Psychology 10: Holyoak

9/22/11

What is Psychology? How did it arise? Psychology: The scientific study of the causes of thoughts, feelings, and behavior. o Uses the scientific method to find causes o Why the interest in causes? Why do people do what they do (good, bad, or weird)? If we know causes, we can change behavior Treatment Therapy Causes: Levels of explanation o Genetic mechanism: behavior genetics o Neural mechanism: neuroscience o Behavioral processes: learning, cognitive , developmental , social o Evolutionary function: comparative , evolutionary o Each level has different ways of explaining the nature of something. E.g. Observation: I want to go to In-n-Out. What caused that behavior? o How long has it been since I ate? (Learning) o Stomach Load/Hormonal Signals (Neuroscience) Temporary o I want to talk to friends (Social) Influences o Im a human not a termite (Behavior genetics, comparative) o Eating gives us energy to reproduce (evolutionary)

o Im too old for a bottle and too young for gourmet food (developmental) PI o I ate at In-n-Out in the past and it was good (learning, cognitive) o When I ate at In-n-Out in the past, my brain released dopamine (neuroscience) o I ate McDonalds in the past and got ill (learning) Three kinds of influences: o Temporary: brain and glands respond to current state (Motivation, Emotion, & Mood) o Permanent/Persistent: experience changes behavior, brain responds differently (Learning & Memory) o Heredity: gene expression (Genes: DNA) E.g. When a experiencing a trauma: o Short-term changes in behavior: Changes in hormonal responses, brain chemistry, environmental cues, genetic make-up o Learning/Memory Formation, Gene Expression o Which both can lead to long-term changes in behavior: Bad memories, inability to deal with new stress o Which can ultimately lead to Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) o From there: Clinical

Methods of Psychology Opinion o Nonscientific view o Not based on observation o Not systematic o Two conflicting opinions can be valid Fact

o Verifiable o Two people can agree that a certain event happened a certain way o Can get blurred but in science must make sure that facts are recorded the way they are o One bit of information o One objective observation Hypothesis o Based on what is observed o Leads to prediction o Can be changed o A testable idea or proposal (leads to a prediction about a fact) o E.g. the chicken and the egg theory Theory o Gives explanation o Generates more hypothesis o Leads to new facts o A set of interrelated assumptions o Organizes a set of facts giving them a common explanation o Generates hypotheses and predicts new facts o Judged by their usefulness, generality, and parsimony o E.g. simple theory explains a lot Example:

o Bad vs. Good driver Find the correlation (relationship) between drivers who talk and non talking While the data may show that good drivers are usually those who do not talk on the phone it does not mean that is the case for everyone. More info is needed. o Experiment Independent variable Avoid confounds To make sure that it does not prefer one group over the other. Dependent variable Objective Reliable Valid make a reasonable inference Selection of subjects/participants Random (representative sample) Although it may seem that random is unorganized, it is to make sure that the sample group is representative of all group types. o Theory Complex activities require attention (cant attend to everything at once) Attention is limited Divided attention (less focus) compromises performance Psychologists have found that memory encoding is especially compromised by multitasking (multitasking have consequences) How did Psychology get to where it is now? Everyone thinks they are psychologists that they know the causes of their behavior.

o Intuitive approach (not scientific method) o We do what we do according to our own free will. (We decide what to do based on reflecting on past performances). o Dualism: mind and body separate and independent. (We think we are our consciousness.) Rationalism: We do what we do base on our ability to reason. (Based on free will) Instinct: We do things because thats how we are. (natural born this way :P) Humans vs. Animals? o Social, physical, mental, religious views of how we are

different o Challenges: Behavioral and neural evidence Darwins theory Philosophical roots (and routes to) Psychology Rene Descartes o A duelist o Theres the mind and the body are in parallel but still separate parts o Thought animals are completely different. o Thought the pineal gland was the center Pineal gland is what makes jet lag. It can tell when it is day or night, which is why Descartes called it the third eye. It also produces melatonin. o Led to the 1st experiment to see how the mind and the brain could be connected John Locke o Empiricism Tabula Rasa

