How psychology has changed over time - 4

Question 1

How psychology has changed over time

Answer 1

1. Psychology is defined now as “the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context”
2. Psychology has been developing over the past 200 years
3. It started as a philosophical discipline and is now widely regarded as a science
4. The way psychologists work and how they study behaviour has also changed over time including the development of neuroscience

Question 2

Neuroscience

Answer 2

the scientific study of the brain and nervous system

Question 3

post-mortem

Answer 3

an examination of a body after death, often to work out how or why the person died

Question 4

How has the study of psychology changed over time

Answer 4

1. psychology started in 1875 when researcher Wilhelm Wundt opened a lab in Germany to study people’s thoughts
2. Before this, people had not really considered what happened inside our heads, they were more interested in the anatomy of the brain itself rather than what it does
3. Cases like Phineas Gage had started to encourage doctors to investigate how the brain itself was involved in the control of specific behaviours
4. Studying the brain at that time was only really possible after someone had died, when the brain could be removed during a post-mortem
5. Although Gage lived a further 12 years after his accident, the level of understanding of how the brain and behaviour were connected was still very limited
6. After the study of psychology as we know it began with Wundt, people began to make more connection between the physical brain and human behaviour

Question 5

Technology in psychology changes

Answer 5

1. In 1924, Hands Berger developed the EEG as a way to measure brain wave activity in a living brain
2. This was the start of ways to study the brain that did not rely on the patient being dead
3. The EEG eventually led to more modern forms of brain scanning such as MRI and PET scans that give us more detailed information about how the brain works
4. An advantage of using brain scans to study the living brain , rather than post-mortem studies is that it provides the opportunity to help people living with brain damage. If we can see where the damage is, and understand how the area is working, then help can be given
5. More modern methods are being developed today which allow psychologists to use high-powered microscopes to look at how individual synapses work. From this, theories can be developed about exactly which parts of the brain control what kinds of behaviour
6. Rather than looking at general brain areas, it is possible to investigate behaviour at the level of the neuron
7. New research methods such as brain scans enable researchers to identify specific areas in the brain that are associated with certain tasks

Question 6

EEG

Answer 6

1. electroencephalograph
2. a method of measuring brain activity using electrodes placed on the scalp
3. In EEGs, electrodes are placed onto the scalp to pick up the general level of activity in different areas of the brain
4. This tells the researcher which parts of the brain are working hardest when the person is doing different activities

Question 7

MRI

Answer 7

1. magnetic resonance imaging
2. a method of studying the brain using electromagnets
3. This scan can show detailed pictures of what the brain looks like or images that show how active different parts of the brain are at different times

Question 8

PET scans

Answer 8

1. positron emission tomography scans
2. This scan can show detailed pictures of what the brain looks like or images that show how active different parts of the brain are at different times
3. imagery showing the amount of energy being used throughout the brain
4. PET scans show colour images of brain activity by detecting areas of high and low metabolism. They use warm colours to show higher energy area, and cool colours for low activity area