Physiological Psychology - Module 1 - PDF

PHYSIOLOGICAL → Dualism – the idea that the mind and the brain are separate. PSYCHOLOGY → Disagreements w...

PHYSIOLOGICAL → Dualism – the idea that the mind and the brain are separate. PSYCHOLOGY → Disagreements with the mind and brain question MODULE 1: Foundations of Behavioral Neuroscience - Democritus – proposed that everything in the Behavioral Psychology world was made up of atoms. - Plato – dualist. → Physiological psychology - Aristotle joined the body and soul in his attempt → Sometimes called as biopsychology or psychobiology. to explain memory, emotions, and reasoning. → Principles of Physiological Psychology - 1st 2) Descartes and the Physical Model of Behavior Psychology textbook written by Wilhelm Wundt. → M odel is a proposed mechanism for how something → The branch of psychology that studies the relationships works. between behavior and the body, particularly the brain, → 17th century, the French philosopher and physiologist → For psychologists, behavior includes internal events Rene Descartes used a hydraulic model to explain the such as learning, thinking, and emotion. brain’s activity → Behavioral Neuroscientists try to go beyond the → Using this model, Descartes then reasoned that the mechanic of how the brain works to focus on the brain’s nerves were also hollow tubes. The fluid they carried was role in behavior. not water, but what he called “animal spirits,” then flowed from the brain and inflated the muscles to produce The Goals of Research movement. → The goal of all scientists is to explain the phenomena → The animal spirits were pumped through the brain by the they study. pineal gland. → Scientific explanation has two forms: generalization and → The pineal gland became the” seat of the soul,” the reduction. place where the mind interacted with the body. → Generalization refers to explanations as examples of 3) Helmholtz and the Electrical Brain general laws, which revealed through experiments. → Empiricism which means that they gathered their → Reduction refers to explanations of complex information though observation rather than logic, intuition, phenomena in terms of simpler ones. or other means. → In practice, the research efforts of behavioral → Late 1700, Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani showed neuroscientists involve both forms of explanations: that he could make a frog’s leg muscle twitch by generalization and reduction. stimulating the attached nerve with electricity, even after the nerve and muscle had been removed from the frog’s → A good behavioral neuroscientist must therefore be an body. expert in the study of behavior and the study of p hysiology. → 1870 in Germany, Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience – produced movement in dogs by electrically stimulating → 1879 – psychology arose as a separate discipline. their exposed brains. → Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology → What these scientists showed was that animal spirits laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. were not responsible for movement; instead, the cause was nerves operated by electricity. 1) Prescientific Psychology and the Mind-Brain Problem → German physicist and physiologist Hermann Von Helmholtz demonstrated that nerves do not behave like → The mind-brain problem deals with what the mind is wires conducting electricity. and what its relationship is to the brain. → He was able to measure the speed of conduction in → M onism is the idea that the mind and the body consist nerves, and his calculation of about 90 feet/second (24.4 of the same substance. meters/second) fell far short of the speed of electricity, which travels through wires at the speed of light (186,000 → Materialistic monism – body and mind and miles/second or 299,00 kilometers/second) everything else are physical 4) The Localization Issue → Localization emerged over the first half of the 19th century. → Localization is the idea that specific areas of the brain carry out specific functions. → Fritsch and Hitzig’s studies with dogs gave objective confirmation to physician’s more casual observations dating as far back as 17th century BCE Egypt. → 1848, Phineas Gage, a railroad construction foreman was injured when a dynamite blast drove an iron rod through his skull and the frontal lobes of his brain. → 1861, the French physician Paul Broca performed an autopsy on the brain of a man who had lost the ability to speak after a stroke. → The autopsy showed that damage was limited to an area on the left side of his brain now known as Broca’s area. → At the end of the 18th century, the German anatomist Franz Gall had come up with an extreme and controversial theory of the brain localization. → According to phrenology, each of 35 different “faculties” of emotion and intellect – such as combativeness, inhabitiveness (love of home), calculation, and other order – was located in a precise area of the brain. → Gall and his student S purzheim determined this by feeling bumps on people’s skulls and relating any protuberances to the individual’s characteristics. → Karl Lashley took an equally extreme position at the other end of the spectrum; equipotentiality is the idea that the brain functions as an undifferentiated whole. 5) Nineteenth Century → Johannes Muller, German physiologist, applied experimental techniques to physiology → Doctrine of specific nerve energies – we perceived the messages of different nerves in different ways. → Pierre Flourens, French physiologist removed various parts of animal’s brains and observed their behavior This method is called as experimental ablation. → Jan Purkinje, a Czech physiologist studied both the central and peripheral nervous system. - He discovered Purkinje fibers – neurons terminating on cardiac cells responsible for controlling contractions of the heart. → Ramon S antiago y Cajal, Spanish anatomist used Golgi staining technique to examine individual neurons of the brain.  MODULE 2: Natural S election and Evolution → Informed consent described the process in which researchers must inform any potential participation about Functionalism and the Inheritance of Traits the nature of the study, how any data will be collected and → Charles Darwin – formulated the principles of natural stored, and what the anticipated benefits and costs of and evolution. participating will be. → He emphasized that all of an organism’s characteristics → Only after obtaining this information can the participant – its structure, its coloration, its behavior – have functional make an informed decision about whether to participate in a significance. study. → Violating the informed consent process can have ethical, → Darwin’s theory gave rise to functionalism, a belief that legal, and financial consequences. characteristics of living organisms perform useful functions. The Future of Neuroscience ´ → Theory of evolution to explain the means by which → Careers in Neuroscience species acquired their adaptive characteristic → Behavioral neuroscientists study all behavioral → The cornerstone of theory of evolution is the principle of phenomena that can be observed in humans and animals. natural selection. → Neurologists are physicians who diagnose and treat → Darwin noted that members of a species were not all diseases of the nervous system. They practice medicine and identical and that some of the differences they exhibited engage in research. were inherited by their offspring. → Behavioral neuroscientists – have a Ph.D. from a → M utations are accidental changes in the chromosomes of graduate program in psychology or from an sperm or eggs that join together and develop into new interdisciplinary program. organisms. → Research Technicians – engaged in neuroscience Evolution of Large Brains ´ research with bachelor’s or master’s level degrees, perform → The process of evolution is a gradual change in the essential services working with senior scientists. structure and physiology of plant and animal species as a S trategies for Learning ´ result of natural selection. → Take notes that organize information into meaningful → First hominids (humanlike apes) – appeared in Africa. groups. → Homo erectus – upright man – scattered across Europe → Teach yourself by teaching someone else. and Asia → Study in the environment you will be tested in. → Homo Neanderthals – inhabited Western Europe, resembled modern humans. → Study with the absolute minimum of distractions → Homo sapiens – evolved in East Africa → Spread out your study sessions. → Large brin requires a large skull, and an upright posture. → Study the most challenging topic first or last. Use mnemonic Ethical Issues in Research with Humans and Other Animals ´ → M ost industrially developed societies have very strict regulations about the care of animals and require approval of the experimental procedures that are used on them. → Work with human participants is subject to strict regulation and must be reviewed and approved by a board of experts and lay people. → Research with human participants must also included informed consent and precautions to protect the identity of the participants.