With just these notes, I passed the exam on a very good note. They are notes of the neuropsychology course in English, including text on the slides, extra information on the slides, and additional information from question hours.
Test Bank for An Introduction to Brain and Behavior 6th Bryan Kolb , Ian Q. Whishaw , G. Campbell Teskey A+ 2024
Brain & Behavior (Chapter 1 & 2)
Complete summary of Brain & Behavior
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Neuropsychology
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Neuropsychology
College 1: evolution and function if the nervous system
Evolution and historical perspectives on mind and brain
Why the brain is so important
- The brains primary function is to produce behavior. To do so it must;
o Receive information about the world (trough senses)
o Integrate information to create a sensory reality
▪ Feels real to us, but is different for every species, so there is no real
sensory experience
o Make a constant stream of predictions about what to expect
▪ Only if you can make predictions, you can adapt your behavior
o Produce commands to control the movement of muscles
▪ The behavior we observe is a product of this command and muscles
- The makeup of the nervous system altogether allows the brain to do so
What is behavior
- Relatively fixed behavior → Dependent on heredity (you can easily do)
- Relatively flexible behavior → Dependent on learning
- Complexity of behavior varies considerably in different species depending on
complexity of the nervous system (and the brain)
o The more complex the system, more complex brain, more complex behavior
Philosophy of brain and behavior: Aristotle and mentalism
- Mentalism (start): 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
o Was not observable
After that: Descartes and dualism
- Solve problem that how can our body be influenced by something that isn’t there
- 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
- Mind is connected to the body through the pineal gland of the brain
- Simple behaviors are controlled by the body
- → but difficult to prove and everything
o mind-body problem: difficult/ impossible to explain a nonmaterial mind in
command of a material body
→ solution be Darwin and materialism (still believe in now)
- materialism: behavior can be explained as a function of the nervous system without
considering the mind as a separate substance
o Related to evolutionary theory of Darwin
o Does not say there is nothing like thoughts or emotions
- Darwins concept of natural selection:
o Differential success in reproduction of different characteristics/ behavior
(phenotypes) results from the interaction of organism with their environment
o → changes to pass on genes are higher if you are better able to cope with
environments → that is how species develop
, o Traits/ behavior that increase reproductive success and changes of survival
will be passed on to offspring → competition is a key concept
Evolution of animals having nervous systems → from easy to complex
- Nerve net → segmented nerve trunk → ganglia → brain
- Also with humans it is likely we started as a very basic nervous system
- But everyone adapted in a different way → that made it that our brain could better
develop and become more and more complex
- The human brain now has the largest size relative to body weight, and the higher this
ratio, the more complex behavior you can show → Humans highest ratio
Neuroplasticity → the brain is plastic
- Neural tissue has the capacity to adapt to the world by changing how its functions
are organized
o Its changing and developing as a function of how you behave and interact
with the environment → your behavior also changes your brain
- Because the brain can adapt to the world, different species could develop
- It is seen both in developing brain and in adaptions of brain structure following injury
o Children in more stimulating environments have different brains than children
poor environments
Epigenetics
- How the brain can adapt is related to epigenetics
o Epigenetics: how the environment can influence brain function because it can
turn on and off curtain genes and that influences the make up of brain
- Study of differences in gene expression related to environment and experience
- Epigenetic factors don’t change your genes, but 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 and how likely a species is to pass
on its genes → evolution
Phenotypic plasticity:
- An individual’s genotype (genetic makeup) interacts with the environment to elicit a
specific phenotype from a large repertoire of possibilities
o Example: same DNA but different food so metabolism changed
Studying brain and behavior in modern humans
- The brain, especially the cortex, is highly flexible
- That means humans can live very different lifestyles in very different environments,
with equal skill and success. That also means that individuals differences in brain
organization are huge! → there is no average brain
o Can only say things about populations, it is always about general effects
Anatomical and functional divisions of the nervous system
, - The bacteria in the guts have a big impact on our brain → so what you eat can affect
your mood
The brain
Overview of the structure of the brain:
- Forebrain: major structure, consisting of two almost identical hemispheres.
Prominent in mammals and birds, responsible for most higher order conscious
behavior → The bigger, the more complex behavior
- Cerebellum: little brain. Involved in the coordination of motor and cognitive
processes → has actually as many neurons as the rest of the brain
- Brainstem: central structures of the brain including hindbrain, midbrain, thalamus
and hypothalamus. Source of behavior in simple animals, responsible for most of our
unconscious behaviors
- Spinal cord: consist of nerves that carry incoming and outgoing messages between
brain and the rest of the body including reflexes
-
- More complex animals have more complex brains. The forebrain and cortex are the
highest in the hierarchy and explain the most complex behavior
Forebrain
- Cerebral/ Neo cortex → is a thin sheet composed of 6 layers of different types of
nerve cells folded many times to fit inside the skull responsible for regulating various
mental activities (higher order activities)
o Gyri are the bumps, sulci are the grooves
- Allocortex cortex: evolutionary older part of cortex consisting of 3 or 4 layers of
nerve cells present in structures of the limbic system (cingulate cortex, hippocampus,
amygdala), as well as structures related to olfactory system
o Cingulate cortex: controlling motivational states, attention and self-
monitoring (oops response comes from here)
Orientation
- “anatomical orientation” illustrates direction of a cut, or section through the brain
(part a) from the perspective of a viewer (part b)
o Coronal (frontal -), horizontal (dorsal -), sagittal (medial view)
, - “brain-body orientation” illustrates brain-structure location from the frame of
reference of the face
o Dorsal (top), ventral (bottom brain), rostral (anterior, front), lateral (side),
medial (midden)
Cell structure of neurons: important structural categories
- Gray matter (the cortex):
o The actual cell bodies (about 80 billion neurons) and
their dendrites
o Cell bodies/ somas are aligned in the cortex
- White matter:
o Fat-sheathed neuronal axons, plus glial cells (about 100 billion) for structural
support
- Corpus callosum
o Fiber system consisting white matter tracts connecting the two hemispheres
o The corpus callosum is largest white matter structure, consisting of 200- 250
million contralateral axonal projections
- Axons running together form nerve outside CNS, tract within CNS
Lobes of cerebral cortex
- Frontal: speech, initiates muscle movement, planning, decision making and EF
- Parietal: cognitive and sensory integration for touch and body position, attention
- Temporal: auditory, taste, memory, sensory integration → recognizes faces
- Occipital: visual
Forebrain: basal ganglia
- Controls voluntary movement: control and coordination of movement patterns
rather than deciding to move or activating the muscles to move.
o Is already here in less complex animals, less complex function
o Many regions work together from different layers for movement
- Works together with thalamus, substantia nigra and subthalamic nucleus
- Related disorders: Parkinson’s and Tourette’s
Forebrain: limbic system
- Group of structures between cortex and brain stem
- Principal structures: amygdala, hippocampus and cingulate cortex
- Allocortex → again evolutionary a bit older
- Regulates emotions and MEMORY (to inform for dangers fe
animals)
- Hippocampus: representing Episodic memories
o Some become semantic memories, not associated with
any particular event
- Amygdala: emotional associations (emotional memories) are formed here
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