Please Look After These Brains. Thank You.

by Amanda Wood

Last half term I presented an assembly to Latter House. I always find these occasions tricky. In years gone by, I thought little about why. The answer surely was obvious; standing up in front of large numbers of people is nerve wracking. But assemblies to me are particularly challenging, more so than other types of public speaking because the topic that you choose to talk about surely says something about you. Why, with all the topics in the world to choose from, did you choose this one? What does this say about me as a person if I choose this topic?

However, there is also another more pressing concern, for, behind the foreheads of those one hundred freshly polished faces staring at me, are 100 fabulous brains, and brains change in interaction with the environments in which they find themselves. I am about to commit “synaptic assault”. Through talking to these brains I am going to change them; the perception of my words will cause physical changes to the neural networks of these children. What an awesome responsibility!

Assemblies happen first thing in the morning too, and this is even more stressful. I usually feel rather bewildered until at least ten o’clock; that startling insult that is ‘day’, that dramatic inhibition of melatonin production, forcing me to wake up, is something I have never especially enjoyed. So I will be pruning the minds of 100 beautiful and clever children at the worst possible point in time for me and yet potentially the most receptive time for them. Assemblies require careful thought. The day will be young, yet to take shape. A lot can happen in 24 fleeting, precious hours and I am about to set the feel of the day.

What follows is a summary of my assembly; I started by telling them how privileged a position I felt I was in, standing in front of the afore-mentioned 100 beautiful and clever faces (tip: flatter your audience early). I told them my feeling of privilege stemmed from my knowledge that encased in all the skulls in the room there was about 135kg of brain (maybe more) and that I found this quite astonishing. An average human brain weighs 1350g, the equivalent of about three cans of baked beans; with all those beans (or all those brains, should I say?), there would probably be enough energy generated in this one room to power the lights in Cambridge House (frankly, we might have done a better job, given the problem in the second floor corridor at times!).

I reminisced about my Year 9 Psychology Club a fortnight previously, when we modelled a brain, imagining the gap between the tables was a synapse, the tiny gap between a brain cell and its neighbour. One group of pupils imagined they were vesicles, or little purses, filled with balls of neurotransmitter (they were actually balls of coloured paper). The pupils on the pre-synaptic table hurled the balls at the pupils on the post-synaptic table. These pupils had their hands in the air waiting to capture the balls; they were pretending to be neuro-receptors. We had a lot of fun.

Milky Way

Then I said to my vesicles and my neuro-receptors that I would like them to imagine that every child in the whole world was playing this game right now; that’s two billion children throwing balls of paper at each other and yet we would only have modelled 1/50th of the number of neurons between your ears at this very moment.

It is estimated that there are 100 billion neurons in the brain, the same as the number of stars in the Milky Way. So, in my assembly room, there would have been one hundred galaxies of stars: each star, each neuron, with up to 10 thousand synapses. That’s a 100 billion x 10,000 x the 100 brains in here; an extraordinary, unthinkable number of synaptic connections, in one room, in one school, in one special city.  And those synaptic connections are made and unmade with every passing second of the day.

I told those starry brains in front of me that morning that my responsibility in talking to them for just ten minutes was so awesome, because I would be responsible for altering their minds; you see, every moment of the day is mind-altering, our brains, our futures, every choice that we might make changing with every passing second.

I told them that we would have a little adventure in neuroscience just for a few minutes before I passed on a short message that they might do me the honour of thinking about, even if only for a few fleeting seconds, because every second matters.

“So lets us imagine that in this room we are a brain, we only have 100 neurons, though, because the Lower Sixth and Year 11 have abandoned us (for study leave); unfortunately, we only have about the capability of one tenth of a leech, so we aren’t capable of much, it has to be said, but still . . .

Some of you have a folded piece of paper in your hands, I want you to cut out the shape on the paper, and then unfold the bean stalk you have created. Don’t forget each of you is a neuron and you are about to reach out to each other and create some connections. When we do this, we are altering the probability of different courses of action for the creature whose mind we are controlling.”

The pupils cut out their branching streams of paper, which were dutifully unravelled and passed along the lines, crumpled dendrites extended, reflecting the etching of experience into the fabric of our very being. Together they created a tangled forest of connections. As the assembled housemates made that leap of faith, beginning to see themselves as one tiny part of the whole, a massive growing brain in the Middle School Common Room, I told them some stories but not before indulging in some personal reflections of my own. I can’t explain why, but I do have a hankering to know where my current mind came from and occasionally ponder the significance of the memories that surface each day: Why now? How are you useful, little thought? What is my brain trying to tell me…?

When I was five or six, my father used to play “Puff the Magic Dragon” on his guitar. It’s a special song with a poignant message: “Dragons live forever but not so little boys”. Little boys and girls grow up and the child without becomes the child within, never lost but silenced to a lesser or greater extent. Today, my other memory is that of a picture by John William Waterhouse: The Lady of Shalott. For sure, I did not know the poem by Tennyson when I was five or six, but I remember the tender ache in her face as she floated down the river. I recently asked my father (who, weirdly, does look very much like Tennyson!!) whether I could borrow the picture to hang in my house, interested to know whether my little face-ache (aged 8 ½) would remember The Lady’s beauty in years to come as I do now.

Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse

My father replied, “I don’t know where it is”. “Really?” I said. “Yes,” he said “Who would want that morbid thing hanging in their house?” “You did,” I replied, “when I was six.” Thirty years have not altered the poem yet I wonder how the architecture of my mind has changed since then --- in the 1, 576, 800 blocks of ten minutes that have passed:

“On either side the river lie,

Long fields of barley and of rye

That clothe the wold and meet the sky

And thro’ the field the road runs by

To many-tower’d Camelot

And up and down the people go

Gazing where the lilies blow

Round an island there below,

The island of Shalott

Willows whiten, aspens quiver

Little breezes dusk and shiver

Thro’ the wave that runs for ever

By the island in the river

Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers

Overlook a space of flowers

And the silent isle imbowers

The Lady of Shalott

The relentless rhymes and rhythm running through this yarn drag us on and on, marking out the passing time, that, in the Lady’s case, is, as for us all, in finite supply. I reminded the pupils to keep snipping, with each passing moment I wanted them to see how our Latter House brain was changing: a dynamic house, a connected house.

In psychology, detailed case studies, involving observations, hours of testing and interviewing, and often secondary data collected from a wide range of sources, help psychologists to understand the extraordinary in order to explain the ordinary. I was about to tell the tales of three participants whose experiences of the world are quite striking and extraordinary.

Firstly, Capgras Syndrome; inside the temporal lobes you will find a tiny brain structure known as the ‘fusiform gyrus’ necessary for recognising faces. Some people who have sustained an injury or have had a brain infection affecting this area suffer prosopagnosia, meaning face blindness; they are unable to recognise the faces of people that they know from celebrities, to their own family and even to the point of not recognising their own face in a mirror. However Capgras Syndrome is something even stranger. Let us imagine someone has sustained a nasty head injury and, on waking from a coma, they see their mother or father before them. They may recognise the face but will claim that the person is an imposter, an alien or even a robot. Although the syndrome can present as a part of a psychotic illness this is not always the case and it seems that it can be explained by thinking about how the brain works.

Usually speaking, visual information comes in through eyes and is directed to visual areas of the brain at the back, and then onto the fusiform gyrus where the face is decoded. This information is then cascaded onto the amygdala, an emotion centre in the brain which will tell us about the emotional significance of whatever we are looking at. If whatever it is is important to us in an emotional sense, i.e. someone we love or something that scares us or disgusts us, then our body will react in various ways which indicate arousal, not least sweating which can be measured using something called a galvanic skin response (GSR).  It is interesting to see that Capgras patients show no GSR when looking at their loved ones. This may be because the areas of the brain responsible for recognition and for emotional reactions have become disconnected (sometimes as a consequence of an injury). It seems that the wiring from the fusiform gyrus to the amygdala has been severed and so they see their family member and recognise their features but have no feeling about the person and so assume that they cannot be their loved one. A very sad state of affairs for all involved.

Prosopagnosia can be equally poignant, patients may well have non-conscious emotional reactions to their loved ones but, as their fusiform gyrus is dysfunctional, they have no idea who these people are and treat them as strangers.

My second weird and wonderful neuroscientific diversion is that of Phantom Limb Syndrome. When an arm or leg is amputated, a person may still vividly feel the presence of the amputated limb. Some of these patients have the sensation that the limb can move, yet many others feel the limb is paralysed and clenched resulting in agonising pain. This is often the case in patients who have actually had a real paralysed limb, which has presented unbearable pain and subsequently been amputated in attempt to remove the pain. Imagine how horrific a situation it must be, to have a limb removed and then experience the same pain in a limb which isn’t even there! Some of these patients have become so depressed they have even committed suicide to escape. This situation may arise because, for months before the amputation, the brain has commanded the paralysed arm to move and received the message loud and clear back from the arm: “No!” The brain then learns that movement is not possible. The renowned neurologist, VC Ramachandran devised a beautifully creative plan to treat these patients and simultaneously demonstrated how the brain can be tricked and retrained.  He developed a ‘mirror box’ whereby the patient puts his or her phantom left arm behind the box and then holds out the right arm and wiggles the fingers, so that in the cleverly aligned mirror it looks like his left arm has been resurrected as the reflection of the hand appears on his left arm. To the patient it actually feels as though the phantom arm is able to move and the pain is momentarily relieved, but only while he or she is watching his right hand moving. The pain returns when the patient closes his or her eyes. However, if the patient practices and teaches the brain to unlearn old habits, the pain can be relieved long term. Old synaptic connections are pruned away and experience creates new connections in their place.

The final phenomena for discussion was synaesthesia. Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, was first to document this. For someone with synaesthesia, every time they see a number they sense a colour, the same colour every time. Sometimes, differing musical tones generate a sense of colours or even tastes. Synaesthesia is a muddling and mingling of the senses, the condition appearing to run in families, which suggests a genetic predisposition; it is also eight times more commin in creative types, such as painters and novelists, than in the general population. It seems that, since colour and number areas are next door to each other in the brain, an accidental cross-wiring may be responsible for this unusual phenomenon. More interestingly, however, it seems that it is not that these area have become wrongly connected but rather that they have not been disconnected. When we are born, our neuronal networks are thick with synaptic connections, every area is wired to every other and, over time, the wiring is trimmed and pruned. Genetic problems may mean that the brain does not prune itself quite as it should.

And so, throughout our stories, our modelled brain has become connected and, through genetic inheritance and environmental experiences, we have seen how areas may become overly connected or indeed disconnected.

So what should we learn from all of this?

Firstly, let us return to "Puff the Magic Dragon". The lyricist of this popular song was Leonard Lipton, who wrote the poem later set to music while a 10-year-old Physics student at Cornell University, in the United States. You are probably more familiar with Lipton than you think as he later invented stereoscopic cinema and was responsible for those geeky black glases we war in the cinema to view a 3D film. And, finally, to Tennyson's words, which have crept into our collective unconscious, recent and memorably: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" chosen as an inscription engraved in the 2012 Olympic Village, inspiring athletes from the four corners of the globe.

But what other notable expressions can be attributed to Tennyson? Two seem especially pertinent: “I am a part of all that I have met” relates well to our discussion of the way in which experiences sculpts our tangled web of neurons, and “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers” captures the idea that, although fragments of experience, of knowledge, may be caught in this neuronal web, amidst the pieces is a truth to be discovered only later in reflection.

Jackie Paper grew up and Puff was sad, he felt redundant. We will never know what sort of man Jackie Paper became; maybe he bumped his head and went to bed and woke up with Capgras Syndrome, or maybe, due to Puff’s nurturance, he grew into a wise and loving father himself, to one day play his guitar and hang pictures in his home that would leave an indelible mark on his own Paper boy or girl.

