What Are You Thinking About?

BY KEVIN GILCHER

Sex, food and, sleep, we all think about them during the day admit it.  A study conducted by Terri Fisher of Ohio State University set out to find out just how often men and women ages 18 to 25 actually think about these topics.  How did she do this you ask? Well it wasn’t telepathy, Fisher distributed golf tally counters to 163 female students and 120 male students who were enrolled in a psychology research participation program.  Each student was randomly given one thought category to tally.  Prior to the experiment the participants were given questionnaires that measured things such as attitudes about sex, tendency to appear socially acceptable and eating and sleep habits.  The students who were assigned to keep track of sleep and eating habits received different questionnaires that disguised the sexual questions so they did not know the main goal of the experiment was to test thoughts on sexuality.  At the end of the week the statistical analysis showed that the difference between how often men and women thought of sex was not much larger than how often they thought of food or sleep.  The men thought of sex an average of 19 times per day, food was 18 times per day and sleep 11 times per day.  Women thought of sex 10 times a day food 15 times a day and sleep about 8 and a half times a day.  Fisher found that no single variable which was determined by the questionnaires could be used to predict how often a male subject thought of sex.  These variables were how comfortable a person is with their sexuality, unrestricted attitudes about sex, and how much the person wanted to be socially acceptable.  However, the more comfortable a woman is with her sexuality the more likely she was to think about sex and women who are concerned with being socially acceptable reported less thoughts of a sexual nature.

This experiment was conducted in an interesting way the researchers were quite thorough but with an experiment like this the margin for human error skewing results is astronomical.  When people are asked to keep track of something for twenty four hours they are likely to forget to do it.  When it is an entire week and the thing being tracked is thoughts in all likelihood the subjects are going to forget to tally many of them.  This is because most thoughts of this nature occur absent mindedly when daydreaming or they pop into one’s mind and out again in an instant.  Fisher knew this and that is why she did hand out questionnaires to find out people’s personality types before beginning her research.  It would be interesting though to see if the results would differ if the same experiment were applied to different departments in the school.  Fisher works as a professor in the psychology department of Ohio State and conducted her research with students who are most likely majoring or minoring in psychology.  The results may vary with different groups of students who perhaps have an art background for example rather than a scientific one, because each subject uses different parts of the brain.  If the results were different then perhaps it would demonstrate that with an inclination towards the arts a person is more likely to think of sexuality or vice versa.  Research on this topic is not very prevalent but with studies like Terri Fisher’s emerging perhaps the myth of men thinking of sex every seven seconds will be a thing of the past.  Or at the very least maybe women will get their own fake statistic.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-debunks-stereotype-men-sex-day.html

Yawning

BY SAMANTHA SPIRA-BAUER

Most people believe that yawning comes form boredom or exhaustion. And others may think its one of my favorites, that the brains lacking oxygen. Recent research has shown that yawning actually occurs to cool down the brain. Everyone knows the brain is out CPU, or central processing unit. Acting as our computer, its clear that it would also work better cooler. According to Gary Hack from the University of Maryland School of Dentistry and Andrew Gallup from Princeton University. “The brain is exquisitely sensitive to temperature changes and therefore must be protected from overheating”. When yawning, the walls of the maxillary sinuses flex. They are located in the cheeks, on each side of the nose. It is unclear what their actual function is, and this research may help to determine their purpose in the human body and its functions. Temperature in the body must be regulated at all times. Hence why we sweat when we exercise. Sweating is the body’s way of cooling down the internal organs and skin. But it has been unclear what cools down the brain besides sweating through the head.

“The researchers said their theory that yawning helps cool the brain has medical implications. For example, excessive yawning often precedes seizures in people with epilepsy and pain in people with migraine headaches.” Now doctors may be able to determine diagnoses in patients who yawn frequently and excessively. Gallup stated, “Excessive yawning appears to be symptomatic of conditions that increase brain and/or core temperature, such as central nervous system damage and sleep deprivation”. I think research like this is extremely important. It can lead to understanding more of how the body works and help determine diseases.

Article: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=151981

Dangerously Overmedicating Foster Children

BY ADAM REHMAN

New reports have recently been revealed, explaining that many children in foster care have been prescribed an alarmingly high amount and dangerous combination of anti-depressant and anti-psychotic medications. The Government Accountability Office released that nearly 425,000 children were affected.

The drugs are used as a convenient solution to these children’s problems instead of proper psychotherapy or in some instances just parents. These kids are thirteen times more likely to be given these mind-altering drugs than other children. The combination and quantity of these medications is at times considered too risky even for adults according to the FDA. Some of the medicines that are being prescribed are so new that they do not know how they will react with children. Currently, half of the United States still does not have or are still in the process of developing policies for psychotropic drug use in foster children.

“You know, there are a lot of people you need to talk to, to find out as much as you can about what the child’s behavior is like in a variety of different situations before you make a determination that you’re going to use something like a very powerful medication to treat them” – Charles Zeanah, Tulane University

Psychotropic drugs are defined as medicines that alter chemical levels in the brain, which impact mood and behavior. Some examples of these drugs are: Antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers.Most of the drugs used are considered “off-label.” This means they are used for purposes other than those that they are approved of.

Although these medicines have their uses and place, they should never be over used and should always be properly prescribed in order to maintain safe mental health especially for children.  It is a shame that this subject has not been given attention until recently, but at least now something can be done to fix this problem.