The Placebo Effect

          The Placebo Effect is a sort of reaction a patient have when they think they have been treated but are actually not. The most common placebos we see are sugar pills and fake surgeries. It shows the power of the human mind and that sometimes the pain can be reduced by psychological means. It can also be the power of the positive thinking.

          The thought of placebos in modern times came from H.K. Beecher’s study. He looked at 15 clinical trials and found out that 35% of the 1082 patients had satisfactory results being administered with the placebo effect. This is the evidence at the time that supported Beecher’s study. But many after found a lot of wrong issues with his results and data. In 10 of the 15 clinical trials Beecher used earlier, 66.7% of the patients improved as a normal course of their illness, and thus, was not an effect of the placebo. Also in another case, the patients improved after 6 days, but that was a normal result and they would have improved even if they didn’t take anything at all for their cold.

Another important issue with his results was that he only recorded the ones that were successful, and didn’t take into account the patients that deteriorated; therefore there was a misleading direction in the data he presented.

          My personal opinion of the placebo effect after reading all of that is that maybe it does exist, but one shouldn’t depend on it to save a life. Obviously if a patient’s status is critical, it would be unwise and unorthodox to use the placebo effect hoping that it would work. I think the placebo effect works best on more trivial things, such as the pressing of buttons and air conditioning. The mind is a very powerful thing, and perhaps it may trick our body into thinking it is in a condition it is actually not.

Sex and Cultural Differences In Memory

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080220104244.htm

Sex differences in memory:

          There has always been differences between sexes, and their capacity of memory is one two.  The findings of psychologists Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman in Sweden did determine that sex differences have a lot to do with their episodic memory, a long-term memory build on personal experiences, by which give woman an advantage.
          The differences between the sexes is that women are better in verbal episodic memory taks (ex: remembering words, objects, pictures) and men are better at remembering symbolic non-linguistic things. Another case is that women can remember facial feature better than men, especially those of other females. Also that women recognize familiar smells better. But another thing that affects this is education, which have a big influence on these sex differences.
          Althought the chances that genetically-based differences between the capacity of male and female memory is not clear, results from experiments show that females have the advantage to episodic memory.


http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep05/culture.aspx

Cultural differences in memory:
         

           Throughout a child's life, it is normal for the child not to remember events that happened below the age of 4 or so. This is called "childhood amnesia". But researcher now have discovered the fact that between different cultures, the time when a child can actually remember something is very different, the largest difference up to 2 years apart.
           The main difference that could be found was between american children and asian children. People who grew up in societies that focus more on personal history, like the US, will have earlier childhood memories than those people who grew up in an environment whose value interdependence is placed above those of personal history, like Asia.
           These difference are also explained by the social-interaction model developed by Katherine Nelson. This models says, our autobiographical memories don't develop in a vacuum, but when we were children and we go over past events with adults, enabling us to remember more details.
          There have been many experiments done to understand these slight differences more. Like they tried to compare the earliest memories of Asian-American immigrants to those of native asians and americans and try to figure out a pattern. So overall, this is not a really precise theory, but they are working on it to prove that it is.

Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease is losing memories slowly and gradually. No one can identify the causes yet, although the most common trait is that people get this at an old age. When people get this, their identities fade away slowly, causing an incredible amount of pain in the families of the affected. They have nursing homes especially made to treat this, and a place for families to leave their beloved and to not worry about their loved ones being in danger at home, alone.

Although researches keep trying to find something that can stop this, all they seem to be able to find is a way to slow down this process, not stopping it entirely. In the early ages, no one seemed to know about Alzheimer’s disease. The main reason for this is because back then no one seemed to live over the age of 65, therefore the rareness of this disease surfacing. But now that human life has been prolonged to over 65 years old, the need for a cure is more and more demanding.

After reading and watching about this disease, it made me wonder about the mysteries occurring all around us, and I grew apprehensive. What if this disease someday attacks on someone in my family? What if later on I actually get this disease too, and can't remember anything from my childhood to my family? With this question, it lead me to think about  the importance of life. I understand now why people everyone keeps saying “live in the present, not the future”, because later on in life, the present is all you have because you can’t be yourself anymore in the future.