PSYC100-Module 5

How to study the nature vs nurture debate in psychology?

- Family studies 
- Twin studies 
- Adoption studies

What are split brain studies?

- Hemispheres are disrputed by severing of the corpus callosum
- There is a left and right visual field 
- Image flashed in the left visual field was processes by the right occpital lobe
- Image flashed in the right visual field was processed by the left occipital lobe 

- Images on the left visual field could be drawn 

• Left visual field, processes by the right occipital lobe 

• Shows the function of the right hemisphere 

• Could not use words to descibe, but COULD RECOGNISE the object and DRAW it 

• No access to the lanaguge centre

- Images in the right visual field could be described in words

• Right visual field, proccess by left ociptial lobe 

• Can describe the image using words

- This shows us the specialisations of each hemisphere and their functions

What is a genotype?

- Genetic composition

What is a phenotype?

- Observable traits of an individual 

What is behavioural genetics?

- Explores the influence og genetics on our behaviour

What is brain damage?

- When parts of the brain are damaged 
- Can lead to a loss of function 
- Brain damage be caused by injury or strokes

What is brain plasticity?

- Brain is easily shaped and molded 
- Experince shapes the brain 
- The brain is able to change its structure due to experince 
- Brain deveoples new neurons to change - in childhood and adulthood 
- Functions in the brain can adapt and change - other parts of the brain can develop new functions to make up for what is lost
- Brain plasticity declines with age 

What is cerebral laterality?

- Brain is divided into two hemispheres - left and right 
- Each hemisphere have specialised abilities
- Different functions between left and right hemispheres of the brain 

What is nature vs nurture?

- Influence of biology in psychology 
- Influence of the environment in psychology

What is somatic nervous system?

- A subdivision of the PNS
- The division of the peripheral nervous system that consists of sensory and motor neurons that transmit sensory information and control intentional actions.
- Involves sensory and motor neurons to carry out INTENTIONAL AND VOLUNTARY movements and actions

-Skeletal muscles

What is the amygdala?

- Part of the limbic system
- Part of the forebrain
- Function

• Emotional processing - attaching emotions to significantg events (loved ones funeral - sadness) 

• Emotion recognition (recognising fear)

• Fear responses

- Damage 

• Inhibit learned fear responses 

• Poor emotional and fear regulation 

What is the autonomic nervous system?

- A component of the PNS
- The part of the peripheral nervous system that serves visceral or internal bodily structures connected with basic life processes, such as the beating of the heart and breathing. It consists of two parts: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
- Controls vitial bodily functions, such as heart beat and breathing, often involuntary, happen without conscious knowledge

What is the brain?

- Part of the central nervous system 
- Contains interneurons were decisions are made, or actions generated
- Intergrates information from the inside and outside of the body
- Brain is protected by the skull 
- Meningies protect the brain 
- Brain is divided into three parts 

• Forebrain 

• Midbrain

• Hindbrain

What is the Broca's area?

- In the left frontal lobe
- Specialises in movements of the tongue needs in speech


- Function

•  The physical production of speech

• Understanding and using grammar 

- Damage 

• Difficulty speaking, articulating and forming words 

• Putting grammatically correct sentences together

• HOWEVER, can comprehend and understand language

What is the central nervous system?

- Includes the brain and spinal cord 
- also known as CNS
- Interneurons are found the in CNS

What is the cerebellum?

- Known as little brain 
- Function includes 

• Posture 

• Movement - Fine muscle movement, smooth muscle movement 

• Balance

- Damage 

• Staggering 

• Slurred speech 

• Non-smooth movements

What is the cerebral cortex?

- Part of the forebrain 
- Part of the cerebrum 
- Is the folded outer layer of the cerebrum 
- These folds increase the surface area of the brain 
- The cortex has areas which are specialised 

• Primary area: process sensory information- initial processing, receive information initially obtained by sensory neurons. E.g seeing a shape

• Association area: Complex processes (transformation of perception into something complex). e.g not such seeing a shape but recognising it as a something

- There are primary and association areas in each lobe 

What is the cerebrum?

- Part of the forebrain 
- Largest part of the brain 
- Most complex part of the brain
- Includes multple structures 
- Is divided into two hemispheres - four lobes in each hemisphere 
- Hemipshers separated by a fissue, but connect by the corpus callsoum - connects the two parts of the brain
- Includes strucutres such as 

• Frontal lobe 

• Parietal lobe 

• Temporal lobe

• Occipital lobe

What is the forebrain?

- Includes the higher parts of the brain and parts found deeper in the brain 
- Includes

• Subcortical strucutres: Basal gangila

• Subcortical structures: Limbic system 

• Cerebrm

• Cerebral cortex

What is the frontal lobe?

- Part of the forebrain 
- In general the frontal lobe in involved in higher order thinking (prefrontal cortex), motor movements (primary motor cortex)
- The frontal lobe includes the prefrontal cortex and the primary motor cortex
- The frontal lobe includes the prefrontal cortex 

- Prefrontal cortex 

• Function: Higher order functions such as working memory, decision making and executive control 

- Primary motor cortex

• Function: Planning movement sequence, making precise movements. Voluntary movement

Left frontal lobe has the Broca's area

- Damage

• Paralysis 

• Thinking

• Behaviour 

• Poor decision making (Phineas Gage is an example)

• Change in personality

What is the general function of the left hemisphere?

- Verbal processing (reading speech)
- Logical thinking 
- Analytical thinking 
- Reasoning

What is the general function of the right hemisphere?

- Nonverbal processing 
- Spatial reasoning 
- Emotional processing

What is the hindbrain?

- Back of the brain, near the spinal cord 
- Functions of strucutres in the hindbrain are basic survival functions
- Includes 

• Medulla oblongata

• Cerebellum 

• Reticular formation 

• Pons

What is the hippocampus?

- Part of the limbic system 
- Part of the forebrain 
- Functions 

• Memory formation - forming new memories

• Calling backing memories

- Damage 

• Patient H.M is a good example of what happens when hippocampus is damaged or removed 

• Anterograde amnesia (cannot form new memories or remember new information, struggling to take information from short term and store it in long term memory) 

• Hard time recalling recent and distant events

What is the hypothalamus?

- Part of the limbic system 
- Functions 

• Regulates eating, sleep and emotions, sexual activity  

• Links the nervous system and endocrine system - activates the pituary gland 

• Maintaining homestatsis 

- Damage

• Impact on homeostatsius: body temp regualtion, blood sugar levels 

• Impact of sleep, eating and sexual acvtivity regulation
  

What is the limbic system?

- Found in the forebrain 
- Part of the subcortical strucutres (below the cerebral cortex)
- Includes 

• Hypothalamus 

• Thamalus 

• Amygdala 

• Hippocampus 

- Limbic system involved in complex sensory, emotional and cognitive behaviourla processes

What is the medulla oblongata?

- Extension of the spinal cord 
- Controls vital physiological functions (such as heart rate, circulation and respiration)
- Axons in medulla oblongata transmit information from one side of your body to the opposite side of you brain 

- Damage

• If damaged you die, as it controls vital life functions

What is the midbrain 

 - Located in the middle section of the brain 
- Includes these structures

• Tectum 

• Tegmentum (substantia nigra)

What is the nervous system?

- The interacting network of nerve cells that underlies all psychological activity.
- Network of neurons throughout the body that enables psychological activity
- Includes the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system

What is the occipital lobe and is cortex and association areas?

- Involved in vision 
- Cortex

• Primary visual cortex: recvies raw visual information form the thalmaus 

• Detect to simple visual stimulus 

- Association area

• Organise simple visual characteristics into perceiving featrures of objects and their position

- Damage 

• Partial or complete blindness

What is the parasympathetic nervous system?

- Part of the autonomic nervous system 
- The part of the autonomic nervous system involved in conserving and maintaining the body’s energy resources.
- Bringing the body back to normal levels, or homeostatsis after a stress response, bring digestion, breathing, sweating rate all back to normal 
- Parasympathic system comes after the threat has passed
- Reactions includes 

• Regaulte blood sugar 

• Secrete salvia

• Regulate heart rate

What is the parietal lobe and its cortex and association areas?

- Part of the cerebral cortex, and the forebrain
- Mainly about sensation  
- Functions

• Dectecing movement in the environment 

• Monitorong body's poistion in space 

- The cortex is the 

• Primary somatosenory cortex 

• Role the primary somatosenory cortext to process raw sensory information 

• Different section of this cortex are associated with body parts

• More senstive body parts have a higher surface area dedicated to them on teh somatosneory cortex 

• This cortexts help register and notice sesnations coming from the body 

- The association area is inolved in forming perceptions regarding the sensory information reiveced from the body parts

- More complex interpretations 

- Damage

• Feel sensation

• Unable to recognise senataions

What is the perpherial nervous system?

