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summary transcription lecture premaster pedagogical sciences pedagogical sciences radboud university neuropsychology neuropsychology english topic 1
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Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)
pedagogische wetenschappen
Neuropsychologie
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HC 1 Topic 1 Evolution & Function of the nervous system
Chapter 1 (paragraph 1.1, 1.2 & 1.3) & Chapter 2
Overview Lecture
• Evolution & historical perspectives on mind & brain
• Anatomical & functional divisions of the nervous system
₋ Central nervous system
− Brain
− Spinal Cord
₋ Somatic nervous system
− Cranial nerves
− Spinal nerves
₋ Autonomic nervous system
− Sympathetic nervous system
− Parasympathetic nervous system
− Enteric nervous system
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;
• integrate information to create a sensory 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.
So first we have to ask ourselves, why is the brain so important? It is very likely you will work with
children in the future, so why do I need to learn about the brain? The primary function of the brain is
to produce behavior. That’s a quite difficult function, so how can the brain do that?
- The brain has to receive information about the world through our senses: touch, smell, sight,
hearing. All those senses send information to the brain.
- the brain needs to integrate this information to create a sensory reality. So I see the world like
I do, but a dog for example who also has a brain sees the world quite differently. So our brain
integrate the information it receives in order to create a reality that feels real to us but that is
different to every species that we have. So there’s nothing like the real sensory experience.
- And it’s very important to the brain to make predictions, so what is going to happen next?
That’s very important, because only if you can make predictions you can adapt your behavior.
Imagine, you’re walking on the street and a car is passing, you know you need to step away if
the car has a certain speed. Remember when the electric bicycles came, I had quite some
mistakes at the beginning that I didn’t estimate the time when a bike would be close to my
car because I didn’t expect the bike to go that quick. But now there are more electrical
bicycles so now your brain takes that into account, so it makes sure we have safe and
automatic behavior. So we have to make predictions.
- And the brain has to give commands to our muscles. So that’s how you see that I behave. So if
I would be in the car, you would see that I break. That’s actually nothing more than a
command from my brain to my muscles and my feet. So the behavior we observe is in the end
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, always a product of the muscles and the movements that we make. It’s very important that
the brain has a central role in this, so understanding how that happens will help you with
understanding behavior.
- And also the make up of the nervous system that you will learn about that helps he brain to
do this. So the brain doesn’t work alone, it works in combination with the somatic nervous
system and all the other nervous systems that I will tell you about today.
But given that it’s so relevant in behavior we can ask ourselves this question first: what is behavior?
There are different types of behavior:
- You can see behavior as a relatively fixed behavior. For example this bird. It can open the
coins as soon as it’s born. Human baby’s can suck from the moment they are born. That’s
innate behavior and that’s totally dependent on the genes, it’s just there when they are born.
- A different animal can also eat those coins, but has to learn it, so then it’s relatively flexible
behavior and that’s dependent on learning.
So there are different types of behavior. And you will learn a lot about learning in the brain. Its really
one of the amazing things the brain can do. Its so flexible and it can adapt so easily to the world and
to your behavior. And we will both tell you a bit about how that happens.
How complex our behavior is, is very much different in different species. And how complex the
behavior is that a certain animal can show, that depends on the complexity of the nervous system and
the brain. So the more complex the nervous system is, the more complex the brain is and the more
complex behavior the animal can display. And that learns us a lot about how the human brain is
developed because it’s developed from the very basic brain that some animals still have.
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,Philosophy of brain and behavior: Aristotle and Mentalism
Mentalism
• An explanation of behavior as a function of the nonmaterial mind
• Ancient Greece: Aristotle
₋ Psyche or soul: Synonym for mind; an entity once proposed to be the source of human
behavior, that lives after death
So how did people think about the brain and behavior in the past and how do we think about it now.
This is a very quick overview of philosophy of brain and behavior and how it all started and what the
main thing about the brain is at the moment.
It started all with mentalism. Mentalism is an explanation of behavior as a function of the
nonmaterial mind. What does that mean? A nonmaterial mind says there is actually something that’s
not in our body, we cannot see, we cannot touch, it doesn’t take any space, that influences our mind.
So its something like our soul. And it’s the entity that was once proposed to be the source of our
behavior but we couldn’t see it, we couldn’t measure it. And it would still be there if people would die.
That was the idea of Aristotle
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 physical principles
₋ Examples: sensation, movement, and digestion
• Mind is connected to the body through the pineal gland of the brain
• Mind–Body Problem
₋ Difficult / impossible to explain a nonmaterial mind in command of a material body
After that Descartes said, that’s quite difficult, we cannot measure that nonmaterial mind and how
can our body be influences by something that’s not there? So Descartes wanted to solve that problem
with his Dualism. He said that we still have a nonmaterial mind and we have a material body and
together they contribute to our behavior. So that seemed like a solution for how can this nonmaterial
stuff influence our behavior, he said it’s through our body. But in fact it may actually be more complex
so Descartes said that the nonmaterial mind influences our behavior through the pineal gland in the
brain. There’s one area in the brain that’s called pineal gland and there is where the nonmaterial
mind could influence our behavior. He also said that some simple behaviors were actually controlled
by the body, there was no nonmaterial mind needed for that.
But this theory is actually so difficult to prove so it was taken over by another theory because of the
mind-body problem. And the mind-body problem says its difficult or actually impossible to explain
how those two entities, a nonmaterial mind and a material body, interact. So how can something
that’s nonmaterial command something that’s material.
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, Philosophy of brain and behavior: Darwin and Materialism
Materialism
• Behavior can be explained as a function of the nervous system without considering the mind
as a separate substance
• 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 organisms with their
environment!!
• Traits / behavior that increase reproductive success and chances of survival will be passed on
to offspring
• Competition is a key concept
So that’s how we came to Materialism and that’s what we still believe in now. It’s the main
philosophy of how we think about the brain. It says behavior can be explain fully as a function of the
nervous system without considering the mind as a separate substance. Materialism doesn’t say
there’s nothing like thoughts in our head, it also doesn’t say that we don’t have emotions, but it says
that if we know a lot about the brain we can explain that by studying the brain. And it’s very much
related to evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin.
And as I already said, we can understand the human brain by studying the brain of animals that are
older in evolution or more simple. And that’s why this Materialism and Darwin are very much related,
because Darwin and the idea of natural selection says that the chances that someone can pass on
your genes and a human getting baby’s or animals getting small animals, so the differential success
in reproduction depends on the interaction of the organism with the environment. And it actually says
that if you’re better able to cope with the environment, the changes that you will pass on your genes
are higher. And because that happens over a long long time, species developed. So those who could
better adapt or had certain characteristics or behaviors, were better able to handle the environment
at that moment, they could reproduce more often. So that’s how species develop. So if you can adapt
to the environment and that turns out to be an advantage then you have much higher changes that
your children will survive and that’s how species developed in the end.
So certain traits and behavior depend on the changes of survival and on how likely it is that offspring
will also be able to adapt to de environment.
So there is a lot of competition between species but also within species so if you have certain behavior
that is an advantage for you and it increases your changes for reproduction then it’s likely that that
specific characteristic of a person or a species will continue.
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