Please look after your astonishing brains and please take responsibility for the mark you leave on the astonishing brains of others.

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Social Acceptance: The Tyranny of the Majority

by Dodo Charles

Being popular is not all it is cracked up to be. I can understand why some individuals want to climb up the social ladder into popularity, however I simply cannot comprehend why people then feel that this is an excuse to pick on someone “beneath” them.

There are some individuals who are more likely to get bullied than others, namely:

1.      Those with disabilities- this can be anything from being blind, being in a wheelchair or being deaf. It is thankfully becoming more rare to see people with disabilities being bullied, but society is still not capable of walking past them without looking uncomfortable and, in some cases, avoid people with disabilities completely.

2.      Visible illness- I am talking about illnesses that cause a change in physical appearance. People often assume that there is something morbidly wrong with you, which is not always the case and can be upsetting to the recipient of the worried looks. Not to mention, the loss of friends who feel awkward talking to the ill person.

3.      Personality- bullying someone for not fitting in with the majority of the public. This is one of the worst forms, as it is picking on someone who is just trying to be themself. Many of us have been affected by this attempt to degrade someone and it really lowers people's self-esteem.

Society will always have difficulties with accepting people. It is something that we cannot prevent no matter how hard we try. The question is: Why?

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How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolution

As January ends, Jack Rockett explores way to keep your New Year's Resolution beyond the the first month of the year. 

At the beginning of the year, it’s always the same. Everyone talks about their New Year’s resolution and how they broke it on the 2nd of January and that is because we want to change suddenly. If you want to succeed, make your resolution easy. Just because it is January 1st you suddenly want to do all these things. Some of our most impossible favourites are:
 

·         Be nicer

·         See more family

·         Study more

·         Be better behaved

·         Quit smoking

·         Cut down on chocolate

·         Stop drinking

          (And the far too clichéd) GO ON A DIET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most of the time, these are things that are very hard to crack. Either you can’t be bothered, love food too much, love wine too much or just love yourself too much, but there is an easy way out. Change your resolution to ‘Love myself more’.
 

It’s mine and so far I’ve kept to it very well. When there is a big decision, just instantly think of factors that affect you. With free opportunity, do what you want to do. After completing a task, spend a few minutes or even half an hour savouring it and feeling proud about what you have achieved. It makes you feel so good.

If you are mean to a person, you are to not hate yourself and feel really bad. Of course you will feel a little bit bad but don’t let the guilt overrun your life. Just apologise to the person, come to a fair agreement and then shake it off your shoulders.

When someone shouts at you for no reason, make sure that you demand they calm down and apologise for the way they talked to you, but you must still be nice. Anyone you talk to should be treated with respect unless they are horrible to you, as, if the others like you and the way you act, you will feel better.
 

I hope this article has helped you get rid of ‘DIET’ from your list. Still, these are things you have to deal with. Don't wait until February 1st. Do it today and become better over a period of time.

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Blue Monday

by Bea Wilkinson

Blue Nude by Pablo Picasso
(source: overarts.com)

Last Monday, 21st January was apparently the most depressing day of the year. In 2005, Dr.Cliff Arnall calculated that the Monday after the first full week of January is the most depressing day of the year. Dr. Arnall figured out that late January is extremely depressing for a number of reasons, including cold, unpredictable and gloomy weather conditions, post-Christmas debts and stress, abandoned New Year’s resolutions and lack of motivation or anything to really look forward to. Dr. Arnall even created an equation to justify his idea. It seems difficult to ignore such a comprehensive list of depressing items, but it appears there are just as many reasons to believe that Dr. Arnall’s ‘Blue Monday’ theory is simply pseudoscience and should be overlooked and ignored. 

Several years ago, now defunct television channel Sky Travel ran a PR campaign to try to boost sales and encourage people to take a holiday. Sky asked various academics, including Dr Arnall, asking them to put their name to a press release, suggesting that the third January of each year is just gloomy. Despite an elaborate mathematical equation, it seems as though the calculations are incorrect.

Ben Goldacre (The Guardian) who first pointed out the flaws of ‘Blue Monday’ in 2006, said that the equations "fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms" and believes that the idea of ‘Blue Monday’ is purely harmful: "I am of the opinion that these equation stories – which appear with phenomenal frequency, and make up a significant proportion of the total science coverage in the UK – are corrosive, meaningless, empty, bogus nonsense that serve only to caricature and undermine science."

 

So, it looks as though Dr Arnall, the man also famous for discovering the perfect day for eating ice cream and devising a formula for the perfect long weekend, is in fact incorrect and we had no scientific reasoning to feel extra down on Monday. Now, it is probably no more than a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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How Many New Year's Resolutions Have You Broken Already?

by Isabelle Byrne

(source: freelancefolder.com)

On the 31st December, at midnight, people all over the country vow to change and yet, by the end of January, many of these vows have been broken. Why every year do we all do the same?

I can honestly say that, since I was 7, my New Year's resolution has been to stop biting my nails and yet, within 30 minutes, it's almost guaranteed that I will have broken this resolution. Its worrying to think about the little willpower I have to stop doing something as simple as biting my nails. So when we look at the ‘Top Ten’ New Year's Resolutions we can see how some of these may not be the easiest to keep:

1.      Spend more time with family and friends

2.      Fit in fitness

3.      Tame the bulge

4.      Quit smoking

5.      Enjoy life more

6.      Quit drinking

7.      Get out of debt

8.      Learn something new

9.      Help others

10.  Get organised

I know family or friends that have tried and failed at all of these objectives. I’ve always had the same view – if you want to do something and achieve, then you have to be SELF-motivated. For example, if I have motivation to revise for exams (for example being offered a place at university) then I will revise – having my Mum and Dad moan at me will not help, as I don’t have the drive to achieve myself.

