Thad A. Polk
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 5
Language
English
Description
Shift your attention from the nature of addiction to the nature of drugs. Here you'll delve into the process of neurochemical transmission and see how drugs mimic this activity by binding to neural receptors. This process is responsible for everything from a drug's physical and psychological effects to its potency.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 9
Language
English
Description
From the original recipe for Coca-Cola to treatments for attention deficit disorder, psychostimulant drugs have had remarkable uses. But they have also been dangerously abused in the form of crack cocaine, methamphetamine, and related drugs. Find out how stimulants work in the brain and why they can be so harmful.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 9
Language
English
Description
In this lecture, The Learning Brain switches gears from explicit to implicit learning, that is, learning that is unconscious and hard to verbalize. Discover non-associative learning, like learning to ignore a fan blowing in a room, as well as associative learning, such as conditioning, through which positive and negative reinforcement can shape behaviors over time.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 8
Language
English
Description
To wrap up the course's section on conscious, explicit learning, Professor Polk delivers an enticing "myth-busting" talk about controversial topics in the field. Do people repress traumatic memories and can such repressed memories later re-emerge? Professor Polk cuts through the hype and lays out the actual scientific findings related to each of these controversies.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 1
Language
English
Description
Beginning with a clear, working definition of the concept of "learning," Professor Polk eases you into a course overview with simple examples of some of the topics that will be covered, including how scientists study learning, the neural basis of learning, and effective learning strategies.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
We’re all getting older every day, and scientific research has shown that starting in our twenties, some brain functions begin a linear decline. But is old age all doom and gloom?
Not at all! While it’s true that some functions in the aging brain decline, neuroscientists have discovered that many other brain functions remain stable - or even improve - as we age. Furthermore, nurture plays as significant a role as nature, and there are a number...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
We live in a time of amazing new technologies-and an unparalleled level of surveillance. Virtually every aspect of human behavior is tracked millions of times a day through the technology that we all, often without giving it a thought, use every day. The collected data has the potential of providing vital insight into the human experience, but can the scientific community explore the psychosocial experience of humanity without making victims of us...
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 20
Language
English
Description
Ask almost anyone where they were when they heard about major events like the 9/11 attacks or the Challenger explosion and they remember immediately. Why, psychologically, do those memories remain so vivid? And do short, quick moments of stress versus chronic stress affect our memories differently? How? These answers and more await you.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 17
Language
English
Description
Diving back into the brain itself, this lecture explores the neuroscience behind working memory in much the same way earlier lectures examined explicit memory and implicit memory. Are different parts of the brain responsible for storing visual information versus verbal information in working memory? Prepare for an illuminating ride.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 6
Language
English
Description
Caffeine and nicotine are two of the most common psychoactive drugs in our society. How do they work? How dangerous are they? After reviewing how each of these drugs affects the brain - and why nicotine in particular is so addictive - Professor Polk offers several strategies to quit tobacco use.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 14
Language
English
Description
How can learning go wrong? Using the knowledge you've been taught so far, you can unmask the dark side of unconscious associations and reward-seeking behavior: addictions to drugs and alcohol. Professor Polk delves into the psychological, chemical, and neural mechanisms underlying addiction to help understand this serious and delicate subject.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 15
Language
English
Description
Begin with an overview of working (or short-term) memory, which is vital to rational thought. This lecture introduces you to the idea of working memory and discusses one of the most important mechanisms involved, the "phonological loop," which we use to store language sounds like words for brief periods of time.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 2
Language
English
Description
In the 1950s, a Connecticut man named Henry Molaison became an unfortunate but invaluable source of information about how learning is implemented in the human brain after an experimental brain surgery led to profound amnesia. Studies of how he could (and couldn't) learn - and what those studies uncover about how the rest of us learn - are detailed in this revealing lecture.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 21
Language
English
Description
If you think "getting a good night's rest" is the only way that sleep affects learning, think again. Our brain is often just as active during sleep as it is while we're awake, and what happens at a neural level during sleep has a profound impact on what we remember, and what we forget. Different stages of sleep influence different kinds of learning and memory, and that's just the beginning.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 7
Language
English
Description
Set your highlighters and pens down and stop re-reading your material! These are actually two of the least-effective study techniques. Professor Polk explains why these old techniques don't really work and offers four different and more efficient, approaches to studying, which have been scientifically demonstrated to work more effectively.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 5
Language
English
Description
How do you know the distance to the Earth from the Sun? With no first-hand experience, we use "semantic memory" - impersonal, fact-based memory - for world knowledge. Semantic memory also includes our grouping or categorizing of information - but how do our brains do that? Professor Polk makes short, easy work of the subject.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 11
Language
English
Description
Are drugs the only thing humans can get addicted to? What about behaviors? To answer this question, take a look at what happens inside the brain of a compulsive gambler. As this case study reveals, many of the same neurochemical processes of drug abuse - from genetic predisposition to dopamine release - also accompany addiction to behaviors.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 24
Language
English
Description
Professor Polk wraps things up by discussing five strategies that can make you a better learner. These strategies draw on and integrate some of the key themes that have appeared throughout the rest of this Great Course. And, putting them into practice in your own life can help you to become the best learner you can be.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 16
Language
English
Description
Several important components of working memory are covered here: the visuospatial sketchpad, which retains images from both recent perception and from long-term memory; the central executive, which decides which cognitive functions to perform and when to perform them; and the episodic buffer, which links information from other working memory components into integrated wholes.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 10
Language
English
Description
Compare the first time you tried to tie your shoes to your present-day, shoelace-tying mastery. How did you come such a long way? Practice alone doesn't begin to cover the intricate process of your brain learning a skill. See which stages are involved in acquiring skill-based knowledge and how you put them all together, with this insightful discussion.