Origins of behavioural neuroscience

Question 1

.

Answer 1

HAVE NOTES BY SIDE THROUGHOUT AS LOTS OF DIAGRAMS

Question 2

the nature of behavioural neuroscience

Answer 2

Behavioral neuroscience is a combination of psychology and physiology – combination of neuroscience and behaviour

The methods and the theories of these two fields are combined to try and explain how biology gives rise to psychology.

These combined methods and theories have been applied to the topics we cover in this series: Consciousness, sleep, reproduction, emotion, feeding, learning and memory, neurological disorders, mental illness, and addiction.

Reductionism and generalisation

The utility of laboratory models

Extract once process and study it – discover principle (reductionist) and generalised to a broader context
- E.g. Pavlovian conditioning

Question 3

history of behavioural neuroscience

Answer 3

Descartes produced the first reductionist (mechanistic) account of movement

Spiritualism

Hydraulic pressure moves statue – underlying principle of Descartes theory

Balloonist theory – heat withdrawal reflex – heat causes fluid in pipes to expand – causes pressure to change up the pipe into the brain – brain channels pressure to correct location which causes muscles to move

Bit like heart/pump

How does it explain other processes? – e.g. withdrawal of hand from something cold

Question 4

neural conductance

Answer 4

Galvani (1737-1798)

Gross anatomy in frogs

Electricity makes contact wit sciatic anatomy in legs – leg twitches

Static electricity could produce heat

Emerging theories of electricity at the time

Volta (1745-1827)

“Electrochemistry”

Produced same leg twitch with electricity from battery – no heat involved

Question 5

neuron theory

Answer 5

Golgi (1843-1926)

Printing on clothes etc. very common at the time

Applied to brain tissue

Dye sticks to cells and enable to see more clearly what was there

Microscope also invented

Repeated pattern of highly organised structure

Diff functional roles played by different cells

Question 6

doctrine of specific nerve energies

Answer 6

How can the same electrical impulse (in different cells) give rise to different sensory experience?

Diff parts of brain use same mechanisms but separated in functions to give rise to diff sensory experiences

Kinaesthesia – crossing of sensory experiences

Question 7

lesions and neural basis of behaviour

Answer 7

Flourens (1794-1865)

Cut part of brain to test functionality – what behaviour is affected – correlation

Very unethical experiments

e.g. cut frontal brain – reduced movements

Cut cerebellum – lose balance and smoothness of movement

Cut brainstem = death as controls phys

Question 8

cog neuroscience

Answer 8

Broca (1824-1880)

Diagnostic and clinical diagnoses

Know what part of behav missing

Post mortem to see where damage in brain was

Correlation

Lots of noise in the data

Impairment in ability to produce speech but comprehension still in tact

Just left of motor strip that controls tongue, face and lips – why speech production disrupted

Specialised part of the motor strip that extends beyond part of the face

Question 9

somatotopic organisation

Answer 9

Circa (1870)

Dogs have skull removed but alive and pinned with pegs to washing line

Prod parts of the brain see which parts of the body moved

Question 10

alien hand syndrome

Answer 10

Characterized by a limb that seems to perform meaningful acts without being guided by the intention of the patient

Question 11

alien hand

Answer 11

foreign/unco-op behav of hand - name for syndrome and all of components

Question 12

posterior alien hand

Answer 12

AHS that may follow posterior lesions, char by levitation and abnormal postures

Question 13

magnetic apraxia/repellent apraxia

Answer 13

instinctive grasping/avoiding w/ abnormal posture

Question 14

compulsive manip of tools

Answer 14

manip objects by abnormal hand against patients own will - used mainly in Japanese lit

Question 15

anarchic hand

Answer 15

autonomous behav of limb w/o denial of ownership

Question 16

strangers hand sign

Answer 16

detail of ownership of limb

Question 17

strange hand sign

Answer 17

original meaning of alien hand sign - failure to recognise abnormal hand as own

Question 18

autocriticism, interhem autocricism

Answer 18

expression of astonishment w/ behav of hand

Question 19

diagnostic dyspraxia

Answer 19

conflict between desired act and perf act

Question 20

intermanual conflict

Answer 20

hands act cross-purposes to each other

Question 21

agonistic dyspraxia

Answer 21

compulsive automatic execution of orders by one of hands when patient asked to perf movement w/ other hand

Question 22

Goldstein

Answer 22

described the case of a 57-year-old woman who suffered a stroke and thereafter perceived her left hand as having a will of its own.

On one occasion, the hand grabbed her by the throat and choked her, requiring great effort to pull it off…

Upon the woman’s death, Goldstein (1908) examined her brain and found lesions in the right hemisphere and in the corpus callosum, the large fibre bundle connecting the right and left hemispheres.

Corpus callosum – communication channel

Question 23

AHS and corpus callosum

Answer 23

Often due to damage to the anterior (front) corpus callosum

Disruption in communication between the two sides of the brain

Pressure in area where blood leaked out but also lack of blood to rest of brain leads to death of cells

Unpredictable how the damage pattern will occur

Question 24

AHS and anterior CC

Answer 24

Lesions of the anterior corpus callosum disconnect the two frontal cortical regions.

Primary motor cortex = sensory part – receive info from all parts of the body

Sensation and movement are interconnected but on diff sides of the channel

Premotor – origin of consciousness – activation ramps up before movement occurs

More complex decision making regions further forwards

Question 25

AHS and premotor and primary motor areas

Answer 25

Due to disconnection of the premotor and primary motor areas between the two hemispheres?

Damage around motor cortex during stroke

Question 26

AHS and descending pathways

Answer 26

Descending pathways from the motor cortices remain intact enabling control of muscles – goes into the striatum – then thalamus (junction box of the spine)

Question 27

AHS and basal ganglia

Answer 27

Basal ganglia motor circuit is complex and we will cover it in a later lecture.

• Between striatum and thalamus
• Decision making and movement control

Question 28

AHS and descending motor pathway

Answer 28

Descending motor pathway continues through the brainstem: Midbrain, pons, circuits the cerebellum (for fine motor refinement) then back out to medulla and into the spine.

• Lots of fibres
• Pons – ‘mini separate brain’
• Contralateral
• Fibres cross at the thalamus

Question 29

AHS and cerebellum

Answer 29

Cerebellum turns jerky movement into smooth movement

Question 30

AHS and somatotopic organisation

Answer 30

The somatotopic organisation in the motor cortex is preserved in the descending motor pathway, so that specific motor cortical regions control specific body parts.

Neurons for different areas exist at different spinal vertebrae.

Question 31

AHS and consciousness

Answer 31

alien hand can afflict either hand equally

If consciousness was only on one side alien hand syndrome would only occur on one side

Can occur on either side

Information not exchanged with other side

Not going to consciousness on the other side - mis-match - doing stuff without being consciously aware

Consciousness resides in one side or the other - not just one side

Assume localisation theory

Emerges from totality of system

Consciousness produced by communication between 2 sides – lesion – no more communication