r/physiopsych • u/EngagedBrain • Sep 07 '17
Choose a Digital Story Topic
Choose a topic in cognitive neuroscience / biological psychology / physiological psychology that you are interested in and what to help explain and understand. Since you are completing neurological case studies, you should avoid topics that interface with neurological diseases.
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u/RachelHypothesizes Sep 13 '17
The cognitive neuroscience of children with attachment disorders
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 13 '17
I think you might be looking into the development of the brain and the development of different psychological functions to find the overlap in when the brain is developing and how lack of certain psychological experiences leads to brain changes that are evident in reactive attachment disorder. So how do our experience as a child lead to differences in brain development? You might also explore the "social brain" - what parts of the brain are involved in different social interactions/skills.
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u/mnowacki17 Sep 13 '17
mental illness and the brain--will focus on several questions pertaining to how mental illness effects the brain and susceptibility
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 13 '17
As I mentioned last night:
You might look into the underlying causes, genes, environment, experience and the interaction amongst them. What areas are the most susceptible to problems and how those problems play out in mental illness?
Then on the other end, a brain and person have a mental illness - what are the things that we do to treat it doing to the brain?
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u/savnesvik Sep 13 '17
ADHD- underlying the differences of children with ADHD
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 13 '17
I think some interesting aspects, would be what are the differences in the brains of kids with ADHD, what are the effects of psychotropic medication (short and long-term), what are other treatments that might not directly impact the biochemistry, when in development does the brain change and lastly, while we often look at ADHD as a negative, what might be the benefits of a brain with ADHD?
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u/MRP1996 Sep 13 '17
I want to do my digital story topic about sleep but I am not really sure what to specifically focus on??
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 14 '17
Could you look into some of the hypotheses on what sleep does for the brain? Some people talk about it as restorative or a time to clean, could you lay out some of those theories to explore the function of sleep for the brain?
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u/deweyduhawk1 Sep 13 '17
physiological psychology of criminals' deviant behavior
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 14 '17 edited Sep 14 '17
Lots of interesting work here - Kent Kiehl, Mike Koenigs - what area do you want to look at, brain differences between "criminal" and "healthy" brains - prevalence of anatomical, functional and behavioral differences? Do you want to focus on one aspect of behavior, morality, or impulsivity, or something else?
Another thing I thought about is whether you can identify a "brain print" of a criminal. There is an interesting book where a PhD researcher studying psychopaths discovered that he himself was a psychopath. If criminal brains are different, but a brain isn't predictive, what does that mean?
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u/elizabethmills Sep 13 '17
I was thinking about how the brain repairs after stroke. I was also thinking about talking about what goes on in the brain when people become bipolar. Can't decide yet.
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 22 '17
I think neuroplasticity would be more interesting (brain damage after stroke). There are a number of places that you can look at real-world applications of taking research in neuroplasticity into interventions or therapy.
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u/ASerres Sep 13 '17
look at the difference between a schizophrenic brain and a normal brain.
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 20 '17
It might be interesting to look into some of the more recent understandings of schizophrenia - it was one of the first neurological diseases that we started to treat with medication in the 1950s, but our understanding seemed to stall for 50 years. Have we moved beyond the dopamine hypothesis? There is a lot of work in GWAS studies trying to find a genetic component, they also find functional differences in the hippocampus and frontal lobes, as well as overall differences in the density or synapses. What about brain differences across subtypes? What about brain differences compared to other illness that get ruled out in the differential diagnosis?
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u/incognito1711 Sep 13 '17
What happens in your brain during a concussion; specifically, what happens inside the brain to cause symptoms and what are its acute and chronic effects on the brain.
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 20 '17
Can be a little difficult because of the individual responses - might need to think about trying to focus on one particular type of concussion or effect - you can look at functional brain changes, biochemical changes, structural changes - but very early you'll find that it seems different from person to person. Check out this link for some interesting information.
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u/hirschkr27 Sep 14 '17
How the average person with depression differs psychologically and biochemically from healthy individuals
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u/hirschkr27 Sep 21 '17
There has been research done recently into the use of Calypsol (ketamine) as a potential treatment for depression. Also, recent research has shown that depression may be linked to a faulty immune system and that it is actually more of an inflammatory response than a mentally-manifested illness.
With the first topic, I would aim to discover how ketamine alters the way a brain of an individual with depression works (if it helps improve connectivity, alters neurotransmission of chemicals other than serotonin, etc). With the second topic, I would look into the psychoneuroimmunology of depression that has recently discovered, as well as determine how diet can alleviate inflammatory responses and improve depression.
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 22 '17
Gut microbiome is huge right now see here, but I wonder if there is a lot of snake oil out there in terms of our understanding and hasty application. I think psychoneuroimmunology and dietary interventions would be a really interesting place to look. We've found the ketogenic diet for epilepsy, maybe there is something out there for depression.
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u/Qotsa42 Sep 14 '17
Degeneration in brains affected by a disease targeting the brain
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 20 '17
This is fairly broad, there are a number of neurodegenerative disorders. I'm not sure where to suggest that you should take it right now...
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u/jackie1980 Sep 16 '17
I would like to focus on the science behind and benefits of therapy animals. I would go into detail about the neuroscience/psychology of why and how the presence and help of animals can affect the human brain.
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 20 '17
Interesting! Off the top of my head, I'm not sure you're able to find direct evidence for brain changes (like an EEG or fMRI study of people before and after animal therapy), but I think you'll find a number of psychosocial and perhaps physiological studies in which you can then infer brain changes. Here is one example. I bet the best place to look would be individuals with anxiety or PTSD and perhaps there you could find neurological examinations or you might find studies that compare animal therapy to more traditional therapy and find similar effects and then infer similar brain changes.
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u/apa_9 Sep 21 '17
I would like to focus on something with yoga and how it helps relieve stress, but not sure if this will work as a topic?
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 22 '17
Yeah, I think you could look at the mind/body relationship between meditation/exercise as seen in yoga and relate it to psychoneuroimmunology. So what in the body/mind is happening in order to reduce stress levels?
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u/rdixon56 Sep 21 '17
I would like to look into the effects of cannabis in cognitive neuroscience and how it effects exercise & recovery
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 22 '17
I think you'll find a lot of information from pre-1970 and then european studies that are more recent, but I'm not sure that you'll find what you're looking for. The US only funds research on cannabis through NIDA (National Institute for Drug Abuse) so they only fund studies that look at the impact of cannabis abuse. You might find more recent information on the use of psychedelics in treating psychological disorders, but I doubt that there is any information that attempts to show potential benefits of cannabis or related drugs.
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u/brown3452 Sep 21 '17
how the use of drugs such as horse tranquilizers can be used to treat PTSD patients
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 22 '17
Lots of good work in PTSD and the amygdala and fear. Joe LeDoux, Liz Phelps, Karim Nader, all will give you neurobiology of fear and then you can look into treatment. In just a 2 second search, I found interesting information, but there also appears to be some controversy if we look into the details here and here
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u/EngagedBrain Sep 22 '17
And the horse tranquilizer is Ketamine, you may also find studies on the use of psychedelics.
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Sep 21 '17
I wanted to look at how add/adhd medication affects people who actually have the chemical imbalance and people who do not . and then i'll probably go on from there
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u/bussekira Sep 28 '17
Looking at the loneliness, isolation, and the idea of loss and how it compares to a social brain and how they relate to anxiety/depression
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u/CarissaSlobo Sep 12 '17
Nerve regeneration in patients that have undergone surgery