I have been attending Penn State University World Campus as a part time undergraduate student for a little over 3 years now. I started as a junior standing student, and if I attended as a full time student, I will have graduated with Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology in 2 years. I never thought I would have the patience to take 1 to 2 courses per semester for over 4 years, but that’s what I will have done when I earn my Bachelor’s degree at the end of next year. After that, I hope to go right into graduate school to study Adult Education. It will likely take me 4 more years to earn a Master’s degree, but that is alright. I can’t imagine my life without focused academic learning anymore, because much my perception about the world has changed for the better,and I have better sense of the kind of work that I want to do that impact the lives of people in positive ways.
This week’s lesson in my Neurological Bases of Human Behavior course introduced me to two videos that tells the story of how applied science help to improve people’s lives in dramatic way. When I say dramatic, it does not mean things happen suddenly, but the overall impact being dramatic from long term work in applying the scientific knowledge in practical ways.
How therapist helped this young girl who could not walk at age 8 to gradually improve so that by age 13 she was able to run and live physically active life is truly inspiring. As a mother of dyslexic son, I couldn’t help but think, there’s so much more we can do to help dyslexic people with proper therapy.
And this ground breaking work by Dr. Ramachandra how pain can be constructed from our brain’s perception rather than the sign of ongoing damage to the actual body part stunned me. Based on this findings, it seems there is so much more we can do to help some people who has emotional difficulties such as depression with measurement of brain area that are active or inactive when having fits of depression.
FUJIKO SUDA 