Download Psychology study guide chapter 2 Phrenology Developed by Franz

Psychology study guide chapter 2
 Phrenology
 Developed by Franz Gall in the early 1800’s
 Study of bumps on the skull and the relationship to mental abilities and character
traits
 Yielded one big idea: different areas of the brain so different things
 Location and function
 Structure of neuron
 Action potential
 Neural impulse that travels down like a wave
 Waves move down the axon through it is only mode made up of ion exchanges
moving in and out
 Action potential (send) when at threshold
 Threshold is reached when excitatory (fire!) signals out weigh don’t fire
 Cant fire harder or softer; either it fires or is doesn’t
 More pain means that more neurons are firing
 Synapse is goes from one neuron to another (between cells)
 Through the terminal branches to a new cell
 Synapse
 Junction between axon tip of sending neuron and dendrite cell body of receiving
neuron
 Synapse also known as synaptic junction or synaptic gap
 Neurotransmitters
 Chemicals used to send a signal across the synaptic gap
 Reuptake
 Recycling neurotransmitters
 Neurotransmitters stimulates the neurons on the recycling neuron the chemicals
are taken back up into the sending neuron to be used again
 Roles of neurotransmitters
Chemicals
Serotonin
Dopamine
ACH
Norepinephrine
Gaba
Glutamate
Effect
Mood, hunger, sleep, arousal/depression,
also anti-depression (depending on
amount)
Movement, learning, attention, emotion;
over supply can cause schizophrenia
undersupply can cause ADHD and
paresis
Muscle burn, learning, memory,
producing neurons can cause Alzheimer’s
and disease progress
Control arousal an undersupply can
depress and ADHD problems
Major inhibitory neurotransmitter and
undersupply can cause seizures, tremors
and insomnia
Major excitatory involved in memory and
oversupply can cause migraines and
seizures (why people avoid MSG)
 Serotonin pathways
 Networks of neurons that communicates with neurons and help regulate mood
 Dopamine pathways
 Networks of neurons that communicate with dopamine are involved in focusing
attention and controlling movement
 Neurotransmitter note
 Like a lock and key-it has to fit all of the way there cannot be any parts of the key
missing
 Agonist: molecule fits in the receptor site and activates it acting like the
neurotransmitter
 Antagonist: molecule fills the lock so that the neurotransmitter cannot get in and
activate receptor site
 Nervous system
 Central nervous system (CNS)
 The brain and spinal chord
 Peripheral nervous system (PNS)
 Everything else
 Neurons
 Sensory neurons: messages in from the body’s tissue and sensory receptors to
CNS for processing
 Motor neurons: instructions out from CNS out to the body’s tissues
 Interneurons: (in the brain and the spinal chord) process information between
sensory input and motor output
 Nerves
 Not the same as neurons
 “Cables” containing many axons
 Part of PNS and connects muscles glands and sense organs to the CNS
 Nervous system
 Central
 Periphery
 Automatic
 Self regulated action internal organ glands
 Sympathetic
 Arousing
 Parasympathetic
 Calming
 Somatic
 Controls voluntary movements skeletal muscles
 Parasympathetic: NS calms (rest and digest)
 NS arouses
 Fight on flight
 Brain is a web of neural networks
 Spinal chord is full of interneurons that sometimes have a mind of their own
 Neural networks
 These complex webs of interconnected neurons form with experience
 Remember; neurons that fire together wire together
 Interneurons in your spine






 Your spines interneurons trigger your hand to pull away from a fire before you
can say ‘ow’
 Example of reflex reaction
Endocrine system
 Hypothalamus: brain region controlling pituitary gland
 Thyroid gland: activates metabolism etc.
 Adrenal glands: inner part helps trigger fight-or-flight response
 Testis: male sex hormone
 Ovary: female sex hormone
 Parathyroid: help regulate level of calcium in blood
 Pituitary gland: secrets many different hormones some which affect other glands
 Pancreas: regulate level of sugar in blood
 Endocrine system: refers to a set of glands that produce chemical messages called
hormones
 Sends molecules as messages
 Like the nervous system but it sends it through the blood stream, not synapses
 Molecules are called hormones, produces in various glands around the body
 Message to brain and other tissues
Adrenal glands
 Produce hormones such as adrenaline, epinephrine, noradrenaline, norepinephrine
and cortisol
 Synaptic fight-or-flight nervous system responds to stress by sending a message
to the adrenal glands to release happiness
 Effect: increase heart rate blood pressure and sugar, these produce energy fro
fight-on-flight
Pituitary gland
 Master gland of endocrine system
 Controlled through NS by near by brain area the hippocampus
 Produces hormones that regulate other glands such as the thyroid
 Also produces growth hormone especially during sleep and oxytocin, the bonding
hormone
Brain
 Strategies find out what is different between mind if brain is not working
 Injury, how does it impact the mind
Brain damage
 Lesions: surgical destruction of brain tissue
 On animals
 Some insight especially bout less complex brain structures
 No longer necessary now chemically or magnetically able to deactivate or
deactivate the brain to get the same information
Split brain patients
 Split = surgery which the connection between the brain hemispheres is cut in
order to end seizures of the brain
 studies of split brain patients has yielded insights
 Stimulate brain









