Behavioral Factors

• Behavior is influenced by needs, reactions, conditioned reflexes, inhibition, dynamic stereotypes, the brain reward system, and temperament.

Classification of Needs

• A need is an internal state caused by a deficiency that acts as a source of activity.
• Motivation arises when a need is actualized.
• Needs are not always relevant; motivation to eat is absent with sufficient blood nutrients.
• Lower-level needs must be met before higher-level needs can be pursued.
• Maslow's Pyramid of Needs includes:
  • Physiological
  • Safety
  • Love/Belonging
  • Esteem
  • Self-actualization

Reactions That Provide Behavior

• Unconditioned Reflex: Inborn reaction dependent on physiological maturation; such as the knee reflex, pupillary reflexes, sneezing, swallowing, salivation, and other congenital reactions.
• Investigatory Reflex: It is Pavlov's "What is this?" reflex, orienting/focusing reflex, a complex multi-system response to unexpected changes regulated by the central nervous system.
  • It is programmed in the corpora quadrigemina, involving head turns and looking toward new stimuli, which forms the basis for research activity.
• Instinct: Complex reflexes for nutrition, defense, and reproduction.
  • It is a chain of unconditioned reflexes.
  • The result of one reflex serves as an irritant for the next.
• Imprinting: Capturing the image of a parent, especially in brood birds that follow their mothers.
  • It has critical periods shortly after hatching in birds and around 6 months and 3 years in humans.
  • It is essential for socialization.
• Motivation: Impulse to action; it is a psychophysiological process controlling human behavior.
  • It sets the direction, organization, activity, and stability.
  • It arises result of need actualization, including motivations for food, sex, protection, cognition, communication, and creativity.
• Emotion: Mental process reflecting a person's subjective evaluative attitude to situations and objects Subjective experiences occur when the external or internal environment changes. Positive Emotions: They are linked to the serotoninergic system and endorphins. Negative Emotions: They are related to the adrenergic system
  • Norepinephrine deficiency causes depression of melancholy, and serotonin deficiency causes anxiety depression.
  • The limbic system is the center of emotion formation.
  • It has three components:
    • Motor
    • Vegetative
    • Mental
  • It can be mobilizing, communicative, and clinically beneficial.
• Conditioned Reflex: A reaction developed over a lifetime that appears on a conditioned stimulus and is classified as food, sexual, or defensive.

Conditioned Reflexes

• The reaction is developed over a lifetime
• It appears on a conditioned stimulus like light, sound, mechanical stimuli, words, etc.
• They can be classified as food, sexual, or defensive reflexes.
• I.P. Pavlov founded the doctrine of conditioned reflexes.
  • He created a theory, classification, and methodology for their development
  • Explained the mechanism of their formation.

Differences Between Reflexes

• Unconditional:
  • Congenital.
  • Constant.
  • Species-specific.
  • Morphological basis has a reflex arc.
  • Irritant is adequate (food or pain).
  • Receptive field is definite.
• Conditional:
  • Acquired.
  • Temporary.
  • Individual-specific.
  • Morphological basis has temporary connection.
  • Irritant is conditional (light or sound).
  • Receptive field can be any.
• A temporary connection is a connection between an irritation center and the center of the unconditioned reflex in the cortex.
• If a food reflex to a sound is developed, a connection is formed between the auditory cortex and the nutritional center.
• Pavlov's experiment proved that to form a conditioned salivary reflex, sound (bell) is served before food.
  • With repetition, salivation occurs at the sound, without feeding.

