Union College of Union County 1

DNA & THE GENETIC INSTRUCTION MANUAL

  • Spelling refresher:

    • "Xyribonucleic… no one got it" → corrected to "Deoxyribonucleic" (DNA).

  • DNA exists in every cell and acts as the body’s “owner’s manual.”

  • Forensic pop-culture reference: TV crime shows compress DNA‐analysis into an hour though it usually takes much longer.

Chemical Bases (The 4-Letter Alphabet)

  • Adenine (A) – spelled A D E N I N E.

  • Cytosine (C) – spelled C Y T O S I N E (professor mistakenly spells "CYD…").

  • Thymine (T) – T H Y M I N E.

  • Guanine (G) – G U A N I N E.

Scale & Similarity

  • Estimated total bases per human: 3\,000\,000\,000.

  • Approximately 99\% of those bases are identical across all humans; the remaining 1\% makes each individual unique.

    • Ethical/psychological aside: if only 1\% differs, why racism or other discrimination?

    • Politicians’ cliché "more unites us than divides us" = literally true at genomic level.

Genes → Proteins → Traits

  • "Genes (G E N E S, not J E A N S) are the building blocks."

  • Some genes code for proteins; proteins drive physical traits (hair color/texture, eye color, etc.).

  • Inheritance: one allele per gene comes from egg, one from sperm.

  • Post-fertilization: copying & division expands gene set to fill the “instruction manual.”

  • Approximate human gene count: 20\text{–}25\,000.

Chromosomes

  • Definition: thread-like DNA–protein structures living in the nucleus.

  • Histone proteins (H I S T O N E S) compact DNA; without them, our chromosomes would be “as tall as we are.”

  • Human karyotype: 46 chromosomes = 23 homologous pairs.

  • Variations:

    • Down syndrome: trisomy of chromosome 21 (three copies instead of two).

    • Certain leukemias: pieces from two different chromosomes swap (example pairs vaguely cited as 23 & 16).

Numbers & Disorders

  • Deviations from 46 (or breaks/re-attachments) can yield cancers or genetic syndromes.

  • Older maternal age historically associated with higher Down-syndrome incidence (Ireland example when women had children into their 40s).

Assisted Reproduction & Ethics

  • IVF can allow parents to "design" embryos → ethical debate (Nazis’ Aryan “super-race” analogy).

  • Modern prenatal testing → decisions about terminating fetuses with genetic disability (lecturer offers no moral judgment but acknowledges controversy).

COURSE & EXAM LOGISTICS (Meta-Information Given In Lecture)

  • Question types primarily T/F, fill-in-the-blank, multi-answer; rarely narrative.

    • T/F can flip by a single word, so read carefully.

    • Some items require correct sequence – order emphasized in bold on exam; partial credit possible.

  • Testing schedule:

    • Test 1 = Ch. 1-3; Test 2 normally only on material after Test 1, but instructor reserves right to recycle 1–2 key items (e.g., "heuristics").

  • Study guide released Monday; because course is compressed (3 chapters at a time) nearly all material is "fair game."

    • Tip: number your note pages; in study guide jot page/paragraph references instead of rewriting answers.

  • Open-note exams: allowed to use notes, study guide, online resources, even “ask Santa Claus.” Poor notes still → low grades.

  • Attendance & participation = 25\% of course grade (bigger than a single test at 20\% each).

    • Roll-call via LMS; system can mis-click – students should monitor and e-mail instructor if errors appear.

  • Extra-credit bump (+3 points final grade) for active questioning/participation (example: Rachel 67→70; B-plus → A for constant engagement).

SENSATION & PERCEPTION

  • Sensation = stimulation of receptors (eyes, ears, skin, etc.) and transmission to CNS (spinal cord + brain).

  • Perception = active organization & interpretation of sensory input.

Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down

  • Bottom-Up: build perception from raw data (e.g., hearing an unfamiliar noise in the dark).

  • Top-Down: expectations, knowledge, prior experiences shape interpretation (hearing a dog bark & knowing it’s a dog).

    • Classroom demo: ambiguous symbol "13 / B" becomes number 13 or letter B depending on context (top-down).

Psychophysics & Thresholds

  • Absolute Threshold: weakest stimulus detectable (e.g., barely seeing dresser at dawn).

