A comprehensive summary of lecture notes on neuroscience including the Nervous system, Hearing, Vision etc.
Suitable for 1st-year university and A-level students
What is Brain and Behaviour
Psychology deals with mental processes in isolation from underlying physiology
We talk about behaviour, but we don’t always tie this to the brain which is instructing this behaviour
The neuroscience module introduces the structures and processes in the brain that underlie behaviour
The brain underlies all human behaviour, it cannot be done without the brain
At a fundamental level, all psychological phenomena are the result of the physiology of the nervous system
It is essential to understand how the brain functions to understand behaviour
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the specific study of the nervous system
It has several different sub-disciplines
Biopsychology (the biology of behaviour)
Neuroanatomy (structure of the nervous system)
Neurochemistry (chemical bases of neural activity)
Neuroendocrinology (interactions between the nervous system and the
endocrine system)
Neuropathology (nervous system disorders)
Neuropharmacology (effects of drugs on neural activity)
Neurophysiology (functions and activities of the nervous system)
The endocrine system includes all the glands in the body that produce hormones
The human brain is the most complex structure in the universe (100 billion neurons, each with 1000s of
connections to other neurons)
The Connectome
A comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain, and is known as a “wiring diagram”
Would include the mapping of all neural connections within an organism’s nervous system
Provides the opportunity to achieve never realised conclusions about the living human brain
Humans Have Big Brains!
Over 2-3 million years, the human brain size has tripled (450g to 1300g)
Most of the increase is due to the cerebral cortex
Cerebral cortex is the most advanced part of the brain
It involves high level thinking (problem solving)
It makes sense that it is the most developed as humans are more sophisticated human beings
We are much more intelligent than our primate cousins
Primates can do impressive things such as use tools, understand certain symbols, manipulate, and deceive
each other, but they are very far away from human intelligence
However, elephants and whales have bigger brain sizes
But we have very large brains relative to our body size
We don’t have the biggest brains in terms of relative size as dolphins have very big relative brain sizes
Relative brain sizes are not indicative of intelligence
Brains are expensive in terms of energy consumption (takes up 10x more energy relative to proportion of body
size)
Tool Use
Our brains helped us to make tools and to use them
As we started to use tools there may have been an evolutionary pressure on us to develop big brains to
exploit this ability
However, until 200,000 years ago tools were very simple, they did not develop significantly during the
most rapid increase in our brain size
Therefore, rapid brain increase did not coincide with tool use
Some of the primitive tools:
Oldowan (Ethiopia) 2.4 million years ago (Homo Habilis)
Acheulean (East-Central Africa) 1.5 million years ago (Homo Eraaster and Homo Erectus)
Mousterian (Europe, Africa) 200,00-40,000 years ago (Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens)
Machiavellian Hypothesis (Nicholas Humphrey)
We evolved big brains to manipulate each other in social situations (to plot with and against other individuals for
status)
Humans can form complex social interactions beyond any species
Our big brains may have been needed for the sophisticated use of language and for interpreting the intentions of
others (makes us uniquely successful)
We can communicate through science
However, baboons and chimpanzees also show Machiavellian intelligence, and there is no evolutionary
pressure on them to develop large brains to compete
So, if other species have this, it cannot explain our big brains
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