.: 3iCreative :.

Pychology + Marketing

The Forebrain: Telencephalon & Diencephalon

by

The forebrain is split into 2 sections: The telencephalon and the diencephalon.

Parts of the telencephalon

The Telencephalon & Limbic System

  • Cerebral cortex – The cerebral cortex is the “gray matter” of your brain, and is comprised of the fissures (valleys) and gyri (hills). Most information processing occurs in the cerebral cortex. Each of its 6 layers has different composition in terms of neurons and connectivity. However, there are 2 types of basic neurons: Star-shaped cells (small interneurons with no tail) and triangular cells (large multipolar neurons). There are 4 lobes in the cerebral cortex:
    4 Lobes of the Brain

    • Frontal lobe – The frontal lobe is associated with personality, conscience (right/wrong/consequences), planning and is the source of inhibitions. Moniz won a Nobel Prize for developing the prefrontal lobotomy. It was later replaced by Walter Freeman’s transorbital lobotomy. They were both later replaced with safer alternatives (drugs like thorazine).
    • Parietal lobe – The parietal  lobe is in charge of somatosensory processing (touch). See Oliver Sack’s case study about the man who fell out of bed.
    • Occipital lobe – The occipital lobe processes visual memory, and is associated with migraine headaches.
    • Temporal lobe – Auditory and language processing occurs in the temporal lobe; about 90% on the left side.
  • Corpus callosum – The white matter in the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres. Split brain occurs when the connection in the corpus callosum is severed.
  • Limbic system – The limbic system is the collective name for the parts of the brain that control emotion, motivation, and emotional association with memory, and includes the hippocampus, cingulate cortex, mammillary bodies, amygdala, fornex and septum.
    • Hippocampus – It’s easy to remember where the hippocampus is because it’s shaped like a seahorse. The hippocampus is associated with short and long term memory indexing (moves memories in and out), and is one of the first parts of the brain affected in Alzheimer’s. Damage to the hippocampus can cause amnesia, preventing the formation of new memories (anterograde amnesia), as well as recollection of old ones (retrograde amnesia). Elderly people with shrinkage of the hippocampus tend to have memory problems (episodic and working memory). Abnormalities in development of the hippocampus are associated with schizophrenia.
    • Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) – In PTSD, there is lower activity and fewer neurons in the the anterior cingulate cortex.
    • Amygdala -The amygdala is shaped like an almond, and located on the fatter end of the hippocampus. It is responsible for emotional processing, and associated with conditioned learning, especially fear/anger/rage. Dysfunction of the amygdala is linked to anxiety, autism, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias and binge drinking. PTSD is now being treated with small doses of esctasy (plus counseling). Also see case study below of Little Albert by John Watson.

    • Olfactory bulb – Sense of smell, connected to the amygdala, which is why smells are strong sources of memories.

Parts of the diencephalon

The Forebrain: Parts of the Diencephalon

  • Thalamus – The thalamus has 2 lobes, and is responsible for sensory relay in your brain. Essentially, it is the “traffic cop” that directs information. It does NOT help with recognition.
  • Hypothalamus – The hypothalamus controls motivated behavior by regulating the release of hormones from the pituitary gland. It is responsible for the 4 F’s: Fighting, fleeing, feeding and sex.
  • Pituitary gland – Small pea-sized gland of the endocrine system, often called the “Master Gland.” The pituitary gland hangs from the hypothalamus.
  • Pineal gland – Small gland of the endocrine system that controls melatonin (a hormone that affects the modulation of wake/sleep patterns and seasonal functions) production that’s sometimes referred to as the “third eye.”

How to Write News Releases for Online Publishers (& a good life lesson)

by

How to Write Press Releases - 3iCreativeWhen I studied Public Relations at Kent State University, I was fortunate to have a couple of really awesome professors – Zoe McCathrin and Bill Sledzik.

Thanks to Zoe, I still often read my copy backward in order to catch typos (and feel just as mortified when I catch one). Anyone who had her can attest to the fact she was a tough teacher – she’d fail you for a single typo in an entire media kit.

