Brain and Behavior*

Our assignment was to play four interactive games on the Brain and Behavior. I went to the website and was trying to figure out the games when i realized that some of them made sense.. and some of them didn't.

The first game I played was called Prisoners Dilemma. You had to either compete or cooperate with "Serendip" to win the game. I competed the whole time figuring that it was probably the way that would get me to win.. And i was right. At the end of the game it said I won the most coins but it said that I was followed playing with an "Inconceivably foul fate" the whole time. So i guess what I learned from this game was that competition is good, but you have to even it out with a little cooperation once in awhile.

The second game I played was called the Free Will Problem. In this game there were yellow arrows going towards the left and green arrows going towards the right. The point the game was trying to get across is that it is your free will that decides whether you see the green arrows or the yellow arrows.

The third game I played was called The Game Of Life. I didn't really understand it a whole lot.. You had a big square full of circles and you had to pick which ones you wanted. It's supposed to represent that at different points in life people are in different places and form different patterns.

The fourth game I played was called was called Transformation and in it you got to pick which different pathways you wanted to go on and in every spot there was something deeper that you could look at. I think this game is supposed to convey that you have to look closer at things because they are not always what they seem to be.

These things can be applied to everyday life because they all give different morals that you are supposed to "get" out of them. They can possibly help you notice or see things you never paid attention to before. This could also change the way you see things because if you come to a realization then you might want to change how you behave to pay closer attention to things and also to have closer/better relationships with other people.

One thing I learned is that there are systems working in your body, but along with that there are also systems inside of them working too. Everything is interconnected and helps everything else work together.

Another interesting thing that I learned is that there are different chemicals in your body and these chemicals can be affected by drugs which gives you the "high" feeling. It increases the senses you already have to make them stand out more. This is also what causes addiction because if you use drugs enough, the natural chemicals in your body are lost and when you are cut off from your own body and your drugs you feel a craving or need for it to be replaced.

One last interesting thing I learned is that it's actually your brain that "falls in love" not your heart. I found this kind of weird because every little kid knows that when you love someone.. It's with all of your heart. But once I read this chapter it actually made a lot of sense to me. I figured out that the heart is basically just a symbol for whatever we feel in our heads. This is just like how we use a flag as a symbol of freedom for our nation.

This affects the way I process information just like learning new things should. It makes you think about how you thought something works compared to how it actually works. It makes you focus your attention on things that have been lost, forgotten, or unknown to us. The brain turns out to be a very complicated system, unlike my assumptions. But you know what they say about assuming things.. :)

The man with two brains was interesting because it's amazing to see how far our medical field is advanced to be able to separate a man's brain and still allow him to function as a normal human being. I thought it was really cool and it gives the future of medicine and information a lot of hope.