Hello, my name is Yosef Nacach (Yosi). I'm a fourth year undergraduate psychology student at San Diego State University. I've been working in the Center for Behavioral Teratology for over a year now. I'm currently working on my undergraduate honors thesis with the help of Chris Cascio. Our project is exploring the mechanisms behind pre/post Betaine adminstration on alcohol exposed rats.
In the summer of 2009 I worked as a research assistant at the University of Michigan, in Dr. Lustig's Aging and Cognition Lab. I had the great opportunity to learn a lot more about the role attention plays in an individual's overall cognitive abilities. I worked on a project which examined the effects of a genetic polymorphism in attentional performance.
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INTERESTS
My major interests are learning, memory, attention and intelligence. However, I’m particularly interested in declarative memory; which involves our ability to remember general information such as words, facts, ideas, life memories, and mathematical concepts. One of my favorite theorists is Howard_Gardner. As a professor of education at Harvard University, he believed that intelligence consisted of multiple domains rather than a simple measure of an intelligence quotient (IQ). Similarly, I believe that intelligence is a complicated phenomenon that can only be described as the combination of various skills and abilities. Thus, my interest is to find neurobiological and nueropsychological interpretations for the variability in an individual’s ability to excel in each of these domains.
"THINK ABOUT IT"
What is reality? Perhaps my favorite interpretation of this concept, is Plato's "Allegory of the Cave." Plato pointed out that our senses are critical to how we understand the world. Having this in mind, here are some illusions that I found challenging to my common understanding of reality (Art by Akiyoshi Kitaoka):
Alien Eggs
Dancing Turtles
Sausages
Pretty cool right? Well... it turns out that even though we're looking at something that physically isn't moving, our eyes make some minimal eye movements that evoke the illusion of a stationary image that is moving. In addition, an fMRI study showed that our brain's area in charge of movement perception (MT) is slightly activated when looking at these type of illusions.
Can you tell me the zip codes of every city in the United States? I know...that's ridiculous right? Well, not really. Kim_Peek is an autistic savant who, due to Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum and damage to his cerebellum, has the ability to recall 98.7 percent of material that he reads. He has memorized over 12,000 books and can answer trivia questions with virtually no mistakes in fields such as history, literature, sports, geography and dates.
Let's test your math skills: can you mentally divide 13 by 721? I couldn't do it either, but there's others who can. Daniel Tammet memorized pi to over 22,000 digits and recited it without a mistake. He can also perform large mathematical calculations incredibly fast. Daniel was born with a mild form of autism called Asperger Syndrome. In addition, he also suffered from epilepsy, and eventually developed a disorder known as Syneasthesia. The best part of all, is that Neuroscientists still don't know how he can accurately perform such incredible calculations in his head.
One last thing
Wouldn't it be awesome if you could fly, breathe under water, or perhaps even teleport yourself instantly across the continent? Actually, I think it's not that hard to do; you just have to do it while you're dreaming. A lucid dream is the locked door to all of these "impossible" possibilities; all you have to do, is use your conscious mind as the key to unlock it. A lucid dream is defined as "the ability to wake up in your dream, realize that you're dreaming, and ultimately control what you dream. Think about it like the matrix. We live in a world with established rules of gravity, logic, and nature. In the other hand, our dream world is free from all of these restraints. However, just like learning a guitar takes dedication and practice, so does lucid dreaming.
ABOUT ME
| Name | Curriculum Vitae | |
|---|---|---|
| Yosef Nacach | yosinacach@gmail.com | Curriculum Vitae |