Needless to say, many students left her classroom in tears over the years. But her toughness made Kent JMC students much, much better than average. And the longer I am in the industry, the more I realize how well Zoe did her job, and appreciate her hard work.

Bill, on the other hand, was new to the academic scene when I enrolled in his class. His energy and enthusiasm made Public Relations more exciting. He brought a lot of fresh, real world experience and practical tips to the classroom.

It is thanks to one of Bill’s pearls of wisdom that I’ve enjoyed many of my successes, including getting my story and pic in The New York Times – a placement all PR professionals strive for, but rarely achieve. Even though I went a different path after graduation, landing early on in the field of Interactive Marketing, this common sense tip of his has always served me well when it came to getting a news release, or other piece of content published.

It went something like this:

If you want someone to publish your new release content, make it easy as possible for them to do so.

I’ve spent the last year on the other side of the fence, publishing online news for people in the PR industry. What I see on a daily basis is disappointing, and full of bad practices. With that in mind, here’s a few tips on how to write news releases for online publishers.

— I often write tongue-in-cheek, so while you should make a mental note of these things, don’t take my attempt at humor too seriously. —

Tips for Getting Your News Picked Up By Online Publishers

  • Write good headlines – First, write a short headline. No one wants to read a headline so long that it wraps three lines on the page. Personally, by the time I get to the end, I forgot what the beginning said. It’s also an immediate red flag that you may not be able to write concisely, and heavy editing is going to be needed. Plus, it generally makes a good design look bad, and dilutes SEO efforts. Second, don’t shout (use all caps). All you’re doing is forcing an editor to fix your ego boost before they can publish your story. If an online publisher wants headlines in all caps, they can easily change every single one on the site in 5 minutes using CSS. What they can’t do is easily change your all caps to title or sentence case. Given the choice between running your story and one that is formatted correctly, which one do you think they will choose?
  • Don’t put your name (or your client’s name) in bold every time it’s used – I have no idea what purpose this serves. What I do know is that it’s not only distracting to readers, it also mucks up my HTML and has a negative effect on my SEO strategy, and therefore, forces me to spend 10-15 minutes deleting them.
  • Embed links the right way – If you’re publishing in a print environment, it might make sense to write out links the long way. But if you’re looking to get published online, this is just bad practice: Worst Press Releases ExampleSeriously, who does this serve? Certainly not YOUR readers, and definitely not the publishers you’re hoping will print it, and who will subsequently invest another 15-20 minutes to properly embed your links so that readers can actually comprehend YOUR message, which is now lost in a tumultuous sea of links. Also, you are missing out on highly valuable opportunities to improve the online visibility of your story, and your website, by following this bad, but widely prevalent, practice — but that’s another post for another day. To those in the know, it comes off as either lazy and/or ignorant of the basic best practices of online content development.
  • Learn the basics of SEO – Every single article, press release, blog post and piece of content that’s published online by a third party has an opportunity to impact rankings through search engine optimization. Not understanding how your online PR initiatives integrate and impact other efforts, like SEO, to improve online visibility is playing with fire. If you are lucky, the only impact will be an opportunity cost. Worst case, it could have a negative impact on your rankings. It may even put you out of a job once your client wises up, too. (In a former life, I dedicated a significant chunk of my time to “fixing” news releases for Fortune 500 clients, who ended up investing top dollars twice to get the same results they could have easily achieved by hiring someone with both PR and SEO experience the first time around.) Once your client sees the evidence that properly optimized releases always achieve better results than a traditional one from a holistic marketing perspective, who do you think they will hire? At a bare minimum, you should understand the best practices of online content development, including link building.
  • Avoid fluff, give me the facts – A lot of online publishers automate the posting of press releases. So, no matter how good or bad your story is, it will probably still generate some online coverage. But the credible sites – those that manually review, edit and post stories – don’t want a press release filled with self-serving language garbage.
  • Provide value – See above. Then make sure your story is actually newsworthy.
  • Don’t annoy the publisher – Sure, that sounds rude. But they are probably busy editing out the miscellaneous HTML that’s dragging down their page weight, the handshake quotes used to fill space, and the headlines that don’t follow good SEO practices from the 50 PR people that submitted a crappy story before you emailed them. So, if you send them several messages to check on a release you submitted less than an hour ago, unless you have something earth-shattering to offer, your story is likely to end up in the recycle bin.
  • Submit your story – Sure, it seems like common sense — a real no brainer, really — but if you want a story published, you should actually submit it. I am thoroughly amazed at how many emails I get on a daily basis that:
    • Are a forward to a story from Facebook or another social media site, which when I click on the link, can’t be accessed;
    • Contain just one or two sentences alerting me to a story the PR professional wants published, and then links (or not) to a few details on another website.
    • Reference a file they sent me days, weeks or months ago (or not at all). If you think a publisher might need a logo or embed code, make their job easier by attaching whatever information is pertinent the first time around. If you force them to sift through the hundreds of email they have saved, or dig through YouTube to find the HTML to display the video you mentioned but gave the wrong title or link to, you’re creating more effort for the publisher than your story is worth. Unless they specifically asked for or initiated a story, they’re not that interested in it. In fact, routinely forcing publishers to compensate for your lack of time, or just plain laziness, could land you in their junk mailbox permanently.
    • Are provided in an image format (like a PDF or JPG file), instead of text, subsequently requiring the editor to convert files (which is relatively worthless from a content perspective) or retype the entire story. Send them your document in Word, or another text editor. If you can’t manage that, just put it in an email.

