Brain Lesson ( Week 1 ) - Intro to Psych

- The Brain and Behavior (Biological Bases of Behavior) - Right and Left Brain

Hindbrain

• Controls the most basic functions of life

Medulla

• The region of the brain that adjoins the spinal cord

• Controls breathing, heart rate, and balance

Pons

• Above the medulla

• Controls attentiveness, and the timing of sleeping and dreaming

• Damage to certain arts of the pons can put a person into a semi-permanent sleep like state

• + REM sleep may also originate in the pons

Reticular Formation

• Inside the Pons and the Medulla

• A network of nerves extending from the spinal cord right up through the Thalamus

• Plays a role in autonomic functions of the body; Circulation, Respiration, Digestion, as well as Pain Modulation, Sleep, and Consciousness

Midbrain

• On top of the Pons

• Helps orient an organism in the environment and guide movement toward or away from stimuli

• Also believed to help regulate our experience of Pain, modulate Mood, and shape Motivation

Cerebellum

• Behind the Pons and Medulla ( yellow section in image)

• Coordinates voluntary movements; posture and coordination , resulting in smooth and balanced muscular activity

• Damage can cause problems in spatial reasoning, discriminating sounds, and integrating input received from various sensory systems

• Evidence shows that it also helps use judge time, modulate our emotions, and even discriminate sounds and textures

Forebrain

• made up of brain structure; Thalamus, Hypothalamus, Amygdala, Hippocampus, & Cerebral cortex

Thalamus

• involved in sleep wakefulness, relay motor, and sensory signals to the cortex

• Closes pathways of incoming sensations during sleep

Hypothalamus

• positioned underneath the Thalamus

• Involved in controlling motivated behaviors; eating, drinking, and sexual activity

• As well as involuntary rhythms; sleep/wake cycle, detecting when the body is too cold/hot

Amygdala

• beloved to play a role in emotional response, specifically anger

• Involved in determining whether a stimulus is a threat or not

• Helps predict when something frightening is about to occur

• Particularly active when playing video games or seeing fearful faces

Hippocampus

• Plays an important role in learning , memory, spatial orientation, and creating new memories

Cerebral Cortox

• Is involved in every thought and perception, our ability to produce an understand language, and to construct and experience emotion

• It is crucial in order to believe organize, remember, and even to hope

• Structurally it is a thin on the outer surface of the brain, on average it is three millimeters thick

• Makes up 80% of the human brain

• Consist of a very large sheet of tissue, crumpled up into the limited space inside the skull which causes the wrinkles

• Divides into lobes

Corpus Collosum

• Responsible for transmitting neural messages between both the left and right hemispheres

Left and Right Hemispheres

• Right controls muscle and sensory info on the left side of the body, and vice versa

• damage to one side of the brain will affect the opposite side of the body

Language and calculation seems to be done on the left and spatial reasoning on he right; left=logic and right=creativity (highly statistical)

Cortical Tissue , 3 sections/functions

1. Sensory areas

   • Receives and interpret information from the eyes, ears , and other sense organs

2. Motor areas

   • control our behaviors

3. Association areas

   • Connects sensory & motor areas

   • Involved in many complex processes

Primary Motor Cortex

• Stimulating different parts of this area leads to movement of specific body parts

• each portion of the primary motor cortex corresponds to a specific part of the body

Primary Somatosensory Cortex

• Is the initial receiving area for sensory info arriving from the skin senses

Neuron

• Comes in many shapes and sizes

• Dendrites : the input side, receives from other neurons

• Cell Body : contains the nucleus, and all the elements needed for normal activities of these cells

• Axon : is the output side, sense neuron impulses to other neurons

• Glia converts glucose into lactate that feeds the neurons

• Action Potential: neurons response to input, fundamental info carrier of the nervous system

Rest and Recuperation Neurotransmitters

• Melatonin

• Serotonin

Excitatory Neurontransmitters

• Acetylcholine

• Glutamate

• Aspartate

• Noradrenaline

• Histamine

Have excitatory affect in the neuron they increase the likelihood that the neuron will fire an action potential

• ex; Epinephrine, Nor-epinephrine

Fight/Flight Neurotransmitters

• Epinephrine

• Norepinephrine

Inhibitory Neurotransmitters

• have an inhibitory effect on the neuron they decrease the likelihood that the neuron will fire an action potential - Ex; Serotonin, GABA

Glutamate

• Rapidly excites neurons increasing the odds that they will talk with other neurons

• Its real ease is associated with enhanced learning and memory

• When abnormally elevated may contribute to schizophrenia and other mental disorders ; because in high doses it can be toxic damaging neural receptors by over stimulating them

GABA

• Inhibits neurons by dampening neural activity

• Considered an absolute work horse in our central nervous system playing critical roles in learning, memory, and sleep

Medication; aka chemicals

Agonists - Enhances ( ends up increasing the strength and duration of the transmitters affect )

• Mimicking Neurotransmitters, so on their own they can activate the receptors

• Blocking the Reuptake, into the pre synaptic cell

• Counteracting Clean-up Enzymes, that breaks dow the transmitter after this triggered a response

Antagonist - Diminishes

• Acting as Receptor “Putty”, prevent the transmitter from working by binding themselves to the synaptic receptor and blocking off the transmitter

• Speeding up reuptake and others by augmenting clean up enzymes

Key Elements in Flow of a Information

• selective receptor response

• Different neurotransmitters provide different signals

Degeneracy- many to one

Core Systems- one to many