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summary psychobiology
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psychobiologyLecture 1
Psychobiology in a historical perspective
Psychology in a historical context
- What is psychobiology?
- Different definitions but more or less related
- The study of the biological foundations of the mind, emotions and mental
processes
- The study of biochemical foundations of thought, mood, emotion, affect
and behaviour
- The use of biological methods to study normal and abnormal emotional
and cognitive processes
- Equated with biopsychology or behavioral neuroscience
Main aims of this course
→ 1. understanding the neurobiological and physiological mechanism underlying complex
behaviour, emotions and cognitive function:
- Brain mechanism
- Peripheral nervous system → go back to the brain
- Hormones
- Immune system (cytokines)
Interaction between the brian and peripheral factors
→ 2. understanding the neurobiological and psychological mechanism underlying behavioral
dysfunction and psychopathology
- From psychobiology to psychopathology
- From functional stress responses and emotional responses to posttraumatic
stress disorder, anxiety disorders and depression
- From normal social behavior to violence or autism
- From regulation of feeding behaviour to anorexia and obesity
→ 3.understanding the process of behavioral neuroscience; reasoning behind research
questions, experiments and conclusion
- Problem based learning assignment
- Formulating a scientific question
- Designing experiments
- Writing a research proposal
History
- Ancient greek philosophers on psychology
- About the relationship between mental processes and physical body
- Body and mind are the same or are they seperae - the mind-body question
- Variation on this view
- Physical body is illusion of the mind
- Or
- Mind were functions of the physical body → aristoteles
Hippocrates
, - Humorism (movement) proposes that our mental state depends on the
balance between four distinct bodily fluids (associated with organs and
physical elements (water, fire, air and earth))
- Rather progressive, mental health were a result of physical
processes
- Progressive ideas, but not knowledge→ no experiments
Galenus
- Took it to a next step
- Medical doctor at the roman court
- Wrote books and documents → dominated western medicine for a long time
- Study (nearly) dead gladiators → more knowledge
- The dawn of experimental science
- Studies on living animals
- Nerve ligation experiments → nerve to voice box, living pig stop screaming → by
accident he discover nerve connections between brain and muscles
- Discovery: The brain controls motion of the muscles (behavior as sound control)
1900th centuries
- Not much happened during middle ages
Psychobiology as a scientific discipline
William james
- Published a book; the principles of psychology
- Scientific study of psychology should be grounded in a understanding of biology
Carl Lange
- Together with James → James-Lange theory of emotions → emotions arise from
physiological responses to stimuli
Knight dunlap
- First to say psychobiology
- Wrote a book about it; an outline of psychobiology
- Also editor or scientific journal
- On the interconnection of mental and physiological functions
Cesare lombroso
- Anthropological criminology
- = Connection between mind and matter → relationship between physical
characteristics (anatomy of the head) and criminal behavior
- Proposed that he could recognize criminals by shape of head
- Not decent research to test this hypothesis →never confirmed
- Hollywood used this believe (movies)
- Homo delinquents - criminal human species
Modern times
Delgado
- Studies that electrical stimulation in certain brain areas can have a big impact in animals
- Inhibit attack in aggressive behaviour in bulls (see movie)
, - Controlling behaviour by electrical stimulation of specific brain regions
- Complex behaviors have a source and are controlled but he brain → important for the
development of psychobiology
Lecture 2
Methods and research strategies in psychological research
How do we advance our knowledge of behavioral neurosciences
- Observations, measurements
- Experimental manipulation
- Take place in a circular fashion
- A wide variety of tools and techniques to study this
See what happens in the brain → 5 methods/techniques
1)In vivo recording of neuronal activity
- Measuring the electrical activity of single cells of groups of neurons b
means by electrodes → broad global cortical activity with microelectrodes
(electroencephalogram) (outside of skull in humans)
- or single cells or multiple unit activity with microelectrodes (more complex,
stereotactic surgery, precise positioning of electrodes)
- Stereotactic surgery; brain atlas to look up the coordinates of the target
regions relative to the visible sutures of the skull → little variation in brain
size and anatomy
2)In vivo assessment of brain biochemistry by means of microdialysis
- Measuring the concentration of specific molecules in extracellular fluid
sampled by means of a semi permeable dialysis membrane → stereotactic
surgery for precise location of microdialysis probe
- Advantage is that you are not measuring the electrical stimulus but
the extracellular concentration of molecules e.g. neurotransmitter
release
3)Collection of brain material of biochemical analysis
- Molecules inside the cells → collect brian tissue
- Measurement of mRNA or protein concentration in homogenates of brain
tissue
- Collecting brain material
- Homogenization of brain material - whole brains of dissected
regions
- Specific analysis procedures
- Biochemical assays
- PCR
- Western blotting procedure
, 4) Collection of brain material for staining procedures
- Staining brain sections (not homogenous) with an antibody or ligand that binds a specific
molecule of interest (structural proteins, receptor proteins, signaling proteins etc.)
- Collection (and fixation) of brain material
- Section of brains with microtome
- Incubation of section with specific antibody of
ligation
- Microscopic analysis
- Advantage that you have this specific spatial
distribution of the protein in the slices → see where
the molecules are
5)Immunohistochemistry
- Clarity = instead of staining procedure in sections it is done in intact brain tissue
- Transforming intact brain tissue in hydrogel hybridized form:
- Basically get a transparent brain with intact brian structure
- Replacing membrane lipids with hydrophilic polymer to make the tissue
transparent while keeping brain structure intact
- Immunocyto Histochemical staining and analysis of intact brain tissue
- Advantage: better 3D view of molecule of interest
→Each method and technique has it pros and cons and there is no signal one that tells it all
- Difference in the neuter of read ous
- Differences in temporal resolution
- Differences in spatial resolution
Experiments in human brain
- More limitations
- Post mortem
- Biochemical analysis or staining of brain material
- In vivo
- Electrophysiological recordings of the scalp (EEG)
- Magnetic resonance imaging MRI
- Positron emission tomography PET
MRI
- Tool where you have this big cylinder
- Hydrogen atoms of the body are aligned with a strong magnetic field. Radio frequency
pulses are used to excite the atoms, which then releases energy when they are
realigned with the magnetic field. The emitted energy, which depends on the tissue, is
detected with a scanner
- Structural MRI: just a picture of the brain does not show activity
- Functional MRI: The image is strongly affected by blood flow, which is used to asses
regional changes in brain activity
- Local changes in neuronal activity = change in oxygen and glucose need = change in
blood flow
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