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INTRO ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
THE CELLS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM .................................................................................................................................. 2
THE NERVE IMPULSE .................................................................................................................................................................. 4
THE CONCEPT OF SYNAPSE:...................................................................................................................................................... 6
STRUCTURE OF THE VERTEBRATE NERVOUS SYSTEM ................................................................................................ 12
THE CEREBRAL CORTEX ......................................................................................................................................................... 15
PARTS OF THE BRAIN .............................................................................................................................................................. 16
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS ............................................................................................................................................... 17
ADDICTION AND LEARNING................................................................................................................................................... 19
COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS ........................................................................................................................................................... 28
COGNITION OF SPEECH PROCESSING ................................................................................................................................. 32
BRAIN IMAGING ......................................................................................................................................................................... 50
PERCEPTION (VISUAL) & ABNORMALITIES IN PERCEPTION ..................................................................................... 69
MEMORY: NATURE & RELEVANCE OF MEMORY.............................................................................................................. 86
MEMORY II: COGNITIVE & BIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF MEMORY ........................................................................ 90
BRAIN AND MEMORY SEMINAR ............................................................................................................................................ 96
DECISION- MAKING ................................................................................................................................................................... 99
JUDGMENT AND DECISION-MAKING: IRRATIONALITY AND BIAS SEMINAR ....................................................... 106
SEMINAR..................................................................................................................................................................................... 107
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY................................................................................................... 110
DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRAIN ........................................................................................................................................... 113
THE DEVELOPING AND AGEING BRAIN ............................................................................................................................ 117
DEMENTIA ................................................................................................................................................................................. 120
PLASTICITY AFTER BRAIN DAMAGE ................................................................................................................................. 126
ATTACK AND ESCAPE BEHAVIOURS ................................................................................................................................. 128
PAIN VS NOCICEPTION, FOCUS ON PAIN .......................................................................................................................... 129
STRESS ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 135
STRESS AROUSAL AND CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS .............................................................................................................. 140
BRAIN, MIND AND BEHAVIOUR VASCULAR BRAIN DISSECTION EXERCISE ......................................................... 144
SEMINAR PPT............................................................................................................................................................................ 149
1
,Biological Psychology Book summary
Intro
• Perception occurs in the brain
• Mental activity and certain types of brain activity are inseparableàmonoism, the idea that the universe
consists of only one type being. The opposite of this is dualism
According to monoism your thoughts or experiences are the same thing as your brain activity
• We should be cautious about what is an explanation and what is not. We should avoiding overstating the
conclusions from any research study.
Biological explanation to behaviour
• Physiological explanation: relates a behaviour to the activity of the brain and other organs. It deals
with the machinery of the body.
• Ontogenetic explanation: describes how a structure or behaviour develops including the influences of
genes, nutrition, experiences and their interactions
• Evolutionary explanation: reconstructs the evolutionary history of a structure or behaviour.
• Functional explanation: describes why a structure or behaviour evolved as it did.
Basic Chemistry:
• Elements: materials that cannot be broken downàatom creates an element
• Compounds: materials made up by combining elementsàmolecule smallest part of a compound
• An atom is composed by subatomic particles, including protons (positive electrical charge), neutrons
(neutral charge) and electrons (negative charge)
• Atomic number of the element: number of protons
• Atomic weight: indicates the weight of an atom relative to the weight of a proton
• Ion: an atom that has gained or lost one or more electrons
• Ionic bond: attraction of positive ions for negative ions
• Covalent bond: pairs of atoms that share electrons with eachother
• Carbon atoms form covalent bonds with hydrogen, oxygen, other carbon atoms and a number of other
elements; Two carbon atoms may share from 1 to 3 pairs of electrons.
The cells of the nervous system
The nervous system consists of two kinds of cells, neurons and glia. The adult human brain contains
approximately 86 billion neurons on average.
• Neurons: receive information and transmit it to other cells.
