Introduction to Biopsychology
[PSB 4002]
Professor Josh Herrington
DM 249 305-348-1230
Jherr033@fiu.edu
website: dpblab.fiu.edu
Part 3
Final Exam
• 100 points possible
• 50 points from textbook and lecture material
from now until the end of the semester
(equivalent to Midterm #3)
• 50 points from the questions already asked on
Midterm #1 and Midterm #2
Research on the Origins of Cognitive
Development Poses a Unique Challenge
– Infants can’t talk and thus can’t tell us what they think,
see, or feel (just like other animal infants)
– Since we can’t ask them direct questions like we can of
older children, researchers have to devise creative
ways of presenting questions and inferring meaningful
answers from infants
Modern Methods in Cognitive Research
• Today we have a variety of different research
methods at our disposal for assessing infant
perception and cognition
• These advances fall into two major categories,
psychophysiological methods and behavioral
methods
– The majority of infant research has been
conducted with behavioral methods
– However, with the advance of technology,
there is an increasing focus on
psychophysiological methods of inquiry
Psychophysiological Methods
• Heart-Rate
– The rate at which the heart beats (beats/min.)
changes as a function of stimulation
• increased HR to fearful stimuli (defensive
reaction)
• decreased HR to interesting stimuli (orienting
reaction)
– HR is employed in studies of selective attention
and information processing in infancy
• if an infant exhibits decreased HR to a stimulus
(e.g., a face, a speech sound, a taste) this is
interpreted as evidence that infant finds the
stimulus interesting and is focusing on it
Psychophysiological Methods
ERP (event-related potentials)
Electrical potentials reflecting the activity
of a population of neurons engaged
in a specific task in a particular brain
region.
This activity is the sum of millions of
neurons. For example, the
processing of a visual stimulus in the
occipital cortex or the processing of a
speech stimulus in the temporal
cortex
Behavioral Methods
• looking time
• head turning
• non-nutritive sucking
Looking Measures
• Habituation paradigm (visual recovery)
• Head turning paradigm
Infant Eye-Tracking
Introduction to Biopsychology
[PSB 4002]
Professor Josh Herrington
DM 249 305-348-1230
Jherr033@fiu.edu
website: dpblab.fiu.edu
Traditional Views of Cognition
• Have tended to use a computer metaphor of mind,
focused on “information processing”
• Have tended to assume that cognition can be
understood by focusing on the individual’s internal
processes
• Have tended to emphasize computation, encoded
representations, cognition as passive retrieval of
rules, strategies, etc.
“non-cognitive” approaches to cognitive
development
Contemporary research in neuroscience, cognitive
neuroscience, psychology, and robotics suggests
that knowledge is embedded in, distributed
across, and thus inseparable from non-cognitive
processes of perceiving and acting (embodied
cognition)
The New Approach to Cognition: increasingly
viewed as a complex system that includes
traditionally “non-cognitive” processes
Nested Domains of Human Development
Embodied Cognition View
Emphasizes “relational analysis” :
focuses on the complex interplay among
brain, body, and environment and how
this rich dynamic both constrains and
guides cognitive processes
Putting it all together
The Challenge:
How does a learner who does not know
what there is to learn manage to learn
anyway?
scaffolding
Do Other Animals Possess Language?
Speech perception and speech production
• Since full-blown language can be studied
only in humans, less is known about its
anatomy and physiology that is known
about most other behaviors.
• Several thousand years ago, the Roman
physician Galen knew that language was
usually represented in the left side of the
brain, but little more was known about the
neurology of language until the 19th
century.
Broca’s Area
• In 1861, Paul Broca described a patient that
had a great deal of difficulty in producing
speech, but his understanding of speech was
not affected.
• Broca’s area is now known to lie adjacent to
the primary motor cortex that controls the
lips, tongue, voice box, etc.
Wernicke’s area
• In 1874, Carl Wernicke described patients who
uttered meaningless sentences (so-called “word
salad”) and seemed to not understand what he or she
was being told.
• This led to the discovery of Wernicke’s area, which
for most people is located in the left hemisphere of
the cortex (like Broca’s area).
