Block 1 - Biological psychology - Lecture 1 - Why and how to study the brain

Question 1

What are Aristotle’s arguments for the heart against the brain as the centre of mind - heart?

Answer 1

• The heart is centrally placed
• All animals have a heart
• Heart provides blood, needed for sensation
• Heart is warm, like higher life
• Heart connects with all senses and muscles, via blood vessels
• Heart is essential for life
• Heart forms first
• Heart is sensitive to touch
• Heart is affected by emotion
• Man’s heart is hottest, fitting his superior intelligence

Question 2

What are Aristotle’s arguments for the heart against the brain as the centre of mind - brain?

Answer 2

• Brain is peripheral, to cool the blood
• Invertebrates have sensations but no brain
• Brain is bloodless, without sensation
• Brain is cold
• Brain is not connected with the sense organs
• Brain is not essential
• Brain forms later
• Brain is insensitive to touch
• Brain is emotionally neutral
• Man’s brain is largest in order to cool the hot blood

Question 3

What did Descartes say?

Answer 3

• the brain is the seat of the mind and the mind is linked to the body
• the mind controls the body through the pineal body
• tried to explain the brain in terms of machines

Question 4

What is dualism?

Answer 4

the philosophical position that behaviour is controlled by 2 entities

Question 5

What did Gall say?

Answer 5

• the brain is the organ of the mind
• the mind is composed of multiple distinct, innate faculties
• each faculty must have a separate seat or organ in the brain
• the shape of the brain is determined by the development of the various organs
• As the skull takes its shape from the brain, the surface of the skull can be read as an accurate index of psychological aptitudes and tendencies

Question 6

What did Golgi do?

Answer 6

• he studied the brain on a more microscopic level
• found that the brain is composed of a large network of interconnected tubes
• so it is misleading to think about functional localisation
• however Santiago Ramon Y Cajal showed that nerve cells are in fact discrete entities

Question 7

What did Bailey and Von Bonin do?

Answer 7

• studied cortico-cortical connexions in the chimpanzee
• supported the idea of localisation of function

Question 8

What are the 6 ways of studying the brain?

Answer 8

1. cytoarchitecture
2. brain lesions
3. imaging techniques
4. listening techniques
5. near infra-red spectroscopy
6. stimulating techniques

Question 9

Cytoarchitecture?

Answer 9

• looks at anatomical functions
• synaptic pruning = neurone that are not frequently activated together will loose their connectivity

Question 10

Brain lesions?

Answer 10

• brain damage is not always perfectly localised
• multiple behavioural problems appear after brain injury
• have to wait for a patient to die to work out what area was damaged and attribute their lack of function to that area
• e.g. Phineas Gage

Question 11

Imaging techniques?

Answer 11

• MRI = studies the brain anatomy (size and shape)
  -> good temporal resolution
  -> good spatial resolution
• FMRI = studies brain function = which part of the brain is active during a particular behaviour

Question 12

Listening techniques?

Answer 12

• single cell recording = insert an electron down to the neuron
• EEG = good temporal resolution, bad spatial resolution
• ERP

Question 13

Near Infra-Red spectroscopy?

Answer 13

• Apply intense near infra-red illumination to the skull using fibre-optic cables
• Sensitive detectors pick up faint reflections as the light bounces off the cortex
• Heightened activity among neurons increases the scattering
• Light penetrates 3cm into cortex with a spatial specificity of 0.5cm with ms resolution

Question 14

Stimulating techniques?

Answer 14

• Direct brain stimulation
• Done in open brain surgery
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) = non invasive, used with MRI, high temporal + spatial resolution