Born as an innocent baby knowing nothing at all Gain knowledge through experience and ideas

James Mill o Materialist o Mind and matter are one o Continuity of humans and other humans (said that were just like animals) o Were just a type of machine Physiological roots (and routes to) Psychology Rene Descartes Luigi Galvani o Physiologist o Compared neurons/nerves with electricity o Experiment w/ frog legs His assistant touched the nerve of the frog legs with an electrical current, which made the frog leg twitch. Johannes Mller o Different nerves/pathways (doctrine of specific nerve energies) o Experiment: pushed at his eye led to the conclusion of physical and visual response It is not the nerve but it sends current to a certain part of the brain that makes the visualization Pierre Flourens o Start experimental brain lesions (ablations) on animals To investigate localizationism, i.e., whether different parts of the brain had different functions

Paul Broca o How brain injuries create different responses What a person can do or cannot do after the injury o Brocas Area in the brain speech production Hermann von Helmholtz o Theory of color vision 3 different kinds of cells on certain wavelengths The First Psychologist: The German Wave o Muller and Helmholtz led to Wilhelm Wundt (1879)Heildelberg, Germany Structuralism: Psychology = science of immediate experience Goal: Describe the elements of perceptual experience o Max Wertheimer Gestalt Psychology A theory of mind and brain positing; the operational principle of Gestalt is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies o Sigmund Freud Unconscious causes of complex actions and personality Therapeutic Had minimal influence in psychology today Introduced cocaine as a medical treatment American Revolution o William James (1842- 1910)

Wrote Principles of Psychology Functionalism: mental life and behavior is an adaptation to environment Divisions of memory Attention Emotion Cognitive Psychology The Tao of Psychology (Tao: true nature of world/ doctrine/principles Structures: o Wundt o Representation o Brain areas o Hippocampus o Neurons Function: o James o Processes o Cognitive operations o Memory o Activation Structures have some function and function have some type of structure Examples of Introspective Report

Wanted to understand immediate experience Apple o Cold, crisp, sweet Meaning o I see meaning as the blue-grey tip of a kind of scoop, which has a bit of yellow above it, and which is just digging into a dark mass of what appears to be plastic material. Titchener (Wundts student), of Cornell Univ. Wundt thinks knowledge are basically mental imagery. Every thought is closely tied with concrete images; even abstract word meaning

Problems with Introspection o Poor agreement between subjects o Most mental operations outside awareness o Process might change observed operations o Inadequacies of language Difficulties led to quest for more objective approaches: Behaviorism Might have the same visual representation but different language Classical Conditioning Experiment Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) o His laboratory study was with dogs More objective o Conditioning of dogs Before dogs doesnt salivate when bell rings

After when bell rings without food, dogs will still salivate Association of food with an inanimate object o Foundation for behaviorism American Behaviorism (1913-1957) John Watson (1878-1958) o 1930-published Behaviorism o "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchantchief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years." Think that he can take anyone and make them into anything that he wants with training BF Skinner (1904-1990) o The Behavior of Organism o Skinner box is a chamber that contains a bar or key that an animal can press or manipulate in order to obtain food or water as a type of reinforcement. The Skinner box also had a device that recorded each response provided by the animal as well as the unique schedule of reinforcement that the animal was assigned. Using the device researchers could carefully study behavior in a very controlled environment. Could be used to determine which schedule of reinforcement led to the highest rate of response in the study subjects. Cognitive Revolution (1950-60s) Noam Chomsky o Modern linguistics o Critique of Skinner Herbert Simon o One of the founder of Artificial Intelligence

o Human problem solving Donald Broadbent o Limited capacity o Human attention George Miller o Short-term vs. long-term memory 21st Century Integrating Mind and Brain All cognitive processes have a neural basis. Different area of brain are active during different cognitive actions. Use different techniques of brain imaging to localize areas in brain associated with different cognitive functions. Mind over body? o Placebo effect Influence of a substance or procedure due to receiving it, even though substance/procedure itself has no effect Effect is due to persons belief Negative placebo (e.g., voodoo) How is this possible? If people believe something to work or they have something their body will produce the effects as if it is actually supposed to happen. o How the brain responds when we do things Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Can use virtual reality to reduce pain we ever know that someone is conscious? The limits of consciousness are hard to define satisfactorily, and we can only infer the self-awareness of others by their appearance and their acts. - Plum & Posner Principle of revealed consciousness: Voluntary (i.e., nonreflexive) behavior is taken to reveal the presence of consciousness. Conscious can be revealed because we can do things

How do

In other words, since we dont have access to measuring consciousness directly, we rely on behavioral indications of consciousness, or a principle of revealed consciousness, by which the presence of non-reflexive behavior is taken to reveal the presence of consciousness

Assessing consciousness in brain-injury patients Detailed patient history (including structural MRI). Repeated daily observation of spontaneous and elicited behavior using standardized (albeit subjective) assessments: o i. Sustained, reproducible, purposeful, or voluntary response to visual, auditory, tactile or noxious stimuli o ii. Language comprehension or expression. o iii. Awareness of self or the environment If any evidence is found of i, ii or iii then the patient is diagnosed MCS. If no evidence is found of i, ii and iii then the patient is diagnosed VS. Imaging Consciousness

If we can see the neural signature of imagining playing tennis (motor imagery) and imagining walking around the rooms of ones home(Spatial imagery), we can turn this into a code for yes and no? This would allow patients who cannot produce any behavioral output to: o (1) Prove they are conscious o (2) Communicate with their environment. While a persons brain is working, they cant response normally. E.g. A patient had been diagnosed VS (i.e., unconscious) for 5 years. Yet by looking into his brain he could (1) show volitional behavior, and (2) correctly respond to 5 out of 6 autobiographical questions.

The Biology of the Mind

Cortex

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Is the reality check part of the brain Connect senses Thinking cap Each neuron have a job Neurons make networks among cells Neural Communications Brain and nervous systems is incredibly complicated The individual neurons are small simple things o They either turn on or off o Based on how they interact with each other Neurons either excite or inhibit o If only: Excite will blow up Inhibit shut everything down o Must have a balance Motor areas voluntary motion and reflexes Sensory areas the 5 senses Association areas sensory and memory Nervous system is electrical Basic neural processing is similar in humans and in other animals.

Note similarities in the above brain regions between the rat, cat, chimpanzee, and humans, which are all engaged in information processing. But association areas are larger in humans. The bodys information system is built from billions of interconnected cells called neurons.

Neurons A nerve cell, or a neuron, consists of many different parts. Parts of a neuron: o Cell Body: Life support center of the neuron. Keeps it alive Most of our energy is used by our brain

o Dendrites: Branching extensions at the cell body. Receive messages from other neurons. Receiving ends, connect to the synapses o Axon: Long single extension of a neuron, covered with myelin [MY-uh-lin] sheath to insulate and speed up messages through neurons. o Terminal Branches of axon: Branched endings of an axon that transmit messages to other neurons. Have a threshold (basically all or nothing) o Each neuron receives excitatory and inhibitory signals from many neurons. When the excitatory signals minus the inhibitory signals exceed a minimum intensity (threshold) the neuron fires an action potential. Action Potential o A neural impulse. A brief electrical charge that travels down an axon and is generated by the movement of positively charged atoms (ions) in and out of channels in the axons membrane. o Properties: All-or-None Response: A strong stimulus can trigger more neurons to fire, and to fire more often, but it does not affect the action potentials strength or speed. Intensity of an action potential remains the same throughout the length of the axon. Synapse:

o Synapse [SIN-aps] a junction between the axon tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the receiving neuron. This tiny gap is called the synaptic gap or cleft.

Neurotransmitter: o Neurotransmitters (chemicals) released from the sending neuron travel across the synapse and bind to receptor sites on the receiving neuron, thereby influencing it to generate an action potential. o One neurotransmitter can influence many different brain areas o Reuptake: Pills such as those for depression slow the reuptake Neurotransmitters in the synapse are reabsorbed into the sending neurons through the process of reuptake.

This process applies the brakes on neurotransmitter action. How Neurotransmitter Influence Us Serotonin pathways are involved with mood regulation. Dopamine Pathways o Dopamine pathways are involved with diseases such as schizophrenia and Parkinsons disease. o Contribute to learning and motion

Lock and Key Mechanisms

o Neurotransmitters bind to the receptors of the receiving neuron in a key-lock mechanism. o Agonists mimics neurotransmitter o Antagonists blocks neurotransmitter Psychoactive Drugs Agonists mimic transmitter at receptor o Domoic acid (contaminated shellfish), nicotine, propofol (Michael Jackson) Antagonists block the transmitter at receptor o botox Modulators alter (up or down) the effect of transmitter at its receptor o alcohol Re-uptake Inhibitors increase effect of transmitters

Transmitter Serotonin Norepinephrine

Function Sleep, mood Blood pressure, attention Movement, pleasure (reward)

Treatment Depression w/ SSRIs such as prozac hypertensionpropranolol, ADHD-ritalin Parkinsons (LDopa), Schizophrenia (thorazine, haldol) Pain control after injury or disease (morphine, vicodin)

Illegal Drugs Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ecstasy Apparently not

Dopamine

Cocaine, amphetamine

Endogenous Opioids endorphin, enkephalin

Regulation of pain

Heroin

Anandamide

Regulation of Nausea from neurotransmission chemotherapy, inflammatory diseases

Marijuana

Example drug effect: ecstasy (an amphetamine) -- primarily influences serotonin system o Acute effects: Heightened perceptions Reduced appetite Stimulation Elevated mood o Adverse effects: Clouded thinking Hyperthermia Disturbed behavior Jaw clenching o Life threatening effects: Hyperthermia Arrthymias Renal failure

Nervous Systems Nervous System: Consists of all the nerve cells. It is the bodys speedy, electrochemical communication system. Central Nervous System (CNS): the brain and spinal cord. o The Brain and Neural Networks: Interconnected neurons form networks in the brain. Theses networks are complex and modify with growth and experience. o The Spinal Cord and Reflexes: Reflexes often only include the spinal cord so for example a finger is getting burned, the finger will reflex back before the info reaches the brain. o The Endocrine System: The Endocrine System is the bodys slow chemical communication system. Communication is carried out by hormones synthesized by a set of glands. Hormones:

Hormones are chemicals synthesized by the endocrine glands that are secreted in the bloodstream. Hormones affect the brain and many other tissues of the body. For example, epinephrine (adrenaline) increases heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, and feelings of excitement during emergency situations. The Pituitary Gland: Is called the master gland. The anterior pituitary lobe releases hormones that regulate other

glands. The posterior lobe regulates water and salt balance. Peripheral Nervous System (PNS): the sensory and motor neurons that connect the central nervous system (CNS) to the rest of the body. o Somatic Nervous System: The division of the peripheral nervous system that controls the bodys skeletal muscles. o Autonomic Nervous System: Part of the PNS that controls the glands and other muscles. Sympathetic Nervous System: Division of the ANS that arouses the body, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations. (flight or fight) Parasympathetic Nervous System: Division of the ANS that calms the body, conserving its energy. (rest and digest) o The Nerves: Nerves consist of neural cables containing many axons. They are part of the peripheral nervous system and connect muscles, glands, and sense organs to the central nervous system. The Brain A brain lesion experimentally destroys brain tissue to study animal behaviors after such destruction. Techniques to study the brain: o Clinical observation:

Clinical observations have shed light on a number of brain disorders. Alterations in brain morphology due to neurological and psychiatric diseases are catalogued. o Electroencephalogram (EEG): An amplified recording of the electrical waves sweeping across the brains surface, measured by electrodes placed on the scalp. o PET Scan: PET (positron emission tomography) scan is a visual display of brain activity that detects a radioactive form of glucose while the brain performs a given task. o MRI Scan: MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) uses magnetic fields related to blood flow to produce computer-generated images that distinguish among different types of brain tissue. Top images show ventricular enlargement in a schizophrenic patient. Bottom image shows brain regions when a participants lies (functional MRI, or fMRI). Older Brain Structures: o The Brainstem is the oldest part of the brain, beginning where the spinal cord swells and enters the skull. It is responsible for automatic survival functions. The Medulla [muh-DUL-uh] is the base of the brainstem that controls heartbeat and breathing. The Thalamus [THAL-uh-muss] is the brains sensory switchboard, located on top of the brainstem. It directs messages to the sensory areas in the cortex and transmits replies to the cerebellum and medulla. Reticular Formation is a nerve network in the brainstem that plays an important role in controlling arousal. o Cerebellum The little brain attached to the rear of the brainstem. It helps coordinate voluntary movements and balance. o The Limbic System:

The Limbic System is a doughnut-shaped system of neural structures at the border of the brainstem and cerebrum, associated with emotions such as fear, aggression and drives for food and sex. It includes the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus. The Amygdala [ah-MIG-dah-la] consists of two lima bean-sized neural clusters linked to the emotions of fear and anger. The Hypothalamus lies below (hypo) the thalamus. It directs several maintenance activities like eating, drinking, body temperature,

and control of emotions. It helps govern the endocrine system via the pituitary gland. Reward Center: Rats cross an electrified grid for self-stimulation when electrodes are placed in the reward (hypothalamus) center (top picture). When the limbic system is manipulated, a rat will navigate fields or climb up a tree (bottom picture). The Cerebral Cortex: o A big part of the brain o The intricate fabric of interconnected neural cells that covers the cerebral hemispheres. It is the bodys ultimate control and information processing center. o Structure of the Cortex: Each brain hemisphere is divided into four lobes that are separated by prominent fissures. These lobes are the frontal lobe (forehead), parietal lobe (top to rear head), occipital lobe (back head) and temporal lobe (side of head). o Functions of the cortex: The Motor Cortex is the area at the rear of the frontal lobes that control voluntary movements. The Sensory Cortex (parietal cortex) receives information from skin surface and sense organs.

Visual Function: A functional MRI scan shows the visual cortex is active as the subject looks at faces. Auditory Function: A functional MRI scans shows the auditory cortex is active in patients who hallucinate. Association Areas: More intelligent animals have increased uncommitted or association areas of the cortex.

o Language: Aphasia is an impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Brocas area (impaired speaking) or to Wernickes area (impaired understanding). o Specialization and Integration Brain activity when hearing, seeing, or speaking words o Why is it shaped the way that its shaped? To increase surface area in a way so that a baby can be born Our Divided Brain o The human brain is divided into two hemispheres. o The left hemisphere (at least in right-handed people) is primarily responsible reading, writing, speaking, mathematics, and comprehension skills. It used to be termed the dominant brain. The Brains Plasticity o The brain is sculpted by our genes but also by our experiences. o Plasticity refers to the brains ability to modify itself after some types of injury or illness. o Young children who lose an entire hemisphere (left or right) may grow with near-normal cognitive abilities o But children who lose their frontal cortex (front of the brain) show major impairments in later life. Splitting the Brain:

o A procedure in which the two hemispheres of the brain are isolated by cutting the connecting fibers (mainly those of the corpus callosum) between them. o Split brain patients: With the corpus callosum severed, objects (apple) presented in the right visual field can be named. Objects (pencil) in the left visual field cannot.

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