Psychology Essay: Neurotransmitters & Animation

Psychology Essay: Neurotransmitters & Animation

The purpose of the present essay is to briefly introduce neuroscience, explain how neurotransmission works and, surprisingly, attempt to reconcile it to animation. Thus, Introduction to Neuroscience is a standard core course one must complete as part of an undergraduate degree when majoring in psychology. Neuroscience, also known as neurobiology, was traditionally a part of biology, and is better understood when one already learned the basics of biology, physics and chemistry.

Further, neuroscience looks at the brain as whole, and at specific neural correlates or neuronal substrates of thought, activity and emotion. Interestingly, the brain remains active in its entirety even during sleep, but neuroimaging studies such as fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and ERP (Event Related Potential) shed light on neuronal clusters most active during a particular event. The precise locations are calculated using the subtraction method.

Muse. Image: © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Alternatively, manga is a style of comics originating in Japan, in the same way as anime is an initially Japanese animation genre. Interestingly the word anime varies in meanings. Sometimes it narrowly refers to Japanese animation and comics (with related words such as manga, komikku and popular series Naruto), while at other times it means cartoon and comic book style characters and stories, that are dark, close to Gothic, in nature. Despite the indisputable worldwide popularity of the anime genre, there are many other cartoon styles such as machinima (toons made with computer graphics as background art), Family Guy and derivative shows, Futurama, Bob’s Burgers, The Lion King or Star Trek: The Animated Series, to only name a few…

A distinguished comic story turned cartoon is The Smurfs franchise. Also called Schtroumpfs, these mythical creatures were created in Belgium. On July 29, 2011 a collaboration between Columbia Pictures and Sony Animation Pictures presented the 3D movie The Smurfs. Needless to say, it’s a lovely movie… Other famous animated productions come from prestigious cartoons, fantasy and comics names such as Disney, Dream Works Animation, Marvel and DC.

Anime portal. Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers in the brain... Image: © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Nonetheless, the term Smad Ubiquitin Regulatory FactorS are also abbreviated as such (Arora & Warrior, 2001). The ligases fulfill important functions in TGF-β functions. Well, aside from some biomedical bloggers and the present entry, there are very few connections between smurfs and neuroscience. Some animation, graphic design and video editing programs are available at little or no cost. Such examples are freeware, open source, shareware & several Internet sites. Animation can be subdivided into 2D and 3D genres, and software exists for modelling, rendering and photo editing. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to attempt to relate animation to neuroscience.

Some animation, graphic design and video editing programs are available at little or no cost. Such examples are freeware, open source, shareware & several Internet sites.

Reference:

• Arora, K. & Warrior, R.  (2001). A new smurf in the village. Developmental Cell, 1: 1-2.