• Glia: serve many functions that are difficult to summarise
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
The main founder of neuroscience (1852-1934) together with Charles Sherrington
He used Golgi’s staining methods but applied them to infant brains where the cells are smaller and easier to
examine on a single slide. He’s research demonstrated that nerve cells remain separate instead of merging into
one another.
The structures of an animal cell
Neurons have much in common with the rest of the body’s cells.
• Membrane: surface of a cell. Protein channels in the membrane permit a controlled flow of water,
oxygen, potassium, sodium and other chemicals.
• Nucleus: the structure that contains all the chromosomes
• Mitochondrion: is the structure that performs metabolic activities, providing the energy that the cell
uses for all activities. They have genes separated from those in the nucleus of a cell and mitochondria
differ from one another generally.
2
,Biological Psychology Book summary
The structure of a neuron
• Motor neuron: with is soma (cell body) in the spinal cord, receives excitation through its dendrites and
conducts impulses along its axon to a muscle
• Sensory neuron: is specialised at one end to be highly sensitive to a particular type of stimulation, such
as light, sound or touch
• Dendrites: branching fibres that get narrower near their ends. The dendrite’s surface is lined with
specialised synaptic receptors, at which the dendrite receives information from other neurons. The
greater the surface area of a dendrite, the more information it can receive. Many dendrites contain
dendritic spines, short outgrowths that increase the surface area available for synapses
• Cell body or soma: contains the nucleus, ribosomes and mitochondria. Most of a neuron’s metabolic
work occurs here. Cell bodies of neurons range in diameter from 0.005 mm to 0.1 in mammals and up to
1 mm in certain invertebrates. In many neurons the cell body is like the dendrites-covered with
synapses on its surface.
• Axon: thin fiber of constant diameter. The axon conveys in impulse toward other neurons, an organ, or a
muscle. Axons can be more than a metre in length, as in the case of axons from the spinal cord to the feet.
Many vertebrate axons are covered with an insulating material called myelin sheat with interruptions
known as nodes of Ranvier. Although neurons can have many dendrites, they can only have one axon,
but the axon may have branches.
• Presynaptic terminal: swelling at the end of each axon’s branch. At that point the axon releases
chemicals that cross through the junction between that neuron and another cell.
• Afferent axon: brings information into a structure
• Efferent axon: carries information away from a structure
• Within the nervous system, a given neuron is an efferent from one structure and an afferent to another
• Interneuron or intrinsic neuron of a structure: if a cell’s dendrites and axon are entirely contained
within a single structure
The shape of a neuron determines its connections with other cells and thereby determines its function
Glia
From the Greek “glue”. Glia outnumber neurons in the cerebral cortex but neurons outnumber glia in several
other brain areas
• Astrocytes: wrap around synapses of functionally related axons. By surrounding a connection between
neurons, an astrocyte shields it from chemicals circulating in the surround. By taking up the ions and
transmitters released by axons, they help synchronise closely related neurons, enabling their axons to
send messages in wavesàimportant for generating rhythms, such as breathing rhythm. They dilate
blood vessels to bring more nutrients into brain areas that have heightened activity.
Tripartite synapses: an hypothesis that says that the tip of an axon releases chemicals that cause the
neighbouring astrocyte to release chemicals of its own thus magnifying or modifying the message to the
next neuron. This process in a possible contributor to learning and memory.
• Microglia: act as a part of the immune system, removing viruses and fungi from the brain. They
proliferate after brain damage, removing dead or damaged neurons. They also contribute to learning by
removing the weakest synapses.
• Oligodendrocytes: in the brain and spinal cord and Schwann cells in the periphery of the body build
the myelin sheats that surround and insulate certain vertebrate axons. They also supply an axon with
nutrients necessary for proper functioning.
• Radial glia: guide the migration of neurons and their axons and dendrites during embryonic
development. When embryological development finishes, they mostly differentiate into neurons, and a
smaller part differentiate into astrocytes and Oligodendrocytes.
