PSY290H5 Study Guide - Winter 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Neuron, Memory, Cerebral Cortex
PSY290H5
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
An Introduction to Brain and Behaviour
What’s i a Name?
How do we Define Psychology?
- The study of
• Behaviour
• Cognition
• The mind
- Thinking, behaving, and acting
- Understanding the mind as a system (how in works, take in information, processes information, makes
meaning/use of that information)
What is the Role of Neuroscience in This?
- Correlates of processes
- Discover the role of parts of the brain
- Seeing how the mind as a machine works
Neuroscience – What is it?
- Neuroscience: the study of neurons and nervous systems
NEUROFACTS
- There are about 100 billion cells (neurons) in an adult brain (according to sources from the 1940s)
• Most recent research has suggested that the best guess is around 84 billion neurons
- How much of our brain do we really use (approximately)? Approximately 100%
- Why is the idea of humans only using 10% of brain activity so popular?
• The idea came from studies on lesioning portions of animal brains in the 1900s
• After destroying certain parts of the brain and finding no change in animal behaviour, it was believed that
not all of its brain was needed
• The idea was made popular by the media
- Does listening to classical music enhance intelligence?
• Started in 1993 when a research study concluded that if they brought university students into a lab and had
them listen to 10 minutes of classical music and then put them through an intelligence test, that on average,
their IQ increased 8 points on a spatial intelligence task
• The improvement in spatial intelligence IQ was short-lived (the effect lasted 15-30 minutes)
• A spatial intelligence tasks asks people to manipulate pictures mentally
• Motivated other scientists and marketers to take off on this idea
• Other researhers ho repeated the stud did’t fid the sae results, ut this eperiet as igored
• In 1998, the Governor of Georgia provides every child with classical music
• Another research group decided to read excerpts from Steven King novels and then had them take a spatial
intelligence test, and found an 8 to 10 increase in scores
• The effet of lassial usi is atuall arousal effet; as log as ou’re stiulated paig ore attetio to
soethig ou’re goig to e doig etter o spatial aipulation tasks
• Anything that stimulates a baby can have an effect on increased intelligence (constant positive stimulation)
The Science of Brain Behaviour Spans Past, Present, and Future
Psyhology had a Long Past ut Only a “hort History
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- We’e ko aout the brain for a long time, but recording of this knowledge and deriving aspects of this has
only occurred during the last 100 years
- The past of psychology has been clouded by religion
Prehistoric Brain Surgery: Trephining
- 7000 years of neurosurgery
- Trephining: putting a hole in the skull to release pressure
- Skulls show signs of healing, meaning that the person survived the process of trephining and began to heal
Ancient Views of the Nervous System
- Ancient treatment
• Stone Age: trephining
- EDWIN SMITH PAPYRUS
• 1500 B. C. E
• Treatment of diseases and behavioural disorders; the brain is described
• Damage of the brain associated with paralysis of the body
- Early Egyptians and Greeks (including Aristotle) thought the heart was the seat of mental capacities
• As the dead enter into the afterlife, the journey would be met with struggles and rewards
• When preparing the body for this journey, you endow them with the needed tools (mummification)
• Preserve organs useful to the person (liver, stomach, lungs, heart)
• The heart was preserved in place in the body
• The brain was considered useless in the afterlife and was discarded
- Mentalism
• ARISTOTLE (400 B.C.) attributes emotions which are created by the heart
• Designated that the brain played a role in the circulatory system of the heart
• Whe the heart is orkig, it’s geeratig a lot of heat, ad lood is too hot. The rai is the first target, ad
as it receives the hot blood, it cools it down before distributing it to the rest of the body (an elaborate
cooling system)
- No mention of the brain in the Bible but the heart is mentioned hundreds of times (as well as the liver, kidneys,
and stomach being the source of several emotions)
• kid-hearted, opehearted, faithearted, heartless
• Using these terms echoes the ancient understanding of the heart in determining behaviour
- HIPPOCRATES wrote of the brain as the seat of thoughts and emotions
• Describes emotions as the product of some brain process
• It’s ot the tissue iside the rai that’s produig ehaiour, ut rather the etriles ased o Gale’s
work)
- GALEN (circa AD 129-199)
• Gale’s eperiee i treatig rai-injured gladiators led him to propose that behaviour results from
connections between the brain and nerves
• Saw that certain brain injuries results in paralysis and other forms of injuries
• The fluid inside the ventricles produces behaviour
• The fluid-filled oetios of tues are hat’s resposile for ehaiours
- Renaissance artist and scientist LEONARDO DA VINCI pioneered anatomical drawings,
and the use of cross-sections
- RENE DESCARTES
• Explained animal behaviour in terms of a machine
• Proposed the concept of spinal reflexes and their neural pathways
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