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Topic 4 HC 4 research methods
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HC 4 Research methodsChapter 7
This lecture is not about how the brain functions, but about how we can measure the brain functions.
we start with a bit of terminalogy in the beginning and then we
move on to how we can measure the brain and how we can
measure brain relationships. And then we have the different
methods of how to measure brain in relation to behavior.
Behavioural neuroscience
so we start with terminology.
What is behavioral neuroscience? Behavioral neuroscience means that we study the brain and the
mechanisms underlying our behavior. So we have a goal to understand how the human being is
working and what is the relation between brain and behavior. In order to achieve this goal we need
to measure the behavior and we need to have good methods to measure the functioning of the
brain.
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,So you see here in this figure the center for behavioral neuroscience. And you see the cognitive and
sensory processes, the behavioral excess, emotional health and modulation of structure/function
relations.
Measuring behaviour
So we need to measure behavior and we need to measure the functioning of the brain.
how to measure behavior, we call that neuropsychology. And we want to study the relation between
brain function and behavior. And understand how behavior and cognition are influences by brain
functions. Neuropsychology is concerned with the assessment and treatment of neurological
disorders. And you see here different tasks. The first one is called the corsi block tapping task and
that means that you have different blocks that appear and you should remember the order of the
blocks and tap them in the correct order. So it is a memory task. The second one is a mirror-drawing
task. The participants see an object in the mirror and they are asked to track the trace between the
two outlines. They were only allowed to look at the hand in the mirror. You need to cross a line that
constitutes an error. So you need to learn to draw it in the reversed order. People can easily learn
this and memorize it, but if you have a neurological disorder then it might be difficult to learn and to
memorize how you have done it. The third one is also a memory test of recent memory. You’re
showing objects and the participants task is to identify which object they have seen most recently.
The famous neuropsychological assessment test is called the mini mental state test. And this is to
diagnose dementia for example Alzheimer disease. It is a very simple test that asks people what day
it is today?, what day of the week is it?, where are you at the moment? So very simple questions.
So this is neuropsychology, the assessment treatment of neurological disorders.
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, That was about
measuring memory
functioning in
humans. But we can
also measure
behavior in animals.
Here is one example
of rats. This is also a
famous human task,
the digit-span test.
That means how
many digits you can
remember. And
here is a similar task for rats. The rats approach different boxes with a smell and they need to
memorize the order in which they have in counted the large number of boxes. So you also have sort
of a memory span how many boxes in a row a rat can memorize. And in the last box they get a
reward. So this are two examples of how you can study the working memory in humans and in rats.
Measuring the brain in relation to the behaviour: Brain manipulations
We can measure the brain in relation to the behavior. And one way to do this is we can manipulate
the brain.
that means we can modify and change the
brain to see how behavior is changed.
By doing so we can test and develop
hypotheses about how the brain affects
behavior.
There are three different ways to
manipulate the brain. We can lesion the
brain which means we destroy a specific
area in the brain and we see how behavior is changed. A famous example that comes in one of the
later lecture is that we learned about memory and what brain area is involved in memory and in the
1950s there was a patient who suffered from epilepsy and the hippocampus was removed. And
because of that he suffered from amnesia, memory loss. That’s how people before didn’t know what
the function and importance of the hippocampus was before this surgery. So that is one way to find
out what the relationship is between different brain regions and behavior, that is to lesion the brain.
Another way we can manipulate the brain is we can stimulate the brain. DBS means Deep Brain
Stimulation. And TMS means Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. That are two ways to stimulate the
brain and we can observe how the behavior is changed.
The third way to manipulate the brain is through drug manipulations. So we can administer a drug
and see what behavior changes.
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