Author Archives: max.colson

max.colson

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Comments: 4

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Research: Placebo “Smart Pill” vs. No Placebo

My experiment will involve the consent of 4 different classes of the same subject. Ideally, 2 of the classes would give their consent to take a new designer drug that increases the brains ability to recall memory and enhance problem solving functions. This is all that will be said to the 2 classes who will participate in taking the placebo aside from being informed that the drug has been successfully tested on primates for the last 20 years and has been confirmed by many leading scientists to work on humans.

The other 2 classes will be told nothing of the experiment and will act as a control group. The course will be a college algebra course which will help make the test more “standard” by combining memory of formulas with problem solving. The students involved are randomly assigned to this course in the block schedules they submitted themselves to upon registration.

After the test is complete we can compare the scores of the two groups to see if there are any noticeable trends. Ideally, this test could be done every year at the same time at the same university to improve the accuracy towards what we may have concluded from our first batch of data.

Even though this experiment is not a perfect science experiment it will give us the ability to see how confidence affects academic performance. With this information we may be able to gain a deeper understanding of how to improve an individuals academic performance in a way that may have been otherwise overlooked.

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Hello!

“Hello,”

My name is Maxx Colson, I’m originally from California and have been living in NY for 3 years. I moved out here to work in the music industry as a recording engineer and after almost 2 years of working for an independent label I felt like I was definitely ready to pursue college diligently. This is my first semester at Baruch, I transferred from BMCC and couldn’t be happier to finally be challenged academically. With that said I am also happy to be in a school with such a high population of russian females whom somehow seem to have the power to inhibit me from higher levels of reasoning at times.

My intended major is Finance, but I am still waiting to fill my perquisite classes before I can apply to Zicklin and make it official. I enjoy psychology and hope to keep studying it on some level outside of the classroom in the future. I’m currently not part of any student organizations and don’t really plan to be until next semester. I work at a bar on the weekends so between that and trying to do well in school my life is pretty busy. I will get depressed if I start talking about all of my hobbies since I have neglected so many of them for too long, but I will say I have been persistent at working out (mostly running) for the last couple months.

I don’t really have anything interesting happening for myself on the web besides FaceBook – sorry!

-Maxx Colson

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Comments Across the Site

"1. After reading the reflection writer’s description, what do you think was happening to them during the meditation on a physiological level? I believe meditation had a significant physiological effect on the writer, it appears that before meditation the writer experienced a lot of physiological problems that resulted from the stress he or she perceived, which in turn led to undesirable physical symptoms. Since the brain is the source of all physiological behavior, the mental clarity the writer experienced during mediation undoubtedly reversed these physical symptoms. 2. Based on your readings throughout the semester, what areas of their central and peripheral nervous systems may have been effected during the meditation? The parasympathetic nervous system which operates just below consciousness was affected since I can infer that as a result of the relaxed state the writer felt, his or her heart rate most likely dropped significantly. Since breathing is also a function of the ANS, attention to slower, deeper breaths brought more oxygen into the blood. The results from these methods also affects the other half of the autonomic nervous system; the sympathetic nervous system in a positive way - bringing the writer closer to allostasis. 3. What questions do you have for the writer about their experience? Based on your experience, do you plan on incorporating mediation into your current lifestyle? If so, what is your plan specifically? Would it be difficult or unreasonable for you to do this everyday? 4. Based on the description provided, would you be open to trying the same meditation exercise? Of course - it sounds the like the writer had a great experience and to me anything I can do to lower my own physical or mental symptoms of stress/anxiety would be a beneficial activity for me to participate in."
posted on Nov 25, 2011, on the post my meditation!!!

"1. I am happy that you are deciding to relocate all of the memories you can. I share the same mentality as you in regards to using the past as a tool to shape your present self. I don't think there is any better way to live your life. 2. I would not be offended if you didn't remember me, I believe that if I were an important enough part of your life other pieces of your recovered memory would bring you back to me. In spite of this I would probably try to do all I could to get you to remember the relationship between us even if the process frustrated me. 3. I would probably try to befriend you again and act as if there was no past between us and take you to all the places we used to go and do all the things we used to do, I believe experience would be the most effective way to recover memory. 4. Rehearsal/repetition would be one the techniques I would utilize the most. Exposure to physical stimulus would be helpful as well to trigger different parts of sensory memory. Anything that can be seen, tasted, listened to would be the best stimulus for recovering episodic memory. Semantic memory might be a bit harder to recover, but with the right exposure over time a lot of memories could be recovered."
posted on Nov 6, 2011, on the post Recovering Memories

"I think this experiment is going to be very challenging if not impossible as a means to prove your hypothesis. I think the first question you should ask yourself is: does merely taking notes in class improve the ability to preform better on an exam? As we talked about in class, taking notes while listening to a lecture can cause interference in attention, which disrupts the brains ability to convert short-term memory into long-term memory. Are the groups taking an exam immediately after the lecture? If not, how similar are the lives they live? A student who lives in a house with domestic may perform differently than a student who uses his extra time to play video games, even if they study equal amounts of time. There also be significant differences in brain functioning and memory capacity between the participants. The confounding variables alone may be too threatening for this experiment to operate efficiently. Another factor to look into would be consistencies in the learning abilities between both groups and define exactly what the electronic devices are capable of doing - is the electronic based group just taking notes in a word program, or are they sketching pictures out on some kind of pad device? Theres nothing wrong with this idea, I'm fascinated discovering ways for people to learn more efficiently. The main problems with this experiment are 1) proving that note taking alone improves the ability to retain information 2) acquiring a balanced sample group (almost impossible in my opinion) 3) explaining what makes taking notes on an electronic device specifically different or more unique than taking notes on paper."
posted on Sep 30, 2011, on the post Notes on an electronic device vs. good ole paper and pen

"Hey - thats really cool you are into international business, what inspired you to want to minor in french?"
posted on Sep 23, 2011, on the post Hello Everyoneeee!!! (: