SoFW Midterm #2 Flashcards
Main Idea: Churchland
evolution & development of human altruism and morality; vasopressin & oxytocin
Function of the ventral pallidum
limbic-somatic motor interface; involved in planning & inhibiting movement
Main Idea: Lashley
he’s an idiot; equipotentiality (any part of brain can do any action) and mass action (action of brain as a whole determines performance)
Main Idea: Hebb
Hebbian synapses; cells that fire together, wire together (repeated stimulation of neurons strengthens connection)
Main Idea: William James
Expansion of Hebb; synapses not yet discovered, but theory of learning related to repeated stimulation
Differences between human & other animal brains (5)
- altricial development (brain and skull grow after birth)
- more neocortex space
- fewer corpus callosum fibers
- less lateralization of function
- neuropil
What is neuropil?
space between neurons that allows for more synapses & dendritic spines
What’s the importance of von Economo neurons and pyramidal neurons?
Gazzaniga claims that they are unique to humans in function, but they’re not really
What part of the brain is damaged in reduplicative paramnesia?
parietal lobe
What is reduplicative paramnesia?
The woman who was convinced she was in her house
What does a lesion in the lateral prefrontal lobe cause?
deficits in planning & multitasking
What does an orbito-frontal lesion do?
damages emotional pathways, leading to decreased ability to inhibit impulsive behavior & emotional pathologies such as OCD
What does a lesion in Wernicke’s area do?
Wernicke’s aphasia: loss of comprehension of spoken and written word; patient may speak with normal rhythm but is only saying gibberish
What part(s) of the brain are severed in the split-brain procedure?
anterior commissures and corpus callosum
Right hemisphere specializations (4)
- visual/spatial skills
- recognizing faces
- focusing attention
- perceiving causality
Left hemisphere specializations (4)
- intellect
- language
- speech
- voluntary facial expressions
What did Hakwan Lau do?
TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) and timing: wanted to show if the sense of conscious control of one’s actions is illusory
What were the results of Hakwan Lau’s study?
If the movement area of people’s brains were stimulated with TMS and they spontaneously moved, and then the part of the brain responsible for intention to move is stimulated, people think the intention came first
Main Idea: Poincare
3/n-body problem: sensitivity to initial conditions can drastically affect outcomes (chaos theory)
Main Idea: Lorenz
weather is a complex system; butterfly effect
Main Idea: Feynman
we can’t predict things
Main Idea: Eve Marder
studied spiny lobsters; the same outcome can be reached with so many different causal chains
What is complementarity?
when 2 contrasted theories explain a set of phenomena but each explains only some aspects
What did Tomasello study?
altruistic/helping behavior in children
What did Wynn, Bloom, and Hamlin study?
6-10 month old infants evaluate social behavior (nice circle vs. mean square)
What is the Baldwin effect?
the effect of learned behavior on evolution; acquired traits are not inherited, but the predisposition for inheriting them is
Main Idea: David Premack
theory of mind (TOM): people get that others have different mental states, intentions etc.
Main Idea: Rizzolatti
mirror neurons
Main Idea: Donald Brown
moral universality: there are cultural universals e.g. anti-incest
Main Idea: Debra Lieberman
we generalize personal taboos e.g. incest and say others shouldn’t do them
Main Idea: Hauser
trolley problem: people across cultures choose the utilitarian option first, but not in the fat man example (but he’s been accused of scientific misconduct)
Main Idea: Antonio Damasio
patients with vmPFC lesions act ruthlessly utilitarian, killing the fat man and smothering babies
Main Idea: Pinker
there are no universal moral judgments; there may be universal moral values, but they are applied and weighted differently
Sam Harris’s 6 main arguments
- we can’t know why we are the way we are
- our brains already determine our behavior before we are aware of it
- mental events are products of physical events
- determinism is inarguably true
- the illusion of free will is itself an illusion
- eliminating the illusion of free will won’t necessarily be a bad thing
Where in the brain is the interpreter?
the left temporal lobe, possibly around the language center
Where is Wernicke’s area?
cortex of the left (dominant) temporal lobe
Two main assumptions of free will?
- you’re the author of your own thoughts
2. you could have done differently than you did
What part of the brain is responsible for planning & inhibiting movement?
ventral pallidum
What can damage to the parietal lobe cause?
reduplicative paramnesia
What part of the brain, if damaged, can cause deficits in planning & multitasking?
lateral prefrontal lobe
