Biological Roots of Behavioural
Neuroscience
Descartes' Model of the Mind (17th Century)
Believed that each person possessed a mind
o Something not subject to the laws of the universe
The sense organs of the body supply the mind with info about what is happening in the
environment
o And that using this info, the mind controlled the body's movements
In particular, it hypothesises that the interaction between the body and the mind takes place
in the pineal body
o A small organ on top of the brain stem
o Buried beneath the cerebral hemispheres
When the mind decides to perform an action, it tilts the pineal body in a particular direction
o Causes pressurised fluid to flow from the brain into the appropriate set of nerves
o This flow causes the muscles to inflate and move
The moving statues in the royal gardens were used as a model for theorising how the body
worked
o Pressurised water replaced pressurised fluid in the ventricles
o Pipes replaced by nerves
o Cylinders replaced muscles
o Hidden valves replaced by the pineal body
This is one of the first times a technological device was used as a model for explaining how
the nervous system works
It did not take long for this to be disproven by Luigi Galvani
o Electrical stimulation of a frog's nerve caused contraction of the muscle
Johannes Müller
19th century psychologist
Suggested that major advances in our understanding of the body would only be made by:
o Experimentally removing/isolating animals' organs
o Testing their responses to chemicals
o Altering the environment to see how they respond
Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies
o One of his most important contributions to the study of the physiology of beh
o Observed that we perceive the same basic messages (electrical impulse) of different
nerves in different ways
Optic nerve = visual image
Auditory nerve = sound
o This is bc the messages occur in diff channels
The portion of the brain that receives messages from the optic nerves
interprets the activity as visual stimulation
Even if the nerves aren't stimulated mechanically
E.g. when we rub our eyes, we see light
o Set the stage for performing experiments directly on the brain
Pierre Flourens
19th century physiologist
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