REPEAT: If you’re too lazy to send a publisher a  written story tweaked to his audience along with your request, let alone cut/paste important details into an email, thereby forcing him become a detective instead of a publisher, so that he has to Google the crap out of your breadcrumb trail in order to wring lemonade out of a lemon, don’t expect your story to get published. It’s not that online publishers are lazy; It’s that unlike the traditional print publishers of the past, most online publishers don’t have an entire team of jockeys dedicated to turning your scraps into meaty masterpieces. They are probably one or two people who simply do not have the 2-4 hours it can take to track down the basic facts, then write/format/publish, a story they didn’t ask for, and that is your job, as the PR professional who wants it published, to provide.

Now, if you want to impress an online publisher, here’s a good juicy tidbit for you. Do them a favor and include well-written meta data. (I am still waiting to see this happen… Just once, even, would be nice!)

It’s too bad that all PR students professionals can’t take Sledzik’s class. If they did, they’d not only walk away with some best PR practices in the business, but also an invaluable life lesson:

Anytime in life that you want someone to do you a favor, make it as easy as possible for them to grant it.

Biopsychology & the Development of the Nervous System

by

Embryonic Cell Layers - 3iCreativeIn order to understand psychology from a biological perspective,  we must understand the development of the nervous system, starting from conception.

Each of us began as a single-celled zygote which multiplied to become an embryo (day 10 to 8 weeks), and then a fetus. In order for us become “us” — and not a blob of cells — many things had to happen, including development of the nervous system.

The development of the nervous system begins during the embryonic stage, about 2 to 2.5 weeks post-conception, when the neural plate forms from the inner layer, called the ECTODERM. Here’s a quick review of embryonic cell layers:

Embryonic Cell Layers

  • Ectoderm – The inner layer of the cell which forms the nervous system
  • Mesoderm – The middle layer of the embryonic cell which becomes connective tissue, bone, muscles, etc.
  • Endoderm – The outer later of cells which develops into bodily organs

In order for proper development to occur, 3 things must happen, starting with the formation of the NEURAL PLATE, a small path of tissue on the dorsal (back).

1) Cell Differentiation

Differentiation refers to the creation of different types of cells. So, for example, some cells will need to become muscle cells, and some will need to become glial cells, etc.

  • TOTIPOTENT – During the earliest stages of embryonic development, most cells are totipotent, which means that they are able to develop into any type of cell.
  • MULTIPOTENT – As the embryo develops, cell differentiation becomes more specified. For example, cells in the neural plate can only mature into nervous system cells. These cells are often referred to as embryonic stem cells.

