Chapter 1 - Intro to Brain and Behaviour Flashcards
What different actions are encompassed in behaviour?
- Intellect, emotions, consciousness
What is found within the CNS?
- Brain, spinal cord, and retina (starts as an out-pocketing of the diencephalon in uterus)
- All enclosed by bone
What is found within the PNS?
- Nerves that carry signals in and out of CNS
- Ex. spinal nerves, cranial nerves
What are glial cells?
- Non-neuronal cells that support the function of neurons
- Ex. nutritional support, immune function, regulation or neuronal signalling
- About 85 billion
Innate vs. Learned behaviour?
- Innate - Inherited (genetically encoded), no experience needed to perform, very fixed
- Learned - Required experience (more complicated behaviours), dependent upon brain plasticity
What’s mentalism?
- Explaining behaviour using the non-material mind
- Developed by Aristotle
- Human intellect is produced by the psyche-mind
- This concept marked the beginning of modern psychology
- Believed that the brain strictly cooled the blood (there are a lot of blood vessels)
What’s dualism?
- Explaining behaviour by both a non-material mind and a material body
- Developed by Descartes
- Mind-body problem - Descartes believed that the mind resides in the pineal gland, where it dictates the flow of fluid through the ventricles and into the muscles to move the body
What’s materialism?
- Explaining behaviour by the function of the nervous system with no recourse to the mind
- Developed by Darwin and Wallace
- Along with the theory of evolution explaining the unity and diversity of life
What’s the main mechanism for evolution?
- Natural selection
- Descent with modification = evolution
What are three important things to remember about evolution?
1) Only populations can evolve
2) Natural selection acts only on heritable traits
3) Evolution is not goal-directed
T/F: Evolution explains the origin of life
- FALSE
- Evolution explains how we evolved from one common ancestor
- Natural selection can only act on existing characteristics
Why are Mendelian genetics relevant to Darwin’s theory of evolution when discussing brain and behaviour?
- Genes that produce the nervous system in different animal species tend to be very similar (highly conserved) in other animal species
What are epigenetics?
- Differences in gene expression related to environment and experience
- ‘Epi’, greek for beyond
- Chemical markers in gene expression that increase or decrease areas of gene expression where DNA strands are wrapped around histones
What are the foundations of materialistic neuroscience?
- Natural selection
- Genetic inheritance
- Epigenetics
What’s the general time line for brain and behaviour evolution?
- Earth formed > first lifeform > first brain cells evolved > first brain evolved > humanlike brain evolved
- Modern human brain has been around for about 200 000 years
What’s the classification order for taxonomy?
- Broadest to most specific: Domain > Kingdom > Phylum > Class > Order > Family > Genus > Species
How do you name an animal using standard taxonomy?
- Genus species (italicized)
What are the three domains?
- Bacteria and Archaea (prokaryotic; no nucleus)
- Eukarya (nucleus)
What is the purpose of cladograms?
- To depict phylogeny (evolutionary descent of species)
What was the general phyla evolution of the brain?
- Nerve net - no brain, simple NS (jellyfish)
- Segmented nerve trunk - bilaterally symmetrical organization (flatworm)
- Ganglia - structures that resemble/function kind of like a brain (squid)
- Brain - true brain and spinal cord
T/F: Of all chordates, humans have the largest brain relative to body size
- TRUE
Who’s the most recent common primate ancestor?
- Hominin ancestor
- Walked upright
What are some common facts regarding the hominin ancestor?
- Brain 1/3 size of humans
- Around 1 meter tall
- Originated in South Africa
What primate ancestors proceeded hominins?
- H. habilis (first animal designated as genus homo, referred to as handy human)
- H. erectus (upright humans, first to spread beyond Africa)
- H. sapiens (appeared around 200 000 years ago and co-existed with the Neanderthals)
What’s the encephalization quotient?
- Developed by Harry Jerison in 1973
- Quantitative measures of brain size obtained from the ratio of actual brain size to expected brain size
What’s the difference between a theory and a natural law?
- Theory - a widely accepted explanation that is continuously supported
- Natural law - events in nature that occur the same way, every time (more substantial)
