PSYCH 2NF3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: William Beecher Scoville, Somatic Nervous System, Autonomic Nervous System
13 Jan 2020
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Lecture 3: Neuropsychology
Neuropsychology
it is the connection between the human behaviour and brain — two hypotheses
brain hypothesis — brain is the source of behaviour
serotonin is involved with emotion regulation, is produced in the gut so
some people are against this theory
neuron hypothesis — a major unit of brain structure and function is the neuron
or nerve cell
misleading because neurons are found in all parts of our bodies for
example stepping on something sharp, a neuron noticed the sharpness in
your skin which caused the response of you stepping away (neurons are
also in your feet)
everything outside the brain and the spinal cord is the peripheral — central is
the brain and the spinal cord
peripheral has two major components — somatic nervous system (brings
all the information from outside to the CNS) and the autonomic nervous
system (fight or flight)
therefore the brain is not the only thing that governs behaviour
glial cells — support units for neurons in order for them to function at a normal
level
Penfield — during 1930s to 50s, there was a huge boom in neurosurgery
people took advantage of the fact that when you open up the skull, there are
no more pain receptors in the the tissue of the brain so you can stimulate
different parts of the brain which would cause no harm
there was an attempt to treat epilepsy — abnormal action potential occurring
the brain (neurons firing when they are not supposed to)
surgeons started to remove parts of the cortex
Penfield did this too and then decided to map out other parts of the brain by
causing stimulations in the brain — he started to connect different parts of the
body to different parts of the brain
note when you stimulate brain tissue, there is no pain receptor on the tissue
sensory humuncus — tries to map out the amount of brain area that is
dedicated to senses in connection to some part of the body
the brain collects a lot of information from these parts of the body and
encodes it in the brain for example the face area has a lot of fibres/nerve
endings
more neural tissue that is designated to specific parts of the body
concern was removing parts of the brain (ethical issue)
patient HM — got knocked down by a cyclist and hit his head, experienced
seizures which got worse and worse, became catastrophically epileptic (had
seizures multiple times a day)
William Scoville was his doctor
he was placed in a facility where doctors and nurses/neuropsychologist had