So on that fateful day, every year, we set ourselves up for failure by setting such unrealistic goals – not that they cannot be achieved but deciding to reach them because of the day of the year seems ludicrous. It’s as silly as turning around and saying that on the 3rd of August I shall simply stop talking. (.. a bit too far?). Either way I do find the whole event rather bizarre, and yet every year I find myself doing the same thing – creating a New Year's resolution that I surely could never fail.

I may be sceptical of New Year's resolutions, but that is based on 16 (not a wealth of experience I grant you) New Years come and gone in which I have seen myself, family and friends fail to reach their New Year goal. If you are one of the many who has managed to survive until the next New Year, feel very proud and please tell me how you did it! Statistically, 46% of New Year's resolution makers last longer than 6 months.

So, this year, I had the brilliant idea that I would make an easy New Year's resolution: to defy the entire convention of creating a New Year's resolution. I can easily say I have stuck to this and do not feel the same bitter disappointment that would normally permeate during January.

To those of you who have made a resolution, January is the month to get past. Considering that we are now 3/4 of the way through January, if you have made it this far, well done – congratulations and give yourself a pat on the back. Now keep going and I hope you don’t fail.

One thing I’ve always wondered – what happens when you manage to keep going the entire year? Do you receive a letter from the Queen? £5 in the post? A prize of any description? If anyone has any answers to this please let me know. Good Luck and a Happy New Year.

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Why We Love Frankenstein's "Monster"

by Lucy Cole

Johnny Lee Miller as Dr Frankenstein
and Benedict Cumberbatch as the Monster,
National Theatre production of Frankenstein, 2012

When we hear the name "Frankenstein", we all draw into our mind the generic image of the green monster, bolts protruding from his brain, that has been portrayed by the media ever since James Whale's Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein in the 1930s and repeated in numerous incarnations, including those of the Hammer House of Horror movies in the 1960s. But the original Frankenstein’s creature of Mary Shelley’s imagination (back in 1818) is far removed from this fumbling green being devoid of any kind of humanity. Whilst watching Kenneth Branagh’s interpretation of Shelley’s infamous novel, I was struck by the extent to which Frankenstein’s creature resembled a human child. I found myself, instead of feeling disgusted by the ugly, pieced-together monster before me, empathising with him and his endless suffering.

"Alone Bad, Friend Good . . ."

From his ‘birth’ the creature is rejected by those who should love him most; Dr. Frankenstein immediately abandons his role as father, abhorring his creation and ignoring its human qualities. Due to his differences, the creature is rejected from society and denied his humanity. Within her novel, Shelley seems to be commenting on the role of the external appearance of an individual in society’s acceptance of them, a topic still highly relevant in our society today. Although seemingly an abstract and unnatural concept, the creature seems to represent all those who are regarded as different, whether due to their appearance, their race, their religion or their mental capabilities, and are thus excluded by society’s in-group.

The creature crucified in Bride of Frankenstein

The Frankensteins of today may not be green or gigantic, but, like Shelley’s creature, they have been marked out as different from birth or childhood, and have consequently suffered for it for the remainder of their lives. They have sometimes been shunned or persecuted, such as the Jews in Germany and Eastern Euurope in World War II due to their race, or perhaps just prevented from engaging in the activities available for ‘normal’ people, as is often found with those with mental illness or learning disabilities. This separation from society, rather than reducing their suffering in fact appears to increase it, as it reinforces society’s belief that they are abnormal. It seems that despite Shelley’s highlighting of this problem, things have not changed from when she published the novel nearly two hundred years ago.

However, perhaps things are improving, and society is becoming more accepting of those who are different. More awareness of mental illness and a better understanding of different cultures has taught us that those who are different from us are not ‘monsters’, but people with the same thoughts, needs and feelings that we experience every day. The government is constantly working in order to integrate out-groups into society and to reduce the isolation of people, such as those with mental illness or learning disabilities, who are not able to function in a normal society.

But it is clear that this exclusion and rejection can never be completely prevented; from the playground to the civil war in Syria between different sects due to their beliefs, as a species humans will continue to judge those that are different, and the different will continue to suffer. We can only do our bit to make sure the Frankenstein’s creatures that we know feel wanted and accepted, their green skin nothing but an irrelevance.

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Is Lack of Sleep a Problem for PGS Pupils?

by Hattie Gould and Annie Materna

(image source: uratexblog.com)

Sleep deprivation is a continual problem for teenagers and can be the cause of many stereotypical teenage characteristics, such as mood swings and… late homework. At PGS, getting a good education is the top priority; however, it is understandable that many pupils do extra-curricular activities such as sport (training sessions, matches, early morning fitness),  music (exam grades, orchestra, concerts) and drama. All of these take up a lot of time. For example, if you are involved in drama you may have recently been involved in The Producers; this would have taken up a lot of time with rehearsals in the evenings and when it came to production as the play finished late every night. Luckily, everyone who was involved in the production was kindly allowed to miss the first two periods of the day to catch up on some much needed sleep. What can be taken from this is that the school cares about how much sleep we get; this is because sleep is the key to our concentration, energy levels and our health and wellbeing.

Recently, a survey was carried out on fifty students at PGS to find out how many hours of sleep the PGS community is getting. The findings concluded that 42% of students at PGS do not get enough sleep! There are many reasons why people may not be sleeping properly; it may not be very serious and could just be something playing on your mind, a problem or something that you are anxious about, such as an essay or a school project, even a test or exam the next day. Maybe you are not getting enough sleep because you wanted to stay up that hour later to watch that programme you really like… Either way, we should plan ahead what time, roughly, we should get too sleep each night. This is because for our mind and body to work effectively we must have between 8 and 12 hours sleep per night. This is not the case at PGS: 47% of students receive eight hours of sleep per night, with only 11% of students sleeping more than eight hours. It was astonishing to find out that the maximum hours of sleep obtained by a PGS pupil was ten hours. This simply is not enough, for young growing adolescents.

