Biology 202 Web Paper 3

A Writer’s Tale of the Overactive “I” Function

Michelle Crepeau

Prof. Grobstein

Biology 202: Neurobiology and Behavior

16 May, 2008

Creatures in the Night and Miracles in Clouds: A Discourse on the Plausibility and Indistinct Nature of Group Hallucinations and Collective Reality

There are countless stories of sleepwalkers suddenly waking up and finding themselves naked in their backyards. Between 1 and 15% of the population are prone to sleepwalking, which involves people getting up and walking around while asleep and often doing bizarre things (1). Frequent sleepwalking can lead to health problems since it interrupts normal patterns of sleep. But what causes sleepwalking and are there ways to control it? How does this relate to the structural mechanisms of neurobiology that we have learned over the semester?

Julianne Rieders

Continuation on the Cultural Cognition Theory

            In my last paper analyzing Richard E. Nisbett’s theories about Cultural Cognition, I asked if stereotypes of the East and West affect research on this topicwithout elaborating on what these stereotypes are. Furthermore I failed todiscuss why China, Korea, and Japan could be considered a cohesive group, whichI called East Asia, in which members share similar ways of thinking.

Do not stand by my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep,
I am the thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on the snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle Autumn's rain,
When you awaken in the morning's hush                                 Remarkably Human, isn’t it?
I am the swift uplifting rush                                                             By Nelly Khaselev

Becoming British Overnight: the Foreign Accent Syndrome

While greeting one of my friends who had just returned from a semester abroad, I was intrigued not by the excitement in her voice as she described London, but rather the lilting British accent she was using to recount the stories. I was baffled to imagine that she picked up such a heavy accent in such a short period of time; she herself mentioned that she hadn’t even noticed that she’d picked it up until she came back to the States. Was it possible to acquire a foreign accent so quickly?