• The existence of such specific deficits implies a
specification of function within the language regions
of the cortex. (remember the importance of
“necessary but not sufficient” to prevent confusion
about the concept of distributed control)
The motor production of speech
• Speech involves manipulation and
control of the diaphragm, lungs, muscles
of the thorax (which blow air up the
windpipe), the vocal cords, the chest,
throat, mouth, nose and head cavities
(which serve as resonators), and the
tongue, lips, palate, and teeth, which
together produce and modify vowels and
consonants
Language Emerges as a Complex System
• does not depend on any single ability (for example,
requires both speech perception and speech production)
• emerges from skills and “developmental resources” that
interact over long periods of time (beginning prenatally)
• language acquisition requires a social and language
environment where adults scaffold and promote language
development in infants and children
Prenatal Learning of Prosody
• mothers read a story aloud to their fetuses twice
a day during the last 6 weeks of pregnancy
• after the infants were born, they heard a tape
recording of the familiar story versus a novel
story that differed in prosody
• the test stories were read by both the mother
and by an unfamiliar woman
Newborns Prefer the Familiar Story
• results showed that regardless of who read the story,
newborns preferred to listen to the familiar story
• infants showed their preference in a nonnutritive
sucking procedure, by sucking more often in order to
hear the familiar story
• even in utero, fetuses are able to learn about the
prosody of language and the unique intonation
patterns that characterize one story versus another
• these findings support the idea that during the last
weeks of gestation, fetuses are hearing and learning
about the sounds and prosody of their native
language, primarily by regular exposure to their
mother’s voice
Introduction to Biopsychology
[PSB 4002]
Professor Josh Herrington
DM 249 305-348-1230
Jherr033@fiu.edu
website: dpblab.fiu.edu
scaffolding
The Tragic Case of “Genie”
suggested to many that
there must be a “critical
period” for language
acquisition
Consciousness
Some Big Questions
• How do brain processes result in conscious
states?
• Is consciousness localized in certain regions
of the brain or is it a global phenomenon?
• If it is confined to certain brain regions,
which ones?
Big Questions (Cont.)
• What is the right level for explaining
consciousness? Is it the level of neurons
and synapses, or do we have to go to
higher functional levels such as neuronal
maps or networks of neurons?
• Might we even have to go beyond the
boundaries of the brain?
Big Questions (Cont.)
• Can we explain consciousness with
existing theories or do we need
some revolutionary new theoretical
concepts to explain it?
• What is “it”?
A Working Definition of
CONSCIOUSNESS:
• Consciousness consists of inner,
qualitative, subjective states and
processes of awareness.
• In other words – being aware of being
aware
Consciousness…
• Consciousness, so defined, begins when we
wake in the morning from sleep and
continues until we fall asleep again, die, go
into a coma, or otherwise become
“unconscious”
• It includes all of the enormous variety of
the awareness we think of as characteristic
of our waking life
It includes everything from:
• feeling a pain
• perceiving objects
visually
• states of anxiety
or depression
• working out
crossword puzzles
• playing chess
• trying to remember
your aunt’s phone
number
• arguing about politics
• or just wishing you
were somewhere else
Being Consciousness
• This “being consciousness” is at one level
easy to observe by others
• When we are not conscious, our bodies
collapse, our eyes roll up in their orbits, our
brain waves become large, slow, and regular.
Being Consciousness (Cont.)
• While these outerphysical signs of
consciousness are pretty clear for all to see, it
is our inner (cognitive, emotional,
perceptual; reflective) life that counts most
for us and what we would like to better
understand
• How does it happen?
Being Someone
• Even though we take it for granted, one
thing we will need to understand is why and
how we all experience ourselves as “being
someone”
• For example, at this moment you all have
the impression that it is you who is hearing
this lecture. And it is you who is forming
thoughts about it.
Introduction to Biopsychology
[PSB 4002]
Professor Josh Herrington
DM 249 305-348-1230
Jherr033@fiu.edu
website: dpblab.fiu.edu
Midterm # 3
• Friday, APRIL 5th
• 50 multiple choice questions
• Study guide and sample test
questions by Wednesday, March
27th
The Self
• Our daily experience makes us think that
we are “someone” who is experiencing
the world
• We commonly refer to this phenomenon
by speaking of the “self ”
Consciousness
• For humans, consciousness is always tied to
an individual,
first-person perspective:
“I”
“me”
“mine”
A big question:
• how far does consciousness go?
• which species have it and which don’t?
Primary (Core) Consciousness
• The ability to build a multimodal scene
based on several different sources of
concurrent information.
• Does not necessarily contain any selfreferential aspect - it lives in the present
(“here” and “now”), tied to the
succession of events in real time.
Biological functions of brain
structures which support core
consciousness appear to
overlap…
(even though they are widely
distributed in the brain):
1) regulating homeostasis and signaling body
structure and state
2) participating in processes of attention
3) participating in the processes of
wakefulness and sleep
4) participating in the processes of emotion
and feeling
5) participating in the learning process
Primary or Core Consciousness
• The function or usefulness of core
consciousness seems related to the
maintenance and regulation of the
biological self (yes, homeostasis)
…
PRIMARY OR CORE CONSCIOUSNESS
• is the process of achieving a neural
pattern which brings together, in about
the same instant, the pattern for the
object, the pattern for the organism,
and the pattern for the relationship
between the two (integrating internal
and external).
Higher-Order (Human) Consciousness
• Emerges when reference to the past,
future, and self become available.
• Appears to be tied to the ability for
autobiographical memory, the ability for
language, and being situated in a
social/cultural network (to provide
scaffolding)
Introduction to Biopsychology
[PSB 4002]
Professor Josh Herrington
DM 249 305-348-1230
Jherr033@fiu.edu
website: dpblab.fiu.edu
Midterm # 3
• Friday, APRIL 5th
• 50 multiple choice questions
• Study guide and sample test
questions by Wednesday, March
27th
• With the emergence of higher-order
consciousness through
autobiographical memory and
language, there is an explicit coupling
of feelings and values, yielding a
subjectivity with narrative powers,
creating a fabric of “identity”,
“beliefs” and a “point of view”
Explanation
• These beliefs and your point of view
powers our need for “explanation” to
maintain them.
