This I Believe Movie Project Reflection

I thought this project was really fun. Designing it and also filming it didn't really feel like a project to me, even though it was. My ideas actually changed while I was filming. I decided to take a different route. Originially, I was supposed to be in most of the clips, but I decided it would be better I was the one filming it. Personally, I don't really like being the center of the movie. So even though all the beliefs came from me, others were holding up the signs that I made. I picked people that sort of matched the belief I had. The different people I chose were the ones that came to mind when I looked at my beliefs. Also, there were some clips that had no people in it. I simply wrote my belief in different and creative ways on the board. I was actually surprised to realize that i really liked the ending product. Usually, I don't end up liking the project that I make. I always have a different picture of how it was supposed to look. Even though the ending product of this project didn't turn out like I had originally planned, I still liked it. I decided at the very last minute to make the whole movie black and white. I'm not sure why, but it just seemed appropriate. The background song I put in was "Upside Down" by Jack Johnson. It totally went with the movie and I love that song. Without the song, I think the whole movie would have been different in a bad way. Overall, I just loved the outcome and can honestly say this is one of the funnest projects I have done.

"This I believe" Analysis

http://thisibelieve.org/essay/48062/

 

 I chose to listen to the 6 year old boy's this I believe statements. For a young boy, his beliefs are surprisingly deep. I love how this shows that you can have beliefs, and very strong ones at that, no matter how old you are. I like how some of his beliefs are not realistic, which is totally fine because sometimes we have to believe in those things in order to keep hope and be happy.

All of these beliefs are very positive and have some good behind them. This list provides joy and happiness and hope to anyone who reads it. It is just a list, not a full on paper, which makes it unique and simple to understand. It makes it seem like he doesn't need to explain himself, he just believes it, and that's that.

Wrapping up The Brain--Reflection

This film was very interesting and answered a lot of questions, but also posed many more. There were some positive and negative implications. The knowledge that was acquired in this film could lead to other scientific discoveries about the brain. One example would be how we could use the knowledge that in a pyschopath's brain, a certain part is smaller that affects their emotions, specifically remorse. We could use this information to try and maybe help the people with brains of psychopaths and possibly stop all the killing. Another implication could be found in the base jumping example. The high wears off and the brain needs a different or more dangerous cliff to have a better high. We could use this information to maybe make a pill that keeps that same high so that it would be less dangerous and the jumpers don't have to go out and find new cliffs everytime.

The knowledge from this video came from many different sources. The navy seals information came from observations and different situations. Information about the most amnesiac man in the world was found by observation and also experiments. Mostly all the knowledge was found through experiments to see where activity in the brain is. The film showed where all the different emotions occurred in the brain, or where the activity occurred. There was some problems with parts of the experiments that happened in this video. For example, the experiment of the orgasm could have had some faults because they couldn't get all of them to have an orgasm. It was difficult because they were in an experimental room and it's hard! Also, what was the point of that experiment?

Overall, I really liked this movie. It was very interesting, and I learned new things I never would have known before. What do the other parts of the brain control? Does everyone get a high from base jumping or is everyone different and have their own way of getting a high? Is that considered an addiction? 

Out of Character: The Psychology of Good and Evil by Maria Popova

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/05/11/out-of-character/

This article is about the thought of good and evil. It talks about how sometimes a person we think to be "good" does something "bad" or vice versa. Of course I didn't watch this whole video that was on the article because its around 50 minutes long, but the gist of it is that we can't put a person into one category of good and bad. People's moral behaviors change all the time.

I don't really understand what the point of this was. Obviously, people who are considered "good" have done bad things becasue nobody's perfect and everybody makes a mistake. I am sure a generally "bad" person must have done something good in their lives as well.

Questions:

Is this topic even worth looking at? Because it's obvious that "good" people do some "bad" things and vice versa.

If a good, amazing person does something bad, does that now make them a bad person? If so, then we would have no good person in this world.

 

 

Mind Reading: "Unlearning" Pain.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/02/mind-reading-neuroscientist-v-s-ramachandran-on-unlearning-pain/

This articles is about the now widely accepted process of mirror neurons. Before mirror neurons, there was something called mirror therapy. This is when a mirror is placed so that the existing limb looks as if it is the missing one, which helped the pain that is in the missing limb. A patient with a phantom limb can feel the touch when a different person was touched. This article explain why unlearning pain is possible. Vision is a large part of that.

Questions:

Even though there is no pain, does that mean it is necessarily good or better?

Could this method of mirror neurons be used for other purposes or pains?

If vision can make pain disappear, does this show that out brain believes what we see?

 

Memory.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/11/memory/foer-text

This articel is about the amazing gift of memory. It tells of a lady, AJ, who remembers practically everything since she was eleven and also a man, AP, who hardly remembers anything at all. The only thing he remembers is his recent thought. EP suffered a virus that ate up a lot of his brain, including the memory part. EP has antergrade and retrograde, two kinds of amnesia. He doesn't even remember that he has a memory problem.

This article describes what memory is and calls it "a stored pattern of connections between neurons in the brain." Scientists has learned a lot about amnesia through this one man's brain named HM. HM was a part of many experiments. In America, there are millions of Americans sufferring from memory problems. Basically, this whole article is about individuals who suffer from memory loss and how they get through it. It also describes how memory works.

Questions:

Is it against human rights to use a patient with memory loss as an experiment, like scientists did with HM?

Do memories make us who we are?

What makes a memory memorable?