PSYB65H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Traumatic Brain Injury, Spinal Cord, Peripheral Nervous System
Chapter 1 – What Are The Origins of Brain and Behavior
Clinical focus – Living with traumatic brain injury
- Fred Linge – clinical psychologist, written description 12 years after head
injury
o Head on car crash
o Became a statistic in the silent epidemic
- Reality of experience of head injury
o Recognizing and accepting physical, mental, and emotional deficits
o Couldnt taste or smell
o Couldnt read entire sentence without forgetting beginning before
getting to end
o Hair-trigger temper, ignite into rage over little things
- What does it feel like to have brain damage?
o Focused on himself and own struggles
o Every head injured survivor goes through stage of narcissistic
preoccupation, creates necessary shield to protect them from painful
realities of the situation until they have a chance to heal
o Little sense of anything beyond material world
o Could only write about things that could be described in factual world
▪ Various impairments
▪ How he learned to compensate through various methods
- Traumatic brain injury – wound to the brain that results from a blow to the
head
- Linge important notes:
o Before crash little thought of relation between brain and behavior
o After crash adapted to injured brain and behavior
o Through journey learned how his injured brain affected his behavior,
skills, and how to compensate for the impairments
Neuroscience in the twenty-first century
- Purpose of the book is to understand link between brain and behavior
o How the brain is organized to produce behavior
1. Evolution of brain and behavior in diverse animal species
2. How the brain is related to behavior in typical people
3. How the brain changes in people with brain damage or other brain
dysfunction
o Changing how we think about ourselves, how we structure education
and other social interactions, how we aid those with brain injury,
disease and disorder. How genes influence the brains structure and
activities and how our experience in turn changes our genes.
Why study brain and behavior?
- Brain – physical object, a living tissue, a body organ
- Behavior – action, momentarily observable but fleeting
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o Both differ greatly but are linked – one is responsible for the other,
which is responsible for the other, etc.
1. How the brain produces behavior is a major unanswered scientific question
o Study the brain to understand humanity
o Understanding brain function allows improvements in understanding
educational systems, economic systems and social systems
o Relation between psychological questions related to brain and
behavior and physiological questions related to humanity
▪ How we become conscious, speak and remember
2. The brain is the most complex living organ on Earth and is found in many
groups of animals
o Brains place in biological order of our planet
o Basic structure and evolution of brains, especially the human brain
o Functional anatomy, functioning of brain cells – the building blocks of
every animals brain
3. A growing list of behavioral disorders can be explained and treated as we
increase our understanding of the brain
o More than 2000 disorders may be related to brain abnormalities
o Relations between brain disorders and behavioral disorders
What is the brain?
- Brain – Anglo-Saxon word for tissue found within the skull, is but a part of
the human nervous system
- Spinal cord – Part of the central nervous system encased within the
vertebrae (spinal column)
o Provides most of the connections between the brain and the rest of
the body
o Descends from the brainstem through canal in the backbone
- Central nervous system – the brain and spinal cord, which together mediate
behavior
o Encased in bone, the brain by the skull and the spinal cord by the
backbone, or vertebrae
o Called central because – its is physically the nervous systems core
and is the core structure mediating behavior
- Peripheral nervous system – all of the neurons in the body outside the
brain and spinal cord
o All processes radiating beyond the brain and spinal cord
o Provides sensory and motor connections to and from the central
nervous system
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- Human nervous system is composed of cells, as well as rest of body
o Neurons - nerve cells, control behavior most directly
▪ Specialized nerve cell engaged in information processing
▪ Neurons in the brain communicate with one another with
sensory receptors in the skin, with muscles and with internal
body organs
- The human brain compromises two major sets of structures
o Cerebrum (forebrain) – Major structure of the forebrain that consists
of two mirror image hemispheres (left and right) and is responsible
for most conscious behavior
o Hemispheres – half a sphere on either side of the cerebrum one on
the left and one on right
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