Flourish - Live an Inspired Life for #Success

How are you feeling about the food you eat lately?  What about the people you eat with?  Are you thinking about how wonderful good food tastes or are you in a hurry going nowhere all the time? Today's episode is inspired by an excerpt from Thich Nhat Hanh's book, Peace is Every Step.  "Eating a meal in mindfulness is an important practice."  Take a good look at what you are feeding your body, your...

Are you seeking calm?   Peace and Happiness?  Do you meditate or think that it's a waste of time?  It's a difficult task at times to calm and organized our thoughts, of which there are thousand per day.   Today's episode gives you some bite sized ideas for when you need to decompress and live in the present moment.  Inspiration for this episode is from the book, Peace is Every Step, by Thich Nhat...

Psychologists conceptualize memory in terms of types, in terms of stages, and in terms of processes. In this section we will consider the two types of memory, explicit memory and implicit memory, and then the three major memory stages: sensory, short-term, and long-term (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). Then, in the next section, we will consider the nature of long-term memory, with a particular emphas...

We think important objects and events in our world will automatically grab our attention, but they often don’t, particularly when our attention is focused on something else. The failure to notice unexpected objects or events when attention is focused elsewhere is now known as inattentional blindness. The study of such failures of awareness has a long history, but their practical importance has rec...

We use the term “attention“ all the time, but what processes or abilities does that concept really refer to? This module will focus on how attention allows us to select certain parts of our environment and ignore other parts, and what happens to the ignored information. A key concept is the idea that we are limited in how much we can do at any one time. So we will also consider what happens when s...

The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin sense the world around us, and in some cases perform preliminary information processing on the incoming data. But by and large, we do not experience sensation — we experience the outcome of perception, the total package that the brain puts together from the pieces it receives through our senses and that the brain creates for us to experience. When we look out...

No matter what you’re doing–solving homework, playing a video game, simply picking out a shirt–all of your actions and decisions relate to your consciousness. But as frequently as we use it, have you ever stopped to ask yourself: What really is consciousness? In this module, we discuss the different levels of consciousness and how they can affect your behavior in a variety of situations. As well,...

Consciousness is the ultimate mystery. What is it and why do we have it? These questions are difficult to answer, even though consciousness is so fundamental to our existence. Perhaps the natural world could exist largely as it is without human consciousness; but taking away consciousness would essentially take away our humanity. Psychological science has addressed questions about consciousness in...

Most of the time, we perceive the world as a unified bundle of sensations from multiple sensory modalities. In other words, our perception is multimodal. This module provides an overview of multimodal perception, including information about its neurobiology and its psychological effects. Learning Objectives -Define the basic terminology and basic principles of multimodal perception. -Describe the...

Whereas other animals rely primarily on hearing, smell, or touch to understand the world around them, human beings rely in large part on vision. A large part of our cerebral cortex is devoted to seeing, and we have substantial visual skills. Seeing begins when light falls on the eyes, initiating the process of transduction. Once this visual information reaches the visual cortex, it is processed by...

The sensory systems of touch and pain provide us with information about our environment and our bodies that is often crucial for survival and well-being. Moreover, touch is a source of pleasure. In this module, we review how information about our environment and our bodies is coded in the periphery and interpreted by the brain as touch and pain sensations. We discuss how these experiences are ofte...

Hearing allows us to perceive the world of acoustic vibrations all around us, and provides us with our most important channels of communication. This module reviews the basic mechanisms of hearing, beginning with the anatomy and physiology of the ear and a brief review of the auditory pathways up to the auditory cortex. An outline of the basic perceptual attributes of sound, including loudness, pi...

The topics of sensation and perception are among the oldest and most important in all of psychology. People are equipped with senses such as sight, hearing and taste that help us to take in the world around us. Amazingly, our senses have the ability to convert real-world information into electrical information that can be processed by the brain. The way we interpret this information– our perceptio...

As the world opens up again to being social, take time to enjoy life again as you venture back out. But, be aware of the lure of the group. Today's episode is a positive vibe as we once again are out of isolation. "Madness is something rare in individuals-but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages it is the rule." Friedrich Nietzsche Groups are contagious and you can really get caught up in the exc...

So many decisions....so little time....so many mistakes! Has this ever happened to you? You thought you made the right choice. You listened to your instincts - so why didn't that work? Today is all about using 6 steps to help you make a rational decision. 1 - Define the Problem 2 - Identify the criteria 3 - Weigh the criteria 4 - Generalte Alternatives 5 - Rate each alternative 6 - Compute the Opt...

"He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened" Lao Tzu. Today is all about rising above the crowd with confidence! Comparison is inevitable in our lives, use it to move yourself forward towards excellence instead of envy. What do you do to keep the momentum flowing? Be rigorous! Be persistent! Live an Inspired Life! #LaoTzu #Empowerment #RobertGreene Find out more about Flouris...

"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."  Joshua J. Marine What is challenging you right now?  I'm writing an exam today and needed a few words of encouragement to remind me to embrace the struggle, do my best so that I may reach my intentions. What do you do to keep the momentum flowing?   Remember, you can't fail if you don't give up!  Just k...

The mammalian nervous system is a complex biological organ, which enables many animals including humans to function in a coordinated fashion. The original design of this system is preserved across many animals through evolution; thus, adaptive physiological and behavioral functions are similar across many animal species. Comparative study of physiological functioning in the nervous systems of diff...

As a generally noninvasive subset of neuroscience methods, psychophysiological methods are used across a variety of disciplines in order to answer diverse questions about psychology, both mental events and behavior. Many different techniques are classified as psychophysiological. Each technique has its strengths and weaknesses, and knowing them allows researchers to decide what each offers for a p...

The human brain is responsible for all behaviors, thoughts, and experiences described in this textbook. This module provides an introductory overview of the brain, including some basic neuroanatomy, and brief descriptions of the neuroscience methods used to study it. Learning Objectives - Name and describe the basic function of the brain stem, cerebellum, and cerebral hemispheres. - Name and descr...

Psychopharmacology is the study of how drugs affect behavior. If a drug changes your perception, or the way you feel or think, the drug exerts effects on your brain and nervous system. We call drugs that change the way you think or feel psychoactive or psychotropic drugs, and almost everyone has used a psychoactive drug at some point (yes, caffeine counts).  Understanding some of the basics about...

The goal of this module is to introduce you to the topic of hormones and behavior. This field of study is also called behavioral endocrinology, which is the scientific study of the interaction between hormones and behavior. This interaction is bidirectional: hormones can influence behavior, and behavior can sometimes influence hormone concentrations. Hormones are chemical messengers released from...

This module on the biological basis of behaviour provides an overview of the basic structure of neurons and their means of communication. Neurons, cells in the central nervous system, receive information from our sensory systems (vision, audition, olfaction, gustation, and somatosensation) about the world around us; in turn, they plan and execute appropriate behavioural responses, including attend...

When people think of emotions they usually think of the obvious ones, such as happiness, fear, anger, and sadness. This module looks at the knowledge emotions, a family of emotional states that foster learning, exploring, and reflecting. Surprise, interest, confusion, and awe come from events that are unexpected, complicated, and mentally challenging, and they motivate learning in its broadest sen...

Basic principles of learning are always operating and always influencing human behavior. This module discusses the two most fundamental forms of learning — classical (Pavlovian) and instrumental (operant) conditioning. Through them, we respectively learn to associate 1) stimuli in the environment, or 2) our own behaviors, with significant events, such as rewards and punishments. The two types of l...