Inhibition of Conditioned Reflexes

• It can be manifested in behavior as disappearance or decreased amplitude of the conditioned reflex.
• Types by Origin:
  • Unconditional (Innate)
  • Conditional (Acquired)
• Types by Mechanism:
  • External
  • Internal
• Types of Unconditioned Inhibition:
  • Permanent Brake: Inhibition occurs when the body is affected by excitation of pain or viscera-receptors, creating a new dominant imperative for the body.
  • Fading Brake: Inhibition of a conditioned reflex occurs under the influence of a new stimulus that causes an orientation reflex.
    • The orientation reflex quickly fades, and the conditioned reflex reappears.
  • Extreme Braking: Inhibition occurs with excessive stimulus force or prolonged medium-strength stimulus.
    • It protects the cells of the cerebral cortex from exhaustion.
• Conditioned Inhibition: Process where a reflex is inhibited through lack of reinforcement.
  • It was concept introduced by I. P. Pavlov
• Types of Conditioned Inhibition:
  • Extinction (Fade-out): Occurs when a positive signal is not reinforced by the unconditioned stimulus.
  • Differential Inhibition: Takes place in the absence of reinforcement of a response reaction to one of two related conditioned signals.
    • Example: Traffic lights indicating stop or go.
  • Disinhibition: Absence of a reflex reaction to a stimulus acting with another stimulus, not reinforced by an unconditioned stimulus.
  • Delayed Inhibition: The absence of a reflex reaction immediately after the action of a conditional stimulus, if reinforcement occurs later.
• The reaction appears immediately before the action of the unconditioned stimulus.
• All types of conditioned inhibition ensure organism adaptation to changing environmental conditions.

Dynamic Stereotype

• It is a sequence of conditioned reflexes developed for a strictly defined sequence of stimuli.
• Formation Involves:
  • Developing separate conditioned reflexes to the appropriate stimuli (light, bell, touch, metronome)
  • Multiple presentations of the complex stimuli in a certain sequence.

Brain Reward System

• The reward system plays are critical for executive functions, motor control, motivation, arousal, reward, reinforcement, nausea, sexual gratification, and lactation.
• The brain reward system contains hedonistic pleasure centers for pleasure from intrinsic rewards.
• Brain Stimulation Reward (BSR) is a pleasurable phenomenon elicited through direct stimulation of specific brain regions.
• Stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus is rewarding and motivation-inducing.
• Rats learn to press a bar for electrical stimulation of pleasure centers or opiate injection.
  • Pleasure stimulation can cause animals to ignore food or water.
• Hedonistic hotspots are nucleus accumbensy shell, ventral pallidum, parabrachial nucleus, insular cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex.
• Euphoria: Is the simultaneous activation of every single hedonistic hotspot within the brain.
• Addiction: A psychological and physical inability to stop consuming a chemical, drug, activity, or substance, despite harm.
  • Pleasure centers are activated during addiction.
  • Opioids and Cannabinoids: The rewarding effects are related to their facilitator effects on mesolimbic dopamine transmission.
  • Addiction-related Neurotransmitters
    • Serotonin
    • Glutamate
    • GABA
• Dopamine: Plays a key role in reward, locomotion, behavior, learning, and emotion; Drugs of abuse activate reward and it releases excessive dopamine.
  • Euphoria is an effect of dopamine.
  • Strong behavioral reinforcement
  • Cravings and compulsions also appear.
• Serotonin: Neurotransmitter involved in sleep, sensory experiences, and wellbeing, also plays a key role in addiction.
  • Decreased serotonin levels can cause intoxication, depression, anxiety, poor impulse control, aggression, and suicidal behavior.
• Glutamate: Primary excitatory brain neurotransmitter, associated with learning, memory.
  • It can promote reinforcement, relapse, conditioning, and craving.
• GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric acid): Neurotransmitter in the brain.
  • Sedatives modulate receptors in GABA systems.
  • It modulates substance reward and reinforcement behaviors.
  • Disturbances may predate addiction.
  • Compounds that target it may help in addiction treatment.
• Endogenous Opioids: Morphine-like neurotransmitters that are key in opiates' reinforcing effects.
  • The opioid system is important for alcohol and nicotine reinforcement.
  • Naltrexone reduces alcohol consumption and craving in humans.
  • Interactions between mesolimbic dopamine and opioid systems are important in the addictive process.

Humans Four Temperamental Types

• Uses Hippocratic theory to recognize four temperamental types: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, and melancholic.
• Ivan Pavlov divided temperaments according to the strength, balance, and mobility of nervous processes.
• Strength: Manifestation of excitation and inhibition processes.
• Balance: Relationship between arousal and inhibition.
• Mobility: Ability to quickly switch nervous processes.
• According to Pavlov's theory, 4 temperaments are distinguished:
  • Strong, balanced, mobile (sanguine).
  • Strong, immovable, balanced (phlegmatic).
  • Strong, unbalanced (choleric).
  • Weak (melancholic).