words to describe emotions are quite condensed, so emotion allows people to share them.

If we do not have emotions, we would lose all the charm of living. Even dogs and cats have emotions. We have emotions because they make us to enjoy our life. They make us human. I cannot imagine that we do not have emotions. If we lose the emotion, it would be a like computer, because our computer is just sitting and being a perfect machine. It just think, store stuff and give results. Therefore, if we have no emotion, it is only an intelligent machine. We have emotions, because we are not low-level animals.  


I found the four theories of emotions, which is James-Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory, Schacter-Singer theory,  and most recently the Lazarus theory. 


The James-Lange Theory, this theory proposes that an event or stimulus cause a physiological stimulation without any conscious thought, and you experience the resulting only after you interpret the physical response.
The Cannon-Bard Theory suggests that the given stimulus evokes both a physiological and an emotion response. The Schacter-Singer Theory takes a more cognitive approach to the issue. Schacter and Singer believe that an event causes physiological arousal, but they you must identify a reason for the arousal before you label the emotion. The last theory is the Lazarus Theory proposes that when the event occurs, a cognitive consideration is made, and based on the result of the consideration, an emotion and physiological response follow. 

Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer‘s Disease is the most common case of dementia, this disease accounts for 50 to 80 percent of dementia cases. The case of dementia describes the symptoms, if can include loss of memory, mood changes, and problems with communication. These symptoms occur when the brain is damaged by certain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease, which means that the brain damages gradually. Alzheimer’s is not problem of age, increasing age is the great risk factor, and the most of people who has Alzheimer’s disease, they are more older than 65. However, this is not a disease of old age, people who is around 40 or 50, they also could get the Alzheimer’s disease.

I watched the video in the class. The video, “The forgetting”, this video was about the some of people who got the Alzheimer’s Disease. The people who got the Alzheimer’s Disease, they are losing their memory. Also,they are losing themselves. They could not remember anything about what they have done, and what they are doing. Also, they could not remember family and friend’s name and face. After I watched the video in class, I feel bad for the people who got the Alzheimer’s Disease. I think Alzheimer’s Disease was really sad Disease for people, this disease does not hurt the body, but it hurt the mind of people around who got the Alzheimer's disease. I cannot believe that people would lose their memories and themselves. I hope that people will not get the Alzheimer’s disease no more in the world.

The case of H.M.

His name is Henry Gustav Molaison. He is famous as H.M., he was an memory disorder patient. When he was 9 years old, his head hit by a bicycle rider. He had seizures after the accident. However, scientists had no idea, and could not understand about his head, because they had no way to see inside his brain. Eighteen years after that bicycle accident, Dr. Scoville decided to remove two finger shaped slivers of tissue from Henry Gustav Molaison's brain. His surgery was successful in controlling the seizures but after this surgery, H.M had severe amnesia. He was still able to remember things from before the surgery but he could not retain any new memories. If he makes new experiences of memory, then he was forgotten all the memory after a while.
The case of H.M. was very important role in the development of theories that explain the brain function and memory. His personality, IQ, and knowledge of the world were intact. However his long term memory and short term memory was not the problem, because he could still remember of his youth, also he could memorize 8-digit numbers and retains the info for 30 seconds The real problem was the ability to convert short-term memories into long-term memories.
Hours after Henry Molaison’s death, scientists took scans of his brain; data that help exactly which areas of his temporal lobes were still untouched and which were damaged, and how this pattern related to his memory. His case has helped scientists understand much more about the brain.

Schema Theory

Schema theory describes how we create psychological representations to perceive and understand reality, whether it is reality in the outer world of people and things, or reality in the inner world. A psychological schema is the perceptual structure we use to make sense of the world around us. A schema is like a network, where different ideas and perceptions are connected in different ways. Everyone has their own personal schema. When they get a perception, they try to fit into their own schema. The perceptual structure, the context, and gives meaning to what they see. Schema theory is important in many ways, such as learning or communication.  

Bartlett experiment was to remember a story called "The War of the Ghost". During recalling of the story, the participants do not remember of details in the story, and they kind of change the story to fit on their sense. The phenomenon became overt, that participants gave up their details to make sense of the information. The conclusion of this experiment lucidly conveyed the schema theory. The demonstration of human memory, that memory can reconstruct following the schema. Bartlett accomplished that people follow along the schema theory or insensitive mental structure that shows one’s general information and though that, memory is affected.

French and Richards experiment showed the study of influence of schemata on memory retrieval. There would be three participants. The three participants were shown a clock with roman numeric symbols. First participant were shown a clock and then asked to draw the clock from memory, asked second participant to remember the clocks and draw, and asked third participant just to draw the clock. The first two participants reverted to the conventional IV notation, but third participants, the IIII notation. French and Richards explained this result in terms of schemata knowledge of roman numerical effecting participant memory retrieval.  

Loftus and Palmer experiment was the test of language. The participants were shown film clips of traffic accidents. After they seen the film, and asked them to answer some question about just what they seen. The question was the critical question; it was to do with the speed of the car involved in the collision. There were five questions, but they changed the verb in each five questions such as smashed, bumped, hit, collided and contacted. The result of the experiment shows the information of the memory can mix up with other memory.

 

The case of Ronald Cotton, Jennifer Thompson was victim. Thompson stated that Ronald Cotton is rapist. After the examination, it found out that her memory was wrong. Because her witness is not true, it proved by eyewitness testimony.   

To sum up, memory can change it. The schema theory both helps and hinders the accurate recall of memory. As I mentioned above, schema theory has an advantage or disadvantage for people's memory.

Review of the case of Ronald Cotton

In 1984, there was a African American called Ronald Cotton. There was an accident in Jennifer Thompson’s house. The rapist broke into Thompson’s apartment through back of the door. The noise awakened her. The man came into her bedroom, and forced her to submit to sexual intercourse. During the attack she studied the rapist’s face, showed to identify him if she survived the attack. Thompson remembered her assailant’s face and she worked with police to create a composite sketch of the rapist. When presented with a photo lineup, she identified Cotton as her rapist. She testified against him twice, even after seeing Bobby Poole. After nine years, Cotton was watching the Simpson trial unfold on TV when he heard about a miraculous new test that could prove his innocence. So he asked to take DNA test. And the results came back, DNA testing proved that Poole was real rapist. Thompson has since become a critic of the reliability of eyewitness testimony. She was remorseful after learning that Ronal was an innocent who was sent to prison.  

                                 

A false memory is a fabricated or distorted  recollection of an event that did not actually happen.  People often think of  memory as something like a video recorder, accurately documenting and storing everything that happens with perfect accuracy and clarity. In reality, memory is very prone to fallacy. People can feel completely confident that their memory is accurate, but this confidence is no guarantee that particular memory is correct.

I think the witness is not usefulness. From Jennifer Thompsom’s memory of the rapist, she confused the face of rapist. Her witness is not exactly true, because the false memory involve confusing or mixing fragments of memory events, some of which may have happened at different times but which are remembered as occurring together. Over time, memories become distorted and begin to change. In some case, the original memory may be changed in order to incorporate new information or experiences.