'The Scream' by Edvard Munch

What happens if we do not receive enough sleep? Lack of sleep has a serious effect on the way that our brain functions; after just one night without sleep we feel grumpy, irritable and forgetful, it is also found that keeping your concentration is more difficult and your attention span decreases. If this lack of sleep continues over a few nights, then the part of your brain which controls ‘language, memory, planning and sense of time is severely affected’. In fact, ’17 hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.05% (two glasses of wine). Which is the legal drink driving limit’. It is also known that if you are suffering from a lack of sleep then you may suffer from a difficulty of responding to quickly changing situations and making rational judgements. This may cause a problem for when you are driving; you may not be fully concentrated on the road ahead due to your tiredness which could result in a serious incident….

Sleep deprivation usually affects the way we carry out our day to day tasks; a lack of sleep can make us carry out these responsibilities in more lacklustre manner, however sleep deprivation may cause a serious problem for many people. It has been scientifically proven that young teenagers whose sleeping habits are poor are twice as more likely to use drugs, tobacco and alcohol. No need to panic as this statistic counts for teenagers who suffer from serious sleeping disorders, such as insomnia; insomnia is the most common sleeping disorder in the UK and can cause severe depression. This is most likely not the case for our sleeping troubles at PGS. Our sleep deprivation can mostly be cured in a simpler ‘homely’ way, for example drinking a herbal tea before bed or smelling an anti-anxiety spray to calm your brain before you go to sleep. It will also help if you get into a routine of going to bed at a set time each night as you are most likely to fall asleep easier, thus leading you to be less tired throughout the day. Just remember that “the amount of sleep we require is what we need not to be sleepy in the daytime.” (Jim Horne – Loughborough University).

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A Meditation on Procrastination

by Freya Derby

I have very little will power. It’s a problem and I frequently find myself amazed at my own ability to get up in the morning. On the weekend, without the immediate threat of school, it is a much more challenging prospect. I tend to procrastinate this particular undertaking in ten minute intervals. If I don’t get up at seven am exactly, I might as well wait until ten past. If it’s eleven past, then I can afford an extra ten minutes. I’ve discovered that there are only three possible solutions to this. A very annoying alarm clock situated out of arm's reach, my father's removal of the duvet and application of cold water or leaping up before I remember I’m tired. However, as I do not have any inclination to sentence my future self to such torture (although my future self is less sympathetic with the me whose catching the bus depends upon her) and do not wish to encourage this kind of behaviour from my father,  I am left with one, rather unpredictable option which relies solely on the fact that I realise I’m awake when I wake up. Unfortunately, more often than not, this is not the case. I recognise my tiredness before I’m awake and am doomed to endure at least ten minutes of opposing interior monologues before…

With no immediate ending to that sentence coming to mind, I decided to procrastinate for a couple of minutes whilst I thought about it.  Two days later, I find that time has not resolved this issue. As is the nature of procrastination, I’m stuck at the same point but with much less time.

…my voice of reason triumphs and I am thrust into a day of constant deadlines.

Unfortunately, my work ethic is similar. If a job is menial enough to do with the distraction of television…

I spend at least five minutes pondering over my use of the word television. In blog article, it seems too formal. But TV doesn’t sound right either. I check Facebook and once again return to find that the same problem remains. I consider how strange it is that I do not notice this at the time, when I wrote about it less than ten lines ago.

…then it's all very well. The difficulty arises when this job finishes mid-programme…

I am prepared to repeat the events caused by the word 'television' but as I can think of no alternative I decide to power through…

…and I convince myself that I can multitask. I can’t. It is not convenient for me to remember this before each attempt. The listening distracts me from the thinking and as a result I give up the thinking so as to focus on the listening. Whilst watching TV, I can cut paper into small pieces, play snake, tidy my bedroom (for a couple of minutes), and draw on my face to see what I would look like with a black eye. It isn’t a successful method. I have, however, watched every episode of Scrubs so that’s a bonus...

Reading what I’ve written, I feel unsatisfied with it. I feel compelled to finish it tomorrow. Writing an article about procrastination makes it very difficult to ignore the symptoms and so I take a few minutes to tell myself, with what I consider impressive willpower, that I must persevere and to give up now would be unwise. Then I go to bed. Unfortunately, recognising the disease is of little comfort if you cannot cure it.

So what can I do? I am not confident in my ability to stay focused at all costs, and the little conviction I had that my willpower will triumph when the moment comes is diminishing with the passing of each opportunity. A brief internet search provided me with answers that can all be summarised as ‘Just do it’. One website tells me to “Stop thinking, start doing”, “Take the first step” and “Make a decision, any decision”. I find these slightly unhelpful , particularly the third, as I am chronically indecisive and seem to be unable to make a decision without sufficient planning time, an outside opinion (which I generally disregard) and exactly the right amount of pressure. In fact, I had to consult a family member on my usage of the word chronically in the last sentence.

I decide that I’ve covered pretty much everything I set out to. It only remains for me to conclude. But that can wait until tomorrow…

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How Far Will Humans Go?

by Bea Wilkinson

Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971



In my AS level psychology, there were two specific experiments which we looked at which I found particularly engaging. These were Stanley Milgram’s experiment in the early 1960s and Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment in the early 1970s. Both focused on our reactions to authority figures in different situations, how we conform and obey. The Milgram Experiment found out just how far an individual may go as a result of feeling obliged to obey an authority figure, and, in contrast, Zimbardo's Experiment looked at the effects that power had on individuals and how they react to others under their control. Both studies had shocking results. Zimbardo’s experiment had to be terminated early when Christina Maslach, a graduate student, protested against the conditions of the prison after she visited the prison to carry out interviews. It is interesting that, out of more than fifty people who were involved in the runnings of the experiment, Maslach was the only one who questioned its morality.