 Parts of brain and neurons can be stimulated chemically electrically and
magnetically
 Result in behaviors such as giggling head turning or stimulates vivid recall
 Researchers can see which neurons of neuron networks fire in conjunction with
certain mental experiments and even specific concepts
EEG
 a recording of electrical waves sweeping across the brain surface
 Useful In Studying seizures and sleep
PET scan
 -Allows us to see what part of the brain is active by tracing where a radioactive
form of glucose goes while brain performs given task
 MRI
 -makes images from signals produced by the spin of atoms
 Schizophrenics have done this
FMRI
 reveals brain activity and function rather than structures
fMRI
 compress successive MRI images taken a split second apart and shows changes In
The level of oxygen in blood flow in the brain
Brain functions
 Brain stem and cerebellum:
 Coordinate body
 Limbic system
 arranges emotions and connects thought to body
 Cortex (outer covering)
 integrated info
Brains less complex structures
 Brain stem made of pons and medulla
 Medulla controls breathing and heart beat
 Pons helps coordinate automatic and unconscious movements (swallow,
blink)
 Someone with total brain damage above the medulla can breathe
independently someone with brain damage in the medulla cannot
Thalamus
 Inner chamber is the sensory switch board and router
 all sensory messages except smell are routed through the thalamus on the way to
the cortex
 higher outer brain also sends messages from the cortex to medulla and cerebellum
Reticular formation
 the network in the brain stem that enables alertness (arousal) from coma to wide
awake
 (cat experiments)
 filters sensory information
Cerebellum
 the little brain it helps coordinate voluntary movement such as playing a sport
 has many other functions including enabling nonverbal learning and memory
 The limbic(border) system
 Limbic system
 coordinates emotions, fear, aggression,
 basic drives, hunger, sex,
 formation of episodic memories
 Hippocampus (seahorse)
 processes and conscious episodic memory
 Works with the amygdala to form emotionally charged memories
 Amygdala (almond)
 has two Lima bean shaped clusters that help process fear and aggression
 Hypothalamus
 Body temperature food and water intake like homeostasis involved in sex drive
 Hypothalamus
 below
 directs endocrine system via messages to pituitary gland
 Cerebral cortex
 Outer gray bark structure that is wrinkles in order to create more surface area for
20+ billion neurons
 Inner white stuff is axons linking part of the brain
 180+filial cells which feed and protect neurons and assist in neural
communication
 Brain has right and left hemisphere
 Frontal lobes
 Involved in speaking and muscle movements and in making planes and judgments
 Parietal lobes
 Include sensory cortex
 Occipital lobes
 Include visual areas receive visual information from opposite visual field
 Temporal lobes
 Include auditory processing areas sensory functions in cortex
 Sensory strip deals with info from tough stimuli
 Occipital lobe deals with visual info
 Temporal lobe deals with auditory info
 more complex animals have more cortical space devoted to integrating and
associating info
 Frontal lobes
 active in executive functions such as judgment planning and inhibit action of
impulses
 active in use of working memory and processing new memories
 Frontal line associating areas
 many functions in area behind sensory strip
 managing input from multiple senses
 performing spatial and mathematical reasoning
 monitoring sensation of movement
 temporal lobe association areas
 some abilities managed here









recognizing specific faces
managing sensory input related to sound helping with understanding of
spoken words
Whole brain functions
 involves complex activities which require communication among association
areas across the brain such as
 memory
 language
 attention
 meditation
 consciousness
Specialization and integration
 visual cortex receives written words as visual stimulation
 angular gyrus transforms visual representation into auditory ones
 Wernicke’s area interprets auditory code
 Boca’s area controls speech muscles via motor cortex
 Motor cortex is how word is pronounced
Plasticity (brain flexibility)
 if the brain is damaged in the general association areas in the cortex
 brain does not repair damaged neurons nut can restore some functions
 it can form new connections reassign excitatory networks and insert new neurons
(some growth from stem cells)
Our 2 hemispheres
 lateralization: going to one side
 2 hemisphere serve some different functions
 How do we know about the functions?
 brain damage studies revealed many functions of the left hemisphere
 brain scans and split brain studies show more about the functions of the two
hemispheres and how they coordinate with each other
Split brain studies
 to end whole brain seizures some people have had surgery to cut the corpus
callous (band I neural axons connecting two hemispheres)
 Researchers have studied the impact of this surgery on patients functioning
 Each hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body and is aware of visual
field on the opposite side
 Without corpus callosum the halves of the brain cannot communicate and the two
halves of the visual field do not work together
 Only the left half of the brain. Has enough verbal ability to express thoughts
out loud
Split visual field
 each hemisphere does not perceive what each eye sees, instead it perceives half of
the view of what is I. Front of you that
Divided brain
 people are able to follow two instructions and draw two shapes at the same time
 Drawback, people can be frustrated that the left and right sides do different things