Caleb Lin's Psychology Blog

 Chosen sense: smell A cool thing about a human's sense of smell is that it can be used as an identifier for more than just fragrant flowers or nasty burps. What's unique about scent is that our olfactory nerves don't lead directly to the thalamus where we'd consciously register smells; data from our noses can trigger our emotions and memories without people not even realizing it. One study asked participants to identify the body odor of a hypothetical assailant out of 5 samples taken from men, and the participants were accurate around 75% of the time! Everyone has their own unique smell that is almost like our olfactory fingerprint; what's more surprising is that we can use smell to distinguish emotions, as shown through a study of people who (disgustingly) smelled the sweat of people who had just watched The Jungle Book versus a horror movie.  I think it's interesting that smell is underrated in the sense that we prioritize other senses like sight and taste a ...

 My birthday is July 3, so my part and chemical are the amygdala and acetylcholine. My hero would be The Fearmonger, and his real name is Isaiah. He grew up in an average middle-class family and generally was the poster boy for a good son and student. However, he held a dark secret: every night, he became haunted by Night Mares, gloomy horses with transformative powers that allow them to morph into any fear or negative experience their victim has. Every hour of moonlight became a battle for Isaiah to overcome these horses, and one night, he managed to tame them. He was selected randomly by the Night Mares as a candidate to become the next Fearmonger, and he succeeded.  With his newfound powers, he vows to abandon his picturesque life and fight crime in his wartorn country of Taiwan in the year 2293. With this control over the Night Mares, he can go into criminals' minds by metamorphosing into a spirit form (physical body leaves tangible form) and riding the horses- there is no...

 I was born on July 3, 2006, in Los Angeles, California. I loved taking walks outside with my parents in my stroller and listening to them read stories to me. I could read The Giving Tree at around 2 1/2, which shows the extent to which I entertained myself with books, and walk at around 1. My first word was "Mama"; my parents taught me some baby sign language that I would use a lot to communicate. My brother (Caden) was born when I was 3, and after 2 more years in California, we moved to Austin, where I started kindergarten. I was really carefree and inquisitive as a child, and I loved reading typical books like Magic Tree House and ones by Roald Dahl. I learned to ride my bike when I was 6, and that was something I enjoyed doing to play with other kids on my street. In 3rd grade, we moved to Houston, and I went to a private school called Trinity Classical School. My twin brothers (Luke and Noah) were born in 2015. I became much more academic during the 2 years I was there; ...