Milgram Experiment, 1961

Milgram’s experiment looked at how far a normal participant (selected from a newspaper advert) would go to cause harm on another participant. The participants were told to administer electric shocks for every incorrect answer to a simple memory task. For every wrong answer, the participant was instructed by an experimenter wearing a white labcoat to give an increasing shock in 15v increments, the voltmeter reached a maximum of 450v (fatal shock). The other participant, an actor, pretended to receive the shocks and it was ensured that the participant could hear screams of pain from the other room, where the actor was based. The ‘real’ participant was unaware that the 'participant' was actually an actor and was led to believe it was another participant of the experiment, just like themselves. 65% of participants gave the other participant the full 450v shock. If this had been a genuine shock, it would have killed the recipient.

Recent research into the causes of these results has found that, despite the unexpected results of the above experiments, we are not actually programmed for conformity. Acts of cruelty require enthusiasm as well as straightforward obedience. Member of the British Psychological Society, Professor Stephen Reicher of the University of St Andrews) has looked specifically at Milgram and Zimbardo’s experiments, which suggested that people who seem morally normal and functioning might commit inhumane and shocking acts when others instruct them to do so.

Despite this, Reicher's research suggests that obedience results from identification with authorities that encourage malicious behaviour and make it seem as if these acts are acceptable and moral. Ordinary individuals commit terrible acts "not because they become passive, mindless functionaries who do not know what they are doing, but rather because they come to believe ... that what they are doing is right".

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What Does Marriage Actually Mean in Today’s Society?




(source: seekersportal.com)

‘Getting married is like permanently grafting your hand to the cookie jar. No matter how sweet those cookies may taste, you can't help but wonder what would have happened if you'd chosen some other dessert--brownies, for instance ... or frozen yogurt ... or maybe chocolate strudel.’

-         JEROME P. CRABB

‘I always compare marriage to communism. They're both institutions that don't conform to human nature, so you're going to end up with lying and hypocrisy.’

                                        -         BILL MAHER, Rolling Stone, Aug. 24, 2006

by Lucy Cole

I, like the vast majority of people all over the world, have known from a young age the direction in which my life would lead me. I have known subconsciously for as long as I can remember that I would go to school, get a job, get married and have children who would then give me grandchildren etcetera etcetera. This is the way it is. If a man or woman decides to be a single parent, society frowns upon them. If they choose to skip the expected step of having children, society frowns upon them. If a couple choose to have children before getting married or even not to get married at all, society frowns upon them. This is the way it goes. Period.

So this leads me to a question: do we get married because we have found the person with whom we wish to spend the rest of our lives or because society deems it unacceptable to be thirty-five and single? In a time when, for the majority, going to church every Sunday is a thing of the past, why is it that, when we get married, we still feel the need to have the ceremony conducted in a church? The answer is: tradition. Marriage has been an expectation of society for as long as we can remember and thus we can’t imagine anything different. 

But has the meaning of marriage changed? Undeniably, in the past, the idea of marriage was to unite two people in order to create a family. Love was not always involved and it was often conducted for one side to gain an advantage, whether monetary or social; for example, Juliet and Paris in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In many cultures, marriage is still dominated by religious tradition and the couple entering into matrimony have often been paired since birth. However, this is not the case for the majority of people in Britain, who have moved away from the monetary or religious values of marriage, and rather regard it as a promise of fidelity and a demonstration of our love. How romantic.

But is it?

 

Divorce rates are higher than ever, with one in three couples splitting after having vowed to love one another forever. We are constantly bombarded with news of celebrity couples desperately in love and getting married one second, and the next fighting over their divorce settlement. Perhaps this is the problem; in placing the basis of marriage on love we are setting up to fail, because, ultimately, very rarely does love last forever. For the most part it comes and goes, lasting a few months or years, but inevitably as we grow and develop, it fades.

Despite how it might now appear, I’m not a cynic, I do believe in true love. However, I don’t understand the general expectation that we will find ‘the one’ within the 10 mile radius within which we exist. This is highly unlikely, if not impossible.

So, if it is a life-long commitment we are looking for, without the need for love and passion, then perhaps marriage would be the best option. It is clear to see from past examples (such as the marriages of many  kings and queens) that two people can happily co-exist, with the development of the affection that time brings, and last much longer than those who have formed their union on the intense yet passing passions of love. But if it is passion and love that you are searching for, then maybe marriage is not such a brilliant idea after all. Maybe it would be better to accept the likelihood of its decline and just enjoy it while it lasts and, when it is gone, you can part as friends, without the messy divorce. Unless, of course, you are prepared to accept that it will not last forever and, inevitably your relationship will come to be formed on foundations of mutual affection, monetary stability and, of course, children.

But what do I know. I’m only 17.

Read also:
Charlie Albuery calculates the probability of finding a girlfriend.

George Hope and Daniel Rollins argue for and against gay marriage.

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How Effective Is Our Prison System?

by Bea Wilkinson



(image source: huffingtonpost.com)

Imprisonment is an increasingly common method of punishment in modern British society, its basis being to punish the offender by depriving them of their liberty. In the UK, each new prison place costs approximately £119,000 and the average cost per prisoner per year is £40,000. This taken into account, it could be assumed that the punishment system we currently have in place works efficiently and is successful in discouraging criminals from reoffending after release, or hopefully discouraging them to become criminals in the first place. In reality, the system is heavily debated. 

Many young criminals experience prison as a sort of ‘university of crime’. Almost 70% of young adults released from prison will be reconvicted within the first two years. This may be because inexperienced criminals are able to learn from older prisoners whilst they serve their time. 

Research has found that “the human brain continues to mature until at least the age of twenty-five, particularly in the areas of judgment, reasoning, and impulse control.” This could further explain why younger criminals are the most likely to be put back into jail. It has been found that “While adults rely on the pre-frontal cortex in certain cognitive tests, 18-25 year-olds rely more on the amygdala, a region of the brain associated with gut reactions and overall emotional responses. This changed over time, with greater reliance on the pre-frontal cortex as people aged.” This biological disposition to more irrational, compulsive behaviour combined with the way in which these young, impressionable offenders quickly pick up new abilities from veteran prisoners means that they are likely to increase the frequency and severity of offences when they are released.

