Chapter 1: Biological Psychology: Scope and Outlook- PSB3340

Behavioral psych

Behavioral neuroscience

the study of the physiological, evolutionary, and developmental mechanisms of behaviour and experience

Human genome project

used xray crystallography to determine structure of DNA

SNP- single nucleotide polymorphism

gene variants which give our individual differences

Human proteome project

Functional activities and interactions between proteins → Proteins are functional components of all our cells +Between any two proteins in an interactome there are only 4 steps between them, so for any polymorphism the protein interacts with many others leading to things like drug addiction

ENCODE- Encyclopedia of DNA elements project

functions of the entire genome

The Human Connectome project

how do the different neurons in your brain connect with each other if there are many synapses

Simplification

way in which we study behavior, procedures to reduce complexity of experimental analysis without altering level of analysis

Generalisation

way in which we study behavior, general conclusion based on many observations

Reductionism

way in which we study behavior, the process of analyzing a complex behavior into elementary components, an attempt to find brain, neuronal and molecular mechanisms of behavior; shifts in the level of analysis from the behaving organism to its neuronal system, circuit, cellular and molecular components

Explanatory reductions

way in which we study behavior, When we have done our reductionist analysis, we then test it (going back the other way)

What are the 4 ways in which we study behaviour

simplification, generalisation, reductionism, explanatory reductions

What are the four categories of biological explanations

psychological, ontogenetic, functional, phylogenetic

Physiological

relationship between behaviour and activity of brain

Ontogenetic

development with individual gene (genes, nutrition, experience, etc.)

Functional

purpose served by particular behaviour (adaption for survival)

Phylogenetic

evolutionary organization of the capacity for particular behaviour

Mentalism

the philosophical position than an immaterial mind is responsible for behaviour

Problem with mentalism

how does an immaterial mind influence a material brain

Who is associated with metalism

Aristotle

Dualism

belief that the body is physical but the mind is not, mind and brain are separate but interacting

Problem with dualism

brain is bilaterally symmetrical, so where is the soul going to interact with which hemisphere? Well the pineal gland sits in the middle and so Descartes though that is where the soul interacts with the brain

Who is associated with dualism

Rene Descartes

Monism

belief that world consist only of matter and energy and the mind is part of it, mind is really activity of brain

Who is associated with monism

Hippocrates and William James

Easy problems

identification of which brain activity relates to which experience or behaviour

Hard problem

does consciousness energy from brain activity, and if so how does this occur

Blindsight

ability to still perform tasks correctly despite visual impairment and inability to see

What does blindsight show about consciousness

Due to complexity of brain, there are 2 visual systems → primitive and complex, Shows portions of the brain function in absence of conscious awareness

Split brain

in cases of severe epilepsy, corpus callosum is cut often studies because it shows contralateral organisation

Unilateral neglect

damage to right parietal cortex causing lack of awareness to left half of visual field

What does unilateral neglect show

If stroke damages to the left side, language is interrupted and cannot show right spatial neglect → nonverbal, inability to test, shows parts of brain responsible for different things

Wilder Penfield

ealised that the brain has no pain receptors, so he could open up the head and touch the brain with electrodes. Occasionally, it evoked visual or auditory hallucinations that were described as memories. Now, our understanding is that our sensory experiences are processed by neurons in the brain and the memory of such experience is laid out in distributed circuits in your neurons in cortex

Somatic intervention

alter a structure or function of the brain or body to see how this alteration changes behaviour

Behavioural intervention

scientist intervene in the behavior or experience of an organism and look for resulting change in body structure or function

Correlation

finding the extent to which a given body measure varies with a given behavioral measure

How does the study of normal brain function relate to understanding of pathology?

we can compare normal brain function to defective ones and see what neural pathways when damaged cause deficit in function