Chapter 4: Brain Flashcards
Hydraulic Metaphors
-The pineal gland that the soul comes in to the body; at the moment of conception dive into the body you chose your parents in this idea. Picking the right couple and coming into the pineal gland. Septic bank, gases and spirits boiling about in your brain
Mechanical and Telephone Metaphors
Wheels turning and churning in brain, keep the machine of the brain moving. Telephone: wires connect, input and out put.
Computer Metaphors
in put and process and store, recall and put out. Images tell you in our history how ideas have changed and could change in the future
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in put and process and store, recall and put out. Images tell you in our history how ideas have changed and could change in the future
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Nervous System
Central Nervous System and Peripheral Nervous System
Central Nervous Sysem
Brain and Spinal Chord:
Your brain, spinal cord and nerves that connect everything, between organs and receive impulses. Conclusions get made, command gets sent out.
Peripheral Nervous System
Somatic and Autonomic( Sympathetic and parasympathetic)
Somatic: contract muscles, runs our muscles makes us move. Autonomic: regulates blood and glans etc. Work without you thinking about them ->parasympathetic: sit down, relax (couch potatoes) ->sympathetic: makes you get up, hear rate up(energy)
Motor Neurons
Lead commandments to different part of your body. -Ex: send messages to relax, 20 minutes until class ends, take a nap etc
Sensory Neurons: afferent(to brain)
detect something. Ex: heat, cold. Outside physical world. Sensitive, send that info to the brain
Interneurons
In between, connect in between.
Structure of a Neuron:
- Dendrites: receive signals and lead them to the cell. Decisions get made to what to do with that info. Example: run away from danger
- Cell Body: nucleus
- Axon: messages away from the cell
Neuron Communication
- Axon terminals release neurotransmitter
- Neurotransmitter enters into synapse.Neurotransmitter binds to receptors that it fits
Brain Stem
Brain STEM keeps you breathing, and more
- Pons (“Fay Faceandear”) networks the cerebellum with the rest of the brain
- Medulla- automatic functions breathing and heart rate
- Reticular Formation(“Downtown Dreamteam”) regulates sleep, wakefulness,arouses cortex and screens incoming info ; maintains life support
3 Parts of Brain Stem
- Pons (“Fay Faceandear”) networks the cerebellum with the rest of the brain
- Medulla- automatic functions breathing and heart rate
- Reticular Formation(“Downtown Dreamteam”) regulates sleep, wakefulness,arouses cortex and screens incoming info ; maintains life support
Cerebullum
- Regulates movement and balance
- Involved in remembering simple skills and acquired reflexes
- Plays part in analyzing sensory info, involving problems, understanding words
Thalamus
Relays sensory messages to cerebral cortex
Includes all sensory messages except from olfactory bulb
Hippocampus
Makes sense of new info in light of the past
Compares sensory info with what brain expects about world
Stores new info in memory
Enables us to form spatial memories to navigate environment
Amygdala
Responsible for arousal, regulates emotions, initial emotional response to sensory info
Plays important part in emotional memory and in mediating anxiety and depression
Hypothalamus and Pituitary Gland
Hypothalamus (“Uma Underbride”)Emergency Services
Emotions and Survival Drives (fear, hunger, thirst, reproduction)
Regulates autonomic nervous system(ex: temperature, if you’re too hot makes you sweat)
Pituitary Gland (“Horace Hormone”) Your drug pusher
Small endocrine gland which releases hormones and other endocrine glands
Cerebral Cortex
Thinking part and voluntary muscles
Short and long term memory in cerebral, helps you to reason and solve problems. Left brain right brain theory.
Left side of brain, effects right side of body- vice versa
Frontal lobe: planning, goals, decision making
Parietal: touch pain, temperature
Occipital: vision
Temporal Lobe: left side speech and hearing
Lateralization
Example: Handedness (unequal distribution of left vs. right hand motor- skills
Handedness and other skills
Optic nerves
Optic Chiasm: now all left-side signals from both eyes will all go to the left side of the brain; all right-side sig- nals from both eyes will all go to the right side of the brain
Next, the nerves pass into the Thalamus. Here, they relay in in multiple pathways (e.g., bright col our, ness, color) to Visual Cortex
Joseph LeDoux (2002)
The Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are
Brain Plasticity: your synapses provide a biological but developing, malleable basis to store incoming info and get rid of unused info. This explains the social and changing nature of your self.
Alva Noe (2009)
Out of Our Heads: Why You are not Your Brain
Consciousness isn’t something that happens inside us: it is something that we do, actively; in our dynamic interaction with the world around us (p. 24).
In other words: Your brain amounts to nothing if there is no world around you for you to interact with
Mario Beauregard
“When spiritual experience trans- forms lives, the most reasonable explanation and the one that best accounts for all the evidence, is that the people who have such experiences have actually contac- ted a reality outside themselves, a reality that has brought them closer to the real nature of the universe”