A study in the late 1980s found that prisoners aged 25 or younger are initially more resistant to the prison structure which makes them more vulnerable to victimisation, compared to older inmates who are more passive. Young offenders enter at the bottom of the pecking order and find ways to feel more valued by their peers. This will make them less vulnerable to violence and by picking up the skills that they observe from experienced inmates, they broaden their experience and knowledge, earning respect as they do so. Prison hierarchy is a clearly a vital aspect of life inside jail yet almost certainly the most detrimental aspect to the overall rehabilitational success of confinement.

Young offenders
(image source: BBC)

To add to this disadvantage, it is not uncommon for prisoners to suffer huge psychological damage as a result of confinement. Again, this increases chances of further crimes and outbalances any positive traits learnt whilst serving time. A prisoner can become institutionalised as a result of serving time. They will become incredibly obedient and fully willing to follow the regimented daily routine of an inmate. This may result in earlier release as the prisoner is seemingly reformed. However, many criminals who have served long-term sentences find it incredibly difficult to adjust to everyday life once released. Adaptation to imprisonment is almost always problematic and can generate behaviours that can be dysfunctional in periods of post-prison adjustment. At best, prisoners are confused by normal life and can find it difficult to make mundane decisions where several choices are offered. Mental illness is a consistent cause of crime and injustice in the UK and worldwide. If our prison system is only making the occurrence of mental illness more and more prevalent, then the rate of crime will undoubtedly escalate.

Many would say that the simple idea of taking away prisoner’s rights to freedom is an adequate punishment – the actual conditions of jails are not intended to be the price that offenders have to pay. Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment is a documentary compiled from real footage filmed during Zimbardo’s famous experiment. Quiet Rage shows explicitly how exposure to a prison environment for just a short period of time is enormously harmful to the human mind. It is clear from the film that the conditions of confinement are the least punishing aspect of prison. Confinement itself can cause extreme distress.

Lack of freedom can dehumanise prisoners, and rid them of a respectable (non-prisoner) identity. Prisoners lose the ability to see family on a regular basis, are forced to wear uniforms which drastically reduce self-esteem, live in fear and are constantly under supervision with minimum personal space. This seems like the ultimate punishment.

Programmes which are introduced inside prisons, such as token economy, are commonly used and seem to have positive effects. Programmes such as token economy may be a successful way to deter prisoners from committing crimes again once they return back to their normal lives. The primary goal of a token economy system is to increase desirable behaviour and decrease undesirable behaviour. The more long term aim of this programme is to teach appropriate behaviour and social skills that can be used in the inmates’ natural environment to prevent actions which may land them in further confinement. With clearly defined target behaviours and appropriate tokens that can be exchanged for rewards, this can be an extremely successful scheme.

Still, the effects of token economy are not guaranteed.  Token economy can be patronising and prisoners can refuse to comply, resulting in a reverse. The undesired behaviours may become more regular. This may lead to reoffending. It has been found that token economy programmes work well amongst inmates found guilty of crimes such as stealing, but less well amongst inmates found guilty of crimes such as murder.

It could be said that although criminals are not always reformed, prison is an effective crime deterrent in the sense that whilst prisoners are incarcerated, they are confined to certain areas and are ‘out of harm’s way’. The prison service can offer victims the comfort of knowing that the offender is behind bars. The Ministry of Justice say that ‘prison is the right place for the most dangerous, serious and the most persistent offenders’.

Many factors may influence the decision to commit a crime. Among these factors, public law enforcement and sanctioning activity play a crucial role. There is no question that prison is seen as a severe punishment for most people. The critical question is whether it is an effective punishment for potential offenders.  This depends on what motivates potential offenders. It is impossible to create a prison environment which will have positive effects for every inmate, because the range of crimes is so varied and, as in the outside world, every inmate is an individual with individual needs. Ultimately, the way we treat prisoners as a society reflects on our humanity. Dostoevsky famously wrote “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” However, it is also the mark of a functional, thriving society that its citizens feel safe and protected from those who would do them harm. People who kill, rape, steal, assault and engage in other anti-social behaviour are causing us, as individuals and as a community, harm and need to be dealt with.

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All About Me!

by Annie Materna and Hattie Gould

As you may have noticed this week the annual Portsmuthian magazine was handed out to the PGS community; what do you think was the first article read? You may presume that it was the first page of the Portsmuthian, however for many people this is not the case. I know for a fact that the first article I read was not the Headmaster’s address, it was the article that I knew that I was in. Is this subconscious selfishness or just being self-centred?

As a whole, I have witnessed not just pupils but indeed teachers skim through the book of achievements to find a photo or a glimpse of their name among the recent activities --- whether this brings disappointment fat not being mentioned at all or joy for standing out among other pupils/colleagues.

If we are lucky enough to be mentioned in this prestigious magazine, what do we look at first? If there is a photo then we may immediately look to see if it flattering or if our names appear; then we may look to see if they are spelt right and in which context they are mentioned. This may make us feel successful and proud of ourselves as we have been recognised in a well-known book, or these findings may make us feel embarrassed or humiliated from a dodgy-looking photo or our name appearing in the wrong context. Does this mean we are vain or are we just worried about the perception of others?

So we always flick to the page we are on before reading the rest of the magazine because we want to know if we look good in a photo or are perceived correctly in an article… But why?

People like to know that they have been portrayed in a particular light; everyone has an ideal image of themselves that they want people to know them by, or see them in. However, most of the time, that image is not who we really are. We want all pictures of us to look ‘perfect’ and we dispose of images in which we do not look ‘perfect’, but ‘perfection’ is different to everyone, and we are not perfect or flawless all the time so why do we want people to see us in this false light?

