Assignent Solutionnurs

A Day in the Life of My Brain Papers
Overview
The two brain papers are your chance to investigate and learn about the biopsychological perspectives of some of your own everyday experiences. Each paper will contain a particular event related to a specific time of day: morning, afternoon, evening, or night. Such events could reflect aspects of behavior, emotion, cognition, or a psychological condition or experience. For example, students in the past have chosen things such as anxiety while taking a test in the evening, jogging in the morning, forgetting one’s grocery list at home, having a bizarre dream, laughing at a funny joke, etc. Just about anything has the potential to work. It’s entirely up to you which of your own personal experiences you choose to investigate.
Choosing Your Paper Topic Requirements
Each of the two papers will focus on one event you experienced related to a particular time of day (morning, afternoon, evening, or night). Please note you cannot choose to examine the same type of event for both papers. For example, you couldn’t investigate taking a cat-nap in the afternoon for one paper and sleeping during the night for the 2nd paper. Each paper’s event must be distinctly different from the other. Each paper should also reflect a different time of day and an event related to a distinctly different chapter than the other paper. Note that you don’t have to stick with concepts and chapters discussed in this class. You’re welcomed and encouraged to broaden your scope to materials outside of the classroom experience. If you are struggling with coming up with ideas or unsure whether a particular event would be a good choice, please feel free to contact your instructor for feedback.
The Context of Each Paper
Within the body of each paper, you’ll be asked to fulfill certain requirements to demonstrate your understanding of the event in relation to biopsychology. Note that I include an expected page length minimums for various sections of the paper. However, there is no penalty for having longer sections than what is listed in this outline. The important factor is successfully meeting the requirements, clearly and accurately providing your information to demonstrate your knowledge gained from researching the event. Having said that, I find typical papers are usually between 6-10 pages in total length (when using 11 size font – 1.5 spacing).
Title: You’ll need to include a title on each entry, specifying the time of day for the entry (i.e. morning, afternoon, evening, night) and the specific event chosen.
Reasoning: Next, you’ll need to include an explanation of why you chose to investigate the behavior. This should include putting the specific event into context for the reader. The reasoning portion is expected to be a minimum of 1-2 paragraphs.
Research Perspectives: After that, you’ll be required to provide information on what researchers know about your chosen event based on two of the perspectives (e.g. functional, evolutionary, or ontogenetic) we discussed in the lectures. One of these must be the cyto-architectonic perspective. This section will require a minimum of 4 references, with one representation from either the somatic or the behavioral approaches clearly outlined (it may be helpful to go back and review the first lessons). In other words, I would expect you to specifically state what are the independent and dependent variables in the study and why it would be considered a somatic or behavioral approach. The research perspectives portion is expected to be at least 2 pages in length.
Research Methods: For this next portion of the entry, you’ll need to select two research methods (i.e. autopsy, modern imaging, histology, lesion studies, psychophysiological procedures, etc.) from the lectures. For each method, locate one good peer reviewed study that uses an aspect of that method to investigate your event (for example, an MRI study for the modern imagining methodology). Now, clearly outline the goal of this study, what they did, who were the participants, and how their results fit within the context of your event. Again, please remember you are picking one significant paper to outline for EACH of the research methods you’ve chosen. The research methods portion is expected to be a minimum of 1.5 pages.
Reflection: Finally, you’ll be asked to reflect on your findings. This should include a discussion of how the results of your examination of the event relate to your own personal experiences of the event. In other words, make sure to tie it back to specific experiences from your event! It should also include a discussion of the implications of your findings, such as potential flaws/promises/meanings gleaned from the results as well as directions for future research. The reflection section is expected to be a minimum of 2 paragraphs in length.
A Couple Other Suggestions:
Review the Example Paper Download Example Paper: As you review this example, keep in mind that writing style can vary from student to student. Additionally, each event chosen by students along with their approach to answering the requirements may differ. Thus, this is not to be considered how you MUST structure your paper, but is provided to give you an example of how one student approached a paper successfully. At a minimum, I would strongly advise that you utilize this example to determine how to break up headings in your own paper. Doing so will increase the likelihood that you don’t forget any major component of the paper.
Create a Timeline. These papers are significant projects and worth almost one third of your grade when put together. Therefore, they shouldn’t be something that you wait until the last minute/week before the deadline to start constructing. While there are two time management projects included in the course, it’s a good idea to create and regularly update your own personal timeline of what aspects of the papers so you don’t fall behind.
