Lecture 1: History Flashcards
True or False:
The average human only uses 10% of their brain
False
True or False:
Our brains can never grow new cells/neurons
False
True or False:
People are either left-brained (logical) or right-brained (creative)
False
Biological Psychology
- Behavioral Neuroscience
- The study of biological bases of psychological processes and behavior
Neuroscience
The study of the nervous system
Biological psychology can help to understand ____ and devise ____.
- brain disorders
- treatments
Early Egyptians and Greeks, including Aristotle, first thought that…
the heart was the seat of mental capacities
Galen
1. Who was he?
2. What did he report?
3. What did he believe? (2)
- “Father of Medicine”
- Reported behavioral changes in brain-injured gladiators
- Believed a fluid or force called “animal spirits” traveled along the body’s nerves
- Believed moods were caused by imbalances of body fluids (blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm)
Renaissance artists were interested in the brain..
Da Vinci pioneered aspects of anatomical drawing
What did Rene Descartes propose (1) and what did he encourage (1).
- Proposed the concept of spinal reflexes and their neural pathways
- Encouraged scientific thinking about body processes
How does Rene Descartes describe the reflex of pain?
- Described the reflex of pain as literally causing a cord to be pulled within the body, that would ring a metaphorical “bell” in the brain to make the brain aware of pain and be able to respond
Rene Descartes’ view on dualism vs monism (3)
- argues that there is a two-way interaction between mental and physical substances
- proposed the pineal gland as the “seat of the soul” - that the mind interacts with the body at the pineal gland
–> why? Because it is not bilateral and he (mistakenly) believed it only exists in humans
Dualism
- the view that the mind and body both exist as separate entities
MATTER - MIND
Materialism (Monism)
- holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature
MATTER > Mind
Idealism (Monism)
- holds that consciousness is the ground of all being
Matter < MIND
Neutral Monism
- believing the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words it is “neutral”
3rd SUBSTANCE > Matter&Mind
Phrenology
(2)
-In the 19th century, phrenology assigned separate functions to cortical areas
-Bumps on the skull were thought to overlie enlarged brain regions which were then matched to behaviors
What did opponents say about Phrenology?
- Opponents to this localization of function said the brain works as a whole
What did phrenology get right?
- the brain is responsible for our mental functions, thoughts, personality traits
What is the problem with phrenology?
The skull has nothing to do with the shape of your brain
Paul Broca
- showed that language ability is restricted to a small area, based on a patient with damage in that region
Phineas Gage (5)
- Born 1823, died 1860
- Survived severe frontal lobe trauma from railroad accident
- Before: soft-spoken, friendly
- After: Irritable, profane, poor impulse control
- First case to suggest role of frontal lobe in personality
Are brain functions localized or holistic? (2)
-Both
- Parts of the brain are relatively more active during some functions than others; much of the brain is engaged during any given task
Scientists recognized that there was a relationship between…
brain size and intellectual ability across primates
Sir Francis Galton (2)
- invented the correlation coefficient to see if there was a relationship between head size and intelligence
- although he found no relationship, other 19th century scientists measured skull volumes as a better indicator of brain size
19th century scientists were interested in the relationship between…
head/brain size and intelligence to support racist, eugenics-influenced theories
Researchers need to be aware of …
implicit and explicit bias in research
More recent study, using more direct measures of brain size (MRI) show…
BUT…
- show a slight positive correlation between brain size and IQ scores
- BUT… a stronger relationship is between gray matter (amount of connections in brain) and IQ