2) Neuronal Migration & Aggregation

The second thing that must occur for proper development is neuronal migration – the movement of different types of cells to the proper location (migration). Once the cells are in the right location, they must align (aggregation). There are 2 ways this can happen:

  • SOMAL TRANSLOCATION – During somal translocation, cells migrate to the appropriate location by developing extensions that look for cues to point in the right direction. As the cells move, the “tail” or extension they have disappears behind them. Many chemicals have been identified that guide cells in the right direction. The 2 most important:
    • Glycoproteins
    • Chemoattractants
  • GLIAL MEDIATED MIGRATION – As the walls of the neural tube thicken, a temporary network of glial cells (RADIAL GLIAL CELLS) develops inside the tube. During glial medial migration, cells latch onto the framework and inch along like a little worm as it guides them in the right direction.

3) Formation of Neural Connections (Axon Growth & Synapse Formation)

Once the cells are properly aligned, the neural pathways must be “hooked up” correctly. So, in the next step of the process, axons and dendrites grow out from the cell’s GROWTH CONE (swelling on one side of the cell which extends and retracts in search of the right direction). Guided by NEUROTROPINS (NGF – Nerve Growth Factor), FILOPEDIA protrude out

AXON GROWTH – In the 1940s, Sperry cut the optic nerves of frogs, rotated their eyeballs 180 degrees, and waited for the axons to regenerate. When he dangled a lure behind the frogs, the struck forward, suggesting that their visual world had also rotated. The same was true whether or not the optic nerve was cut. This behavioral evidence suggests that each retinal cell had grown back to the same point where it was originally connected. This was confirmed in 2000.

  • Sperry’s Chemoaffinity Hypothesis of Axonal Development – Each post synaptic surface in the nervous system releases a unique chemical label, which attracts a growing axon. However, this hypothesis does not account for the fact that some axons follow the same circuitous route to reach their target in every member of a species, rather than going directly from point A to point B.
    • Elaboration of hypothesis based on new research indicates that axon growth is influenced by a series of chemical signals along the route. These guidance molecules are called CHEMOATTRACTANTS. Others repel (CHEMOREPELLANTS). Other signals comes from adjacent growing axons. The PIONEER GROWTH CONES lead the way, and others follow in their path. FASCICULATION is the tendency of developing axons to grow along the paths established by preceding axons. When pioneer axons die before reaching their destination, subsequent axons of the same nerves tend to die also.
  • Topographic Gradient Hypothesis – Axons growing from one topographic surface to another are guided to specific targets arranged on the terminal surface in the same way the axon’s cell bodies are arranged on the original cell surface (guided to destination by 2 intersecting gradients on original surface).

SYNAPTOGENESIS (synapse formation) – It takes the coordination of 2 axons to create a synapse between them. Recent discovery – Astrocytes (star-shaped glial cells  in the brain and spinal cord) are necessary for this process.

Neuronal Death

The death of neurons is a normal part of the development process, and operates on a “survival of the fittest” principle. We produce about 50% more neurons than we need, and those that die generally lose the competition for the chemicals (target sites) they need. The ones that don’t get hooked up properly or used, die.

  • Implanting new chemicals (target sites) reduces neuron death
  • Destroying neurons in a particular area before the period of cell death increases the survival rate of the remaining neurons
  • Increasing the number of axons that initially innervate a target reduces the number that survive

NECROSIS – Passive cell death

APOTOSIS – Active cell death; this is the safer process because the internal structures of the cell are packaged in membranes before the cell breaks. The membranes attract scavenger cells that prevent inflammation. If the process is inhibited, cancer can develop.  If the process is overstimulated, neurogenerative diseases may develop.

In Pursuit of a Mind Map, Slice by Slice

by

Dr. Lichtman and his team of researchers at Harvard have built some unusual contraptions that carve off slivers of mouse brains as part of a quest to understand how the mind works. Their goal is to run slice after minuscule slice under a powerful electron microscope, develop detailed pictures of the brain’s complex wiring and then stitch the images back together. In short, they want to build a full map of the mind.

The field, at a very nascent stage, is called connectomics, and the neuroscientists pursuing it compare their work to early efforts in genetics. What they are doing, these scientists say, is akin to trying to crack the human genome — only this time around, they want to find how memories, personality traits and skills are stored.

Read the entire article at The New York Times.