Humans naturally crave attention from others, but it has to be the right kind of attention. We want to be seen in a particular light, a falsified vision. This is because approval from others gives us a higher sense of self esteem. We are convinced that their recognition matters to our self- worth and how deeply we value ourselves. But why should we need this ‘approval’ from others just to be confident and happy with ourselves? Naturally, everyone cares about what people think of us, everyone subconsciously wants others to have a feeling of awe, jealousy or admiration towards them because it gives us a feeling of superiority and confidence. This does not necessarily make us vein or self-centred, just normal. Appearance and the way we are perceived are becoming increasingly more important to humans; that is just the way the environment is evolving and so wanting to read about yourself is natural, whether it is seen as subconscious selfishness, or deliberate vanity; we all do it.

All in all, it is up to us to decide whether we care too much what others think. Deep down, one person’s opinion should not change who we are; we should not be embarrassed or shamed by ourselves, because we are who we are, and we should be proud and not falsify ourselves to fit in, nor stand out.

So the next time the Portsmuthian is out and you know you’re in it, what will you do?


Tim MacBain offers 5 reasons to treasure The Portmuthian

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Is Conscience Innate or Learned?

by Oliver Price

(source: adorotedevote.blogspot.com)

Developmental pyschologist Jean Piaget put forward the theory that conscience is learned as we grow up. Concerned with the psychology of children as they matured, he deduced that children only gain a full sense of morality by age 10; he called this stage of moral development heteronomous morality, whereby you follow the rules due to fear of punishment but not from a higher sense of moral duty.

Another psychologist, Sigmund Freud, saw the mind as a machine-like entity. Freud theorised that the human personality consisted of three parts: the id (the unconscious self devoid of morality and only concerned with its own wants and desires), the ego (the conscious self and personality society sees) and the super ego (the set of moral controls given to us by outside influences which may conflict with the id). Freud theorised that there was no absolute moral law that humanity abides by and, instead, as children we learn our moral behaviour from our parents and other older role models. Erich Fromm also shared this view that humans are influenced by external authorities and that disobedience therefore produces guilt.

Piaget and Freud’s theories would be consistent with the case of James Bulger’s murder as both the killers were 10 years of age at the time of the killing, so would not be viewed by Piaget to possess a fully developed moral conscience. Also, one of the murderers, Robert Thompson, was born into a family of 7 children whose parents had separated. He is described as having been an illiterate child raised in an impoverished family. His mother is portrayed as having been an alcoholic and as having neglected her parental responsibilities. On the basis of this evidence, Freud would argue that a cause for Thompson’s warped sense of morality could be his lack of an authoritative role model on whom to base his morality. Piaget would argue that Thompson was still at the stage of heteronomous morality because the lack of an authoritative figure in his life meant there were no rules to follow. It also leads us to pose the question: if conscience comes from God why did these atrocities take place?

Joseph Butler attempted to answer this question by stating that immoral actions only take place when a person blinds themselves from their conscience to make way for a wrong action; he went on to say how corrupting one's conscience is worse than whatever the evil action is that comes from it. Butler stood by his assertion that conscience comes from God, seeing conscience as what stands humanity apart from animals, so that being human involves being moral; for Butler, the principle of man is conscience. Within human nature, Butler believed there was a hierarchy with conscience at its top and self-love and benevolence at its base, and above the last two the principle of reflection, which is part of the conscience; Butler argues that God gives us the principle of reflection. However, Mark Twain offered a criticism of Butler’s theory by suggesting that the conscience is not discovered through the principle of reflection and God’s guidance: “I have noticed my conscience for many years, and I know it is more trouble and bother to me than anything else I started with.” Both Butler and Twain, in different ways, suggests that the conscience is innate and with us from birth throughout life.

Cardinal Newman saw conscience as the voice of God, when we feel any sort of intuitive moral knowledge when decision making. As Newman said: “If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed.” By “One” Newman is referring to God, implying that conscience come directly from Him and is therefore innate. Another proponent of this view, St Augustine of Hippo, directed Christians to: “return to your conscience, question it… Turn inward, brethren, and in everything you do, see God as your witness." This seems to parallel Butler’s principle of reflection. The ideas of Butler, Newman and Augustine concerning conscience rely on an intuitionist approach, whereby people are able to sense what is right and wrong due to God acting as a guide revealing the right path to them.

Thomas Aquinas presented an alternative approach to conscience, offering a middle way. He viewed the conscience as being made up of two parts: “synderisis” and “conscientia”. The synderisis rule states that it’s innate that people aim for good and avoid bad. However, Aquinas also believed that it is repeated use of right reason that leads to gaining moral principles and understanding that it is important to strive towards good and avoid evil deeds. Conscientia is the ethical judgement, based on right reason, that a person makes which leads to a particular action. His whole approach is based around “reason seeking understanding”; you use your conscience correctly to reason what God wants. He said conscience “was the mind of man making moral judgements”. Aquinas’ argument is more rationalist than those of Butler, Newman and Augustine. However, modern psychologists, building on Freud’s ideas would dispute that God leads us to reason what he wants, as they argue that some people’s conscience never mature; does this mean that God has not influenced their moral decisions, and, if so, why?

Freud and Piaget’s views on conscience being innate coincided with those of Lawrence Kohlberg, who argued that there were six stages of moral development: behaving morally due to the instruction of authority figures, the law, caring for others, respecting universal principles and the demands of the individual conscience. Kohlberg said we have to follow these in sequence or otherwise we are prone to faults. Therefore, Kohlberg, like Piaget, believed that moral development and conscience are gained through social interaction, stressing nurture over nature, society over God.

In conclusion, theologians Augustine, Newman and Butler believed that conscience is derived directly from God as he influences our every moral decision; conscience is the voice of God. However, psychologists Freud, Piaget and Kohlberg disputed this claim, arguing that conscience is not discovered through God’s guidance but, rather, is innate and gained through external factors such as role models (parents, teachers etc.) and the environment we grow up in. Lastly, Aquinas provides us with an alternative approach that states that conscience comes from God but that reason enables us to realise what God wants: reason seeking understanding. For me, Aquinas’ argument is preferable to that of Newman and Butler, as it is much more rationalist.

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