Psychology 2606

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Psychology 2606

• Dr. David Brodbeck

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History and Origins of the Study of Brain and
Behaviour

• The course is about the relationship between
  brain and behaviour
• This is a question that has involved many people,
  philosophers, physicians, psychologists and
  neuroscientists
• Once we define a couple of terms (notably brain
  and behaviour) we can look at how these
  different groups of people have looked at the
  relationship

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What is brain?

• Well you can kick it
• Tissue
• Organ
• Is it just that wrinkly thing in your head?
• Technically yes
• However, you cannot do certain behaviours without
  say a spinal cord

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Brain brain brain

• So, while the definition of brain really means
  just the thing in the head, we will have to
  concentrate not only on the brain itself but on
  the cerebellum, spinal column and indeed other
  parts of the nervous system if we want to relate
  the brain to behaviour.
• The Mind-body problem

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The Nervous system

• Central Nervous system (CNS)
• Brain, spinal column, cerebellum
• Communication is neural
• Peripheral Nervous system (PNS)
• Nerves that make you move basically
• Communication is neural

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How does it work?

• Bicep curl for example
• Muscle needs an agonist and an antagonist
• Motor neuron sends message to bicep to curl up
• Sensory neuron tells you when to stop
• Simple behaviour LOTS of neurons

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In a Moths Ear.

• Moth Ear basically has two neurons A1 and A2
• They are not frequency sensitive, but do not
  respond to low frequencies

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Those would be some tiny Q tips..
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Do Moths Have Ear Wax?

• A1 is responsive to intensity
• More firing with closer bat
• A2 only fires with very loud sounds
• A2 fires, bat must be very close

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Moths and Bats, Charts and Graphs

• A1 on the left fires, that wing beats faster
• Moths course corrects to 180 degrees from bat
• So very and totally cool
• A2, go crazy
• 2 neuron ear can encode where a predator in in 3
  dimensional space!!!

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Autonomic Nervous System

• Different communication than in the CNS and PNS
• Not neural, more chemical
• Hormones secreted into bloodstream by ductless
  glands
• Pituitary gland is the master gland
• Example, pituitary controls release of pitocin
  and oxytocin which start labour
• Another example, effects of testosterone on
  spatial ability
• psychoneuroendocrinology

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Behaviour

• And you thought our brain definition was
  amorphous
• What is behaviour?
• 1 the manner of conducting oneself
• 2 a anything that an organism does involving
  action and response to stimulation b the
  response of an individual, group, or species to
  its environment behavioral or chiefly British
  behavioural /-vy-rl/ adjective
  behaviorally or chiefly British
  behaviourally /-r-lE/ adverb

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Hmmmmmmmmmm

• Action and response to stimuli eh
• Stimuli, well, we tend to think of those as being
  external things
• But we can oh imagine pizza, and then have a
  reaction.
• An organism, so a plant can behave?
• As a rule, dictionary definitions suck.
• Behaviour is some observable reaction that has no
  obvious substance

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OK Mr. smart guy what does behaviour mean?

• Thats Dr. Smart Guy to you.
• Action of an organism having cause and function
• So, in the moth example, the cause is the sound,
  the function is evasion
• This will include both learned behaviour and
  inherited stuff
• Not all behaviour has an obvious function

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Some history

• First the earth cooled, then the dinosaurs ruled
  the world, then they died cuz of some big meteor,
  then the people showed up
• Even early humans probably wondered about why we
  do what we do
• Then we started hanging around in towns

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Aristotle

• Believed that the heart was the seat of behaviour
• He noted the importance of the brain (but it was
  for cooling blood he figured)

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British Empiricists

• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
• Contents of mind rest on experience
• John Locke (1632-1704)
• white paper or tabula rasa

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Rene Descartes

• Descartes said that we were machines with a soul
• The notion was that the mind and the body were
  separate
• Animals have no soul

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And yadda yadda yadda.

• By the 19th century people were talking about
  psychology
• Still the philosophers held sway
• Last half of the 19th century changed this
• The zeitgeist of the time changed

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What the hell does zeitgeist mean?

• I dont speak freaky deaky Dutch Mr. Goldmember
• The spirit of history
• The enlightenment of the 18th century was
  affecting the common person
• Science and technology could explain everything

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Gesundheit

• Even the origins of humanity could be explained
  without appealing to religion!
• Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species
• So like you could figure out anything with
  science!!

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Natural Selection

• The Theory of Natural Selection is so simple that
  anyone can misunderstand it. (Anonymous)
• Charles Darwin (1809-1882) saw three problems in
  need of a solution.
• Darwin was not the only one to see these problems
  BTW
• Other Naturalists were struggling with the same
  issues

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Problem the First

• There is change over time in the flora and fauna
  of the Earth
• What we would commonly call evolution today
• The fossil record showed this to be pretty clear,
  even to people in the mid 1800s
• This was not controversial in Darwins time, and
  is not now.

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The Second Problem

• There is a taxonomic relationship among living
  things
• People were big into classifying stuff
• It was pretty obvious that there was a
  relationship between different species
• Different birds, different grasses, different
  cats etc

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The Third Problem

• Adaptation
• Different kinds of teeth for different animals,
  say carnivore ripping teeth and herbivore
  grinding teeth
• Different tissues within species
• Heart vs. eye etc.

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The Solution!

• Natural Selection provides a mechanistic account
  of how these things occurred and shows how they
  are intimately related.
• It is one of those oh man is that ever easy, why
  didnt I think of that? type things.

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Hows it work?

• There is competition among living things
• More are born or hatched or whatever, than
  survive and reproduce
• Reproduction occurs with variation
• This variation is heritable
• Remember, there was NO genetics back then, Chuck
  knew, he just knew.
• Realized that is wasnt blending

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Hows it Work?

• Selection Determines which individuals enter the
  adult breeding population
• This selection is done by the environment
• Those which are best suited reproduce
• They pass these well suited characteristics on to
  their young

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Hows it Work?

• REPRODUCTION is the key, not merely survival
• If you survive to be 128 but have no kids, you
  are not doing as well as I am
• I have reproduced
• Assuming the traits that made me successful will
  help them then I amore fit NOW than the 127 year
  old guy

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This lecture keeps evolving..

• Survival of the Fittest (which Chucky D NEVER
  said) means those who have the most offspring
  that reproduce
• So, the answer to the trilogy of problems is
• Descent with modification from a common
  ancestor, NOT random modification, but,
  modification shaped by natural selection

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So cause and function

• The causal part of the behaviour definition
  refers to the immediate cause, stimuli, that sort
  of thing
• Function is over evolutionary time usually
• What does the behaviour accomplish
• How does it increase fitness

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Human evolution

• We split from the chimps about 5 million years
  ago
• For a long time we were basically not so hairy
  short apes
• What happened?
• Diet change, maybe
• Standing up was key
• You have to pump blood up

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Our Brains make us us

• If you get a heart so powerful that it can pump
  blood up, well you have lots of extra Oxygen and
  sugar you can use
• So get a bigger brain!
• See we dont have big teeth
• We cant run that fast (without steroids)
• But, we can outsmart our prey

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Ok so.

• So you are saying that big brain means big smarts
  right?
• Sorta, encephalization quotient idea
• Food storing vs non storing birds and Hp volume
• Within species?
• Harder to tell