- Includes all the neurons outside the spinal cord and brain
-A component of the nervous system that includes neurons that travel to and from the central nervous system; includes the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system.
- PNS takes information to the CNS and carries information from the CNS
- Has two division 
- Autonomic 
- Somatic

What is the pons?

- Part of the hindbrain 
- Links medullar oblongata and cerebellum with the upper portion of the brainstem 
- Function 

• Respiration 

• Movement 

• Sleep 

• Waking 

• Dreaming

- Damage

• Ability to breath 

• Movement 

• Distribution is sleep wake cycle

What is the reticular formation?

- Connects brain and spinal cord since it contains axons for brain and spinal cord 
- Function 

• Consciousness, arousal regulation 

- Damage 

• Impact to sleep patterns 

• Coma

What is the spinal cord?

- Connects the brain to the body through the peripheral nervous system 
- Is protected by the menengies and cerebrospinal fluid
- Crucial for reflex response 
- Can be thought of an extension of the brain 
- Spinal cord can be broken up into 4 segments 

• Upper parts: 1. Cervical and 2. thoracic nerves - for top part of body 

• Lower pat: 3. Lumbar nerves, 4.sacral nerves - for the lower part of the body 

What is the split brain?

- The part connecting left and right hemispheres, the corpus callsoum is severed 
- For motor 

• Right hemisphere controls the LEFT side of the body 

• Left hemisphere controls the RIGHT  side of the body 

- No conntection between left and right hemisphere

What is the sympathetic nervous system?

- A division of the autonomic nervous system
- Bof the autonomic nervous system, typically activated in response to threats to the organism, which readies the body for ‘fight-or-flight’ reactions.
- Initates stress reponse, and prepares for the body for fight or flight reactions
- Stresses responses include

• Ceases digesitions 

• Redirects bloof flow to the muscles 

• Increase heart rate

• Dialates pupil

What is the tectum?

- Part of the midbrain
- Function 

• Vision 

• Hearing 

• Orientating to stimuli (focus to stimuli, hearing a loud noise and attending to it) though vision and sight 

- Damage 

• Minimise ability to orientate to visual and audioty cues 

What is the tegmentum?

- Part of the midbrain 
- Tecgmentum includes the structre substania nigra 
- Function 

• Learning to produce behaviours that promote rewards (behaviours that get reinforced)

• Movement - mainly the substania nigra 

- Damage 

• Damage to substantua nigra leads to Parkinson's diease 

What is the temporal lobe and its cortex and association areas?

- Part of the cerebral cortex 
- Involved in auditory processing and language, recognition 
- Cortex 

• Primary auditory cortex - recieves auditory information directly from the ears and processes it

- Association area

• Breaks dowm the auditory stimuli into words 

• language

• Makes the perception

- Left temporal lobe contains the Wernicke area

- Damage

• Hard time recognising songs, faces or paintings

What is the thalamus?

- Part of the limbic system 
- Part of the forebrain 
- Function 

• Processing and integrating sensory information to send this information to the corresponding area of the brain to be further processes 

• Acts as a filter - determines which incoming sensory information is important - highlighting some information and de-emphasising others 

- Damage 

• Issues with movement and sensation 

• Trouble with attention 

What is the wernicke area?

- Found in the left temporal lobe 
- Involved in language compreheion 
- Damage 

• Wernicke aphasia: hard time understand the meaning of words ans sentences 

• Can speak fluently, but their speech makes little sense

What is visual laterization?

- Images in the left visual field are procssed in the right hemisphere of the occipital lobe 
- Images in the right visual field are processes in the left hemipshere of the occipital lobe
- Visual field: left and right
- Something in left and and something in right 
- Left eye

• Left side of the left eye looks at the right portion of the visual field

• Right side of the left eye looks at the left portion of the visual field

- Right eye 

• Left side of the right eye looks at the right visual field 

• Right side of the right eye looks at the left portion of the visual field 

- Right side of left eye  goes to the right 

- Right side of the right eye goes to the right

- The cross over point is the optics chiasm - cross of information from the right viual field into the left occipital lobe, information from the left visual field go to the right occipital lobe