Chapter 7: How do we study the brain Flashcards
Neuropsychology
-Study of the relationships between brain function and
behavior, with emphasis on humans
-Originated by paul Broca: Link between damage in left frontal lobe and speech
Historical
Brains sectioned and stained tissues with different dyes
Behavioral neuroscience
-Study of biological bases of behavior
-Humans and animals
-Challenge is to develop methods for studying both normal and abnormal behavior
Ethology
Objective study of animal behavior, especially under natural conditions
Morris 1980 swimming task
-Place learning
-Rat must find platform using external cues
-Matching-to-place learning: Platform is in the same location each trial but a different platform each day
-Landmark version: Platform is identified by a cue on the wall
Skilled reaching task
-rats are trained to reach through a lot to obtain food
-Movement can be broken down into segments, which are differently affected by different types of neurological perturbation
Brain Lesions Karl Lashely
-Find location of memory in the brain
-Ablation: Removal/destruction in the tissue
Deep brain stimulation
-Electrodes implanted in brain stimulate a targeted area with a low-voltage electrical current to facilitate behavior
-Used for Parkinson’s, depression, OCD
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation TMS
-Procedure n which a magnetic coil is placed over the skull to stimulate the underlying brain
-Induce or disrupt behavior
Optogenetics
-Transgenic technique that combines genetics and light to control targeted cells in living tissue
-Based discovery that light can activate proteins
Chemogenetics
-Synthetic genetic sequence codes for a G-protein coupled receptor engineered to respond exclusively to a synthetic small-molecule designer drug
-Designer receptor exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADD)
Four Major techniques
1) Single-cell recording
2) EEG
3) Event-related potentials ERP
4) MEG
Extracellular recording VS Intracellular recording
-Electrodes are placed next to cells or they are placed inside
EEG
-Measures the summed graded potentials from many thousands of neurons
-EEG changes as behavior changes
-Displays patterns
-Brain noise
ERP
-Largely the graded potentials on dendrites that a sensory stimulus triggers
-EEG waveforms are related in time to sensory event
-To counter noise effects the stimulus is presented repeatedly
