PSY100H1 Lecture Notes - Synesthesia, Phineas Gage, Neuroplasticity

• School: UTSG
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY100H1
• Professor: Ashley Waggoner Denton

Document Summary

People are using psychological disorders as escape goats for committing crimes. Behaviour cannot be explained through a single-cause, there are always many more sides to the story. There are four factors that influence behaviour: heredity, biology, environment, culture. The nervous system controls the body"s electrochemical communication. The central nervous system (cns) is composed of the brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system (pns) is composed of the somatic (deals with external world) and autonomic nervous system (deals with internal world). The autonomic nervous system is then broken down into the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. A neuron can receive an excitatory signal, which increases the likelihood of firing by depolarizing the neuron (making the internal environment positive). An inhibitory signal decreases the likelihood of firing by hyperpolarizing the neuron (making the internal environment more negative). A neuron will fire when it reaches a threshold value. In a resting neuron, the internal environment is usually -