All information that has been discussed during the lectures and the powerpoints of the lectures. Everything is in English, because the exam is also in English. This way you get used to the English terminology.
Neuropsychologie – hc 1
Evolution & historical perspectives on mind and brain
Why is the brain so important?
The brain’s primary function is to produce behavior. To do so, it must:
- Receive information about the World trough our senses
- Integrate information to create a sensory reality → everybody sees something
different. What you see, is not THE reality.
- Make a constant stream of predictions about what to expect
- Produce commands to control the movement of muscles
The make up of the nervous system altogether allows the brain to do so
What is behavior?
- Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt:
o Behavior consists of patterns in time
o Examples
▪ Movements, vocalisations, thinking
- Animals produce behaviors that
o Are inherited → it’s genetic
o Are learned
- Most behaviors probably consist of a mix of inherited and learned actions
- Relatively fixed behaviors
o Dependent on heredity, it is not something
he learned.
- Relatively flexible bahaviors
o Dependent on learning. The rat learns
how to eat a pine cone from his parents.
- Complexity of behavior varies considerably in
different species depending on complexity of nervouw system. Humans are the most
complex species. The more complex the behavior is, the more complex the nervous
system is. And the other way around.
,Philosophy of brain and behavior: Aristotle and Mentalism
This changed over time.
Mentalism:
- An explanation of behavior as a function of the nonmaterial mind → it suggests that
our behaviour is not our body, because that’s material.
- Ancient Greece: Aristotle
o Psyche of soul: synonym for mind; an entity once proposed to be the source of
human behavior, that lives after death.
Philosophy of brain and behavior: Descartes and dualism
Dualism:
- Both a nonmaterial mind and the material body contribute to behavior
- Mind directs rational behavior
- Body and brain direct all other behavior via mechanical and psychical principles
o Examples: sensation, movement and digestion
- Mind is connected to the body through the pineal gland of the brain
- Mind-body Problem
o Difficult/impossible to explain a nonmaterial mind in command of a material body.
Philosophy of brain and behavior: Darwin and Materialism
This view is still dominant.
Materialism
- Behavior can be explained as a function of the nervous system without considering
the mind as a separate substandce → we are all material. There is no separate non-
material mind.
- Related to evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin
Darwin’s concept of natural selection:
- Differential success in the reproduction (i.e. passing on your genes) of different
characteristics/behavior (phenotypes) results from the interaction of organismes with
their environment – including each other!! Your specie has more chance to survive.
The interaction with the environment is important!
- Traits/behavior that increase reproductive success and chances of survival will be
passed on to offspring → you have to adapt to the environment.
- Competition is a key concept
Evolution of animals having nervous systems
- Neurons and muscles
- Nerve net: Simple nervous system (without spinal cord and brain) that receives
sensory information and connects directly to other neurons that move muscles.
- Bilateral symmetry
- Segmentation
- Ganglia: Structures (cell clusters) that resemble and function somewhat like a primitive
brain
- Spinal cord
- Brain
,Human brain is the most developed brain in the evolution. Human has the largest brain
compared to body weight.
Neuroplasticity
- The brain is plastic:
o Neural tissue has the capacity to adapt to the world by changing how its
functions are organized → there is always influence of the environment. If you can
adapt to that, than you can survive.
o Neuroplasticity is seen both in the developing brain and in adaptations of
brain structure following injury
epigenetics gene expression can be due by environmental factors.
- Study of differences in gene expression related to environment and experience
- Epigenetic factors do not change your genes, but they do influence how your
genes operate
- Epigenetic changes can persist throughout a lifetime, and the cumulative effects can
make dramatic differences in how your genes work
Example: Plastic patterns of neural organization: phenotypic plasticity
An individual’s genotype (genetic makeup) interacts with the environment to elicit a specific
phenotype from a large repertoire of possibilities. One of the mice got some extra food with
chemicals that trigger genes. The genetic make up was changed by food.
Studying brain and behavior in modern humans
- Culture, permitted by a highly specialized social brain, is strictly a human
acquisition
o Learned behaviors that are passed on from one generation to the next
through teaching and learning
- The brain – and especially the cortex – is highly flexible
o That means that humans can live VERY different life styles in VERY
different environments, with equal skill and success. That also means
that individual differences in brain organization are huge! The average
brain does not exist! If you have a very different childhood, your brain can
developed different. The brain look the same for people from different country’s.
, Anatomical & functional divisions of the nervous system
General overview of the nervous system. Three different parts.
Overview of the structure of the brain
How evolution is related to the function of the brain.
Some parts of the brain is very simple in the vertebrate brain, but there are still the same parts
in the developed human brain.
Forebrain: Major structure of the brain, consisting of two almost
identical hemispheres (left and right). Prominent in mammals and
birds, responsible for most higher order conscious behaviors.
Cerebellum: “Little brain”
- Involved in the coordination of motor and cognitive
processes.
- It has more cells than the rest of the brain
Brainstem: Central structures of the brain, including the hindbrain,
midbrain, thalamus & hypothalamus. Source of behavior in simpler
animals, responsible for most of our unconscious behaviors.
Forebrain: cerebral (neo) cortex
The cerebral cortex is a thin sheet composed of nerve tissue folded many times to fit inside
the skull responsible for regulating various mental activities.
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