  • Difference Threshold (Just Noticeable Difference): minimal change needed to detect difference.

  • Weber’s Law: JND proportionate to original stimulus intensity; adding a pebble to a large rock is undetectable, to a small stone is noticeable.

  • Subliminal Stimulation: sensory input below conscious absolute threshold; associated term subliminal perception (used in marketing e.g., idyllic commercials).

  • Signal Detection Theory: detecting a signal depends not only on intensity but also on training, motivation, expectations (e.g., rescue workers hearing distant twig snap).

Feature Detection & Context

  • Feature detectors help identify objects before full form (train headlight far away, bus front, etc.).

  • Figure–Ground: perception can flip:

    • Chess-piece silhouette / two faces–vase illusion.

Sensory Adaptation

  • Receptor response diminishes with continuous exposure.

    • Smell: garlic bread aroma fades if you stay in restaurant.

    • Sound: ticking grandfather clock disappears from awareness at night.

    • Touch: clothes on skin quickly ignored.

Stroboscopic Motion

  • Perception of movement from rapid succession of still images (flip-book, movies).

Depth Perception

  • Two-D images gain 3-D illusion via cues like light/shadow (Caravaggio, Vermeer), perspective (distant barn), etc.

HEARING & SOUND

  • Sound = pressure changes (air or water) → waves.

  • Two key dimensions:

    • Pitch: frequency (cycles/second).

    • Loudness: amplitude (wave height).

  • Place Theory of Pitch: different parts of basilar membrane correspond to different frequencies (base = high pitch, apex = low pitch).

Hearing Loss

  • Congenital deafness: present at birth.

  • Conductive loss: issues delivering vibration to cochlea (ear-canal block, eardrum hole).

  • Sensorineural loss: inner-ear or nerve damage (aging, head injury, diseases like mumps, Meniere’s disease → tinnitus, vertigo).

  • Cochlear implant: microphone + speech processor + electrode array stimulates auditory nerve (success story of deaf child in district).

OTHER SENSORY MODALITIES

  • Chemical Senses: Taste & Smell.

  • Skin Senses: Touch, Pressure, Pain.

  • Kinesthesis (Proprioception): awareness of body part position & movement (typing, basketball free-throw stance, golf swing muscle memory).

  • Vestibular Sense: balance & posture; organs adjacent to cochlea; distinguish from kinesthesis.

    • Example distinction: shooting a 3-pointer without falling = vestibular; knowing arm position = kinesthetic.

  • Adaptation & Everyday Examples:

    • Typing without looking = kinesthetic learning.

    • Detecting weight change when holding small vs. large object illustrates Weber’s concept again.

  • QWERTY keyboard historical aside: designed to slow key-jamming vs. alphabetical layout.

CONSCIOUSNESS & ATTENTION

  • Consciousness = personal awareness of thoughts, memories, sensations, environment.

  • Selective Attention: focusing on one stimulus (friend’s voice at noisy party). Subjective & shifting.

  • Direct Inner Awareness: internally calling up images without external stimulus (visualizing diner you’ll visit later).

  • William James: consciousness as a stream – continuous yet ever-changing.

  • Freud’s model: conscious / preconscious (readily retrievable) / unconscious (repressed).

  • Behaviorists largely dismiss consciousness as non-observable.

STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

  • Normal: wakefulness & standard sleep.

  • Altered: dreams, hallucinations, hypnosis, meditation, psychoactive-drug states, comas, lethargy, confusion.

  • Higher/“mystical” states: transcendence, mindfulness, flow.

    • Instructor critique: mindfulness is self-focused vs. traditional religious meditations oriented toward The Other.

Sleep Architecture

  • Driven by circadian (~24 h) rhythm (earth’s rotation; disrupted by clock changes, jet lag).

  • 5 stages per cycle:

    • NREM 1–4: increasingly deeper non-rapid-eye-movement sleep.
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Structuralism, Functionalism, Behaviorism

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

James, Wundt, Jung, Freud

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visual and Auditory Perception

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

States of Sleep and Dreams

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Scientific Method

 

 

 

 

 

Central Nervous System and the Brain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genes, Chromosomes, DNA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IRB