Ask Questions: Please don’t hesitate to contact your instructor if you are struggling with the requirements or if something is unclear. Your instructor is there to help guide you through the process and provide you with advice as needed.
Have FUN with the Projects! Pick events that are meaningful to you and you want to learn more about from a biological perspective. Doing so will make the entire process more enjoyable and rewarding for you in the end.
Gathering Additional Resources for Entries
As stated previously, your entries will require that you incorporate factual elements of your events from appropriate sources into your writing. Thus, you’ll need to gather acceptable resources (i.e. peer reviewed books and/or journal articles – not Wikipedia or About.com, or other such websites) that outline aspects related to your specific events.
One method of gathering appropriate information is to perform a literature search on your selected events. In Brainstorm #1 I outlined how to do searches on PsycINFO through the library’s Lion Search system.
You may wish to also search specific journals rather than a large database like PsycINFO. Luckily, as a student of Penn State you have access to an extensive listing of journals online, which you can review, save, and print all from the comfort of your own home even at 3am in the morning! Below is a list of some journals (there are definitely more) related to biopsychology that you should be able to access through the online resource databases of the library. To browse these journals, you should use the CAT system on the library’s webpage Links to an external site.. To do so,
Go to the library’s website and click on “Search the CAT” option in the Lion Search box.
In the CAT system, you can type out the exact name of the journal in the quick search box (for example, Biological Psychology).
I also suggest clicking the “exact” option and selecting “journal title” from the drop down box provided.
Choose the “Online Resources” from the list of libraries if you are using one of the suggested journals below. And then hit “search”. The search should provide you with a link labeled GET IT! for the electronic resource library databases.
Clicking on the GET IT function will open up a separate page that shows you the various databases that house this journal that you can access online as a Penn State student. If there are multiple choices, I usually tell students to select one that they are either familiar with and/or covers the greatest time period of production of the journal.
Once you’ve clicked on “journal” of one of these databases, a new window will open up into that journal within that database.
Note that each database’s interface is slightly different and you may have to try different search functions to figure out how to navigate successfully through their site. Again, if you get stuck, please don’t hesitate to notify your instructor for assistance.
Biological Psychology
Neuropsychology
Physiological Psychology
Psychobiology
Psychophysiology
Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology
Cognitive Neuropsychology
Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience
Journal of Neuroscience Methods
Journal of the Autonomic Nervous System
Developmental Neuroscience
Journal of Neuroscience Research
Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology
Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Behavioral Neuroscience
Brain Structure and Function
Brain Imaging and Behavior
Cerebrum
Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology
Cerebral Cortex
Brain: A Journal of Neurology
Developmental Psychobiology
Journal of Psychophysiology
Developmental Neuropsychology
References Page and Citations
A single reference page for the entire paper should be placed at the very end of each paper. Additionally please note that referencing the textbook or lecture notes would each count as one reference source towards your minimum requirements. You should also use proper in text citations throughout your entries. Both the in text citations and the reference page should be in APA style. If you are unfamiliar with APA style for how to write references and in-text citations, please review information from the Purdue Online Writing Lab Links to an external site.(OWL). Also, feel free to contact your instructor if you are unable to determine the appropriate format for a particular source.
Late Penalties
You may turn in a particular paper early if it better suites your personal schedule. However, as you have had a significant number of weeks to work on each paper, you are expected to manage your time appropriately. It is the student’s responsibility to make sure that they have submitted a copy of the each paper by the listed due dates. Late penalties including non-acceptance of your papers may be imposed by your instructor if you do not meet the listed deadlines. Please contact your instructor in regards to their late policies for assignments, including the term papers.
Tentative Grading Rubric
The grading rubric will be based on the entry requirements. More specifically, each of the two papers will be worth 60 points broken down as follows:
Title (2 points),
Reasoning (6 points),
Research Perspectives (20 points),
Research Methods (18 points), and
Reflections (10 points).
Additionally, an overall quality score worth 4 points will be applied to the entire paper. This overall quality score will reflect the commitment of learning and mastery shown by the student as well as their ability to excel beyond the minimum expectation levels of the paper.
If you have any further questions after our in-class review of the paper requirements, please don’t hesitate to contact the instructor of the course.
Rubric