01:830:314 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Action Potential, Color Vision, Social Cognition
9 Oct 2018
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Document Summary
All nerve fibers carry the same type of signal (nerve impulse); sensory information must be specified by which particular nerve fibers are active. Doctrine (law) of specific nerve energies : different types of sensory information, all sent via impulses, must be projected to different brain areas (a separate area to process each sense) Experimental ablation ( : fluorens) : damaging a part of the brain to determine what function it has by observing the behaviors an animal can no longer perform. Fritsch and hitzig (1800s) applied electrical stimuli to cortex in dogs to elicit muscle contraction on opposite body side (contralateral) Identified primary motor cortex, a region that activates muscles on opposite side of the body (left brain controls right side) Humans" sensory and other cortexes are more developed and have more neurons than other hominids; brains are larger. More cortexes, better developed parts of the brain.