Why we need a Blood-Brain barrier:
When a virus invades a cell, mechanisms within the cell extrude virus particles through the membrane so that
the immune system can find them. The immune system then kills it and the cell that contains it. That would not
work well with neurons, that are mostly irreplaceable. Some viruses like rabies though can pass through the
barrier leading to death. The microglia are more effective against several other viruses that enter the brain,
mounting an inflammatory response that fights the virus without killing the neuron.
• The blood brain barrier depends on the endothelial cells that form the walls of the capillaries.
• Outside the brain such cells are separated by small gaps, but in the brain, they are joined so tightly that
they block viruses, bacteria ad harmful chemicals from passage
3
, Biological Psychology Book summary
• The barrier keeps out useful chemicals too, such as amino acids. For these chemicals the brain needs
special mechanisms not found in the rest of the body
• No special mechanism is required for small uncharged molecules such as oxygen and carbon dioxide, as
well as molecules that dissolve in the fats of the membrane such as drugs and vitamin A and D
• Water cross through special protein channels in the wall of the endothelial cells.
• For certain other chemicals, the brain uses active transport, a protein mediated process that expends
energy to pump chemicals from the blood into the brain. Chemicals transported like this include glucose
(the brain’s main fuel), amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), purines, choline, a few vitamins
and iron.
• The barrier poses a difficulty for treating brain cancer since the barrier blocks nearly all the drugs used
for chemotherapy.
The nerve impulse
The axon regenerates an impulse at each point. The impulse travels along the line without weakening because
each neurons generates it anew. Problem: because axon transmit information at only moderate speeds a touch
on the shoulder reaches the brain sooner than the one on a foot. The brain won’t normally pay attention to this
unless it’s in visionàthe brain does need to knowàto detect movement as accurately as possible the visual
system compensates for the fact that some parts of the retina are slightly closer to the brain than other parts
areàaxons from more distant part of the retina transmit impulses slightly faster than those closer to the brain.
The resting potential of the Neuron
The resting potential prepares the neuron to respond rapidly. The excitation of the neuron opens channels that
allow sodium to enter the cell rapidly. Because the membrane did its work in advance by maintain the
concentration gradient for sodium, the cell is prepared to respond vigorously to a stimulus.
• Messages in a neuron develop from disturbances of the resting potential
• All parts of the neuron are covered by a membrane, that is composed of 2 layers of phosopholid
moleculesàwithin them are cylindrical protein molecules through which certain chemical can pass
• When at rest the membrane maintains an electrical gradient (polarisation), a difference in electrical
charge between the inside and the outside of the cellàit is slightly negative with respect to the outside,
because of negatively charged proteins inside the cell. This difference in voltage is called the resting
potential
• Resting potential: the different in voltage
Forces acting on Sodium and Potassium Ions
• Selective permeability: some chemicals pass through more freely than others do such as oxygen,
carbon dioxide, urea and water (the channels are always open). For ions including sodium, potassium,
calcium and chloride the channels are sometimes open sometimes not.
• When the membrane is at rest, the sodium and potassium channels are closed, permitting almost no
flow of sodium and only a small flow of potassium. Certain types of stimulation can open these channels
permitting freer flow of either or both ions.
• Sodium-potassium pump: a protein complex, repeatedly transports 3 sodium ions out of the cell while
drawing 2 potassium ions into it. Since it is an active transport it requires energy.
• Sodium ions are more than 10 times more concentrated outside the membrane than inside and
potassium ions are more concentrated inside than outside.
• When sodium ions are pumped out they stay out, but some of the potassium ions in the neuron slowly
leak out, carrying a positive charge with themàit increases the electrical gradient across the membrane
• When the neuron is at rest, 2 forces act on sodium both tending to push it into the cell.
• Sodium is positively charged and the inside of the cell is negatively chargedàopposite charges attract so
the electrical gradient tends to pull sodium into the cell.
• Concentration gradient: the difference in distribution of ions across the membrane. Sodium is more
concentrated outside than insideàmore likely to enter than leave it
• Potassium is positively charged and the inside of the cell is negatively chargedàelectrical gradient tends
to pull potassium in. However potassium is more concentrated inside the cell than outsideàthe
concentration gradient tends to drive it out
4
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