Unit 1 Flashcards
Democritus:
The First Materialist (460-370 BC)
• Everything in the universe is made up of atoms of different sizes and shapes
• Psyche composed of light spherical fast-moving atoms, most prevalent in the brain—associated thought with the brain
• Larger atoms in the heart, center of emotion
• Largest atoms in the liver, seat of lust and appetite
Plato:
Nativism
• All knowledge is in our minds at birth but is forgotten and must be rediscovered
• Story of socrates and slave boy who deduces Pythagorean theorem, argues knowledge is innate
• He later suggests that the mind is like a block of wax, imporessed by experience
• Believed notion of Soul or Mind, somewhat dualist
• “Soul” has 3 parts
EEG –electroencephalography
•Sum of post synaptic potentials from brain (cortical region) and scalp
•Reflects changes in the frequency and/or phase of post-synaptic potentials
Advantages: non-invasive, high temporal resolution, whole-brain coverage
Disadvantages: Poor spatial resolution
Data can be hard to interpret
Artifacts (blinks), noisy
Thomas Willis (1621-1675)
neuroanatomist
•Made distinction between gray matter and white matter
•Drew more attention to the cortex
Luigi Galvani
Frog legs: discovered “animal electricity”
•Discovered that emf is produced in an electrolyte by dissimilar metal electrodes
• It was intrinsic properties of the frog legs that could evoke the twitch, not electricity from an outside source
Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828)
-The first comparative anatomist
-Phrenology
•Corresponding parts of the two brain hemispheres are connected by white matter
•Tracts of white matter cross over from one side of the brain to the opposite side of the spinal cord (left side of brain controls right side of body)
Pierre Flourens (1794-1876)
• Performed lesion studies in birds, frogs, nad dogs, led him to conclude that o Brainstem (medulla) is critical for life, lesion = death o Cortex lesions, no localization of function for vision, sound, etc o Bigger cortical lesions > more impairment “Common Action” – distributed function in the brain
Fritsch & Hitzig (1870s)
o Mapped out “motor strip” using electrical stimulation while dog was anesthetized
o Hermann Munk identifies primary visual cortex in dog
o David Ferrier maps motor cortex in the monkey (mislocalizes visual cortex)
fMRI
fMRI creates a powerful magnetic field, the protons in the nuclei of some atoms become oriented in the direction parallel to the magnetic force. Radio waves are passed through the magnetized regions, and the protons absorb the energy