• Why this “higher-order” type of
consciousness?
• Why do we appear to have something
beyond “primary” consciousness?
Predictable
• Most often the least “predictable” or
most difficult to explain aspect of our
environment is the social one
– making sense of the behavior,
intentions, and beliefs of others
Cognitive Tricks
• Some have argued that higher-order
consciousness initially emerged as a cognitive
“trick” to allow an individual to better predict
the social behavior of other members of his
or her group.
Theory of Mind
• If you are awareof your own
intentions, beliefs, thoughts, etc.
then you can extend this knowledge
of the “self” to help make sense of
the thoughts and behaviors of others
–This idea is usually termed the
“theory of mind”
Paradox?
• Conscious experience is rather slow
and “behind the curve” of much of our
actions and decisions (driving a car,
returning a tennis serve, finding the
next words to make a sentence),
despite our impression that “I” am
“making it happen”
Free Will?
Introduction to Biopsychology
[PSB 4002]
Professor Josh Herrington
DM 249 305-348-1230
Jherr033@fiu.edu
website: dpblab.fiu.edu
Midterm # 3
• Friday, APRIL 5th
• 50 multiple choice questions
• Study guide and sample test
questions by Wednesday, March
27th
Human Consciousness
• To be aware of oneself as well as to be aware of
others
• To be able to feel and express emotions
• To be able to engage in complex cognition,
including symbolic representations and in
particular, language
• To be able to think about things not present in
the immediate environment (imagination)
• To be able to predict the consequences of events
never before experienced by simulating those
events (including future events)
Retrospection and Prospection
• This remarkable set of abilities requires both
“retrospection” - the ability to re-experience
the past AND “prospection” - the ability to
pre-experience the future by simulating it in
our conscious awareness
• This allows us to be able to go beyond “the
information given”
• Most of the time our judgments and
decisions in any situation are arrived at as
a consequence of the evaluation of a set
of internally generated “alternatives”.
These alternatives are typically based on
the seamless integration of the past, the
present, and possible futures.
• These counterfactuals are constructed to
compare what happened or is happening with
what could have happened. Without such
alternatives or simulations, it would be very
difficult to fine tune our behavior and to avoid
making the same mistakes over and over again,
as well as anticipate and plan for needs not
currently experienced.
Acting NOW in Anticipation of LATER
Examples:
Making your lunch
Flossing your teeth
Applying to graduate school
Investing in a savings account
Address threats of global warming
??
• These remarkable abilities to “mental time travel”
were not always available to us – coming to terms
with the flow of time and becoming skilled at using
the past and possible futures to inform and direct
our actions, choices, and goals emerged over a long
period of time during early childhood
• Of course, now we take such abilities for granted
and can’t imagine operating any other way
Comprehension of yesterday and
tomorrow emerges gradually over the
preschool years.
Recent evidence suggests that imagining
the future depends on the same neural
circuits and mechanisms that are needed
for remembering the past.
Simulation of future events seems to require
a system that can flexibly re-combine details
from past events.
According to this idea, thoughts of past and
future events draw on similar information
stored in episodic memory.
This notion has been termed the:
constructive episodic simulation
hypothesis
and is generally presumed to be unique
to humans
For example, if young children have limited
skills at reconstructing the events of the
past, they will likely also have limited ability
to anticipate or predict the future
Oh boy, chocolate pudding!
Introduction to Biopsychology
[PSB 4002]
Professor Josh Herrington
DM 249 305-348-1230
Jherr033@fiu.edu
website: dpblab.fiu.edu
Midterm # 3
• Friday, APRIL 5th
• 50 multiple choice questions
• Study guide and sample test
questions by Wednesday, March
27th
Modulation of internal and external
events through the construct of ‘self’
allows us to remove ourself from the
present and construct “alternative”
interpretations of past, present, and
future events. In normal individuals, this
“off-line” ability to consciously evaluate
and adjust behavior relies in large part
on the activity of the prefrontal cortex.
plans, goals, strategies, decisions
The prefrontal cortex is thought to be
crucial for integrating and discriminating
internally and externally derived models
of the world. These functions occupy a
major portion of our conscious
awareness, including rumination on the
past, speculation about the future, and
real-time daydreams about a different
present and possible futures.
The “flashlight” vs. the “floodlight”
experience of time
Wow, remember that
great bone I had last
Thanksgiving?
Paradox:
even though we can retrospect and
prospect, thereby making our
“temporal window” very large
compared to other animals, this
particular moment (now) is all we have
to work with consciously (in other
words, all consciousness occurs in
“real-time”)
Introduction to Biopsychology
[PSB 4002]
Professor Josh Herrington
DM 249 305-348-1230
Jherr033@fiu.edu
website: dpblab.fiu.edu
William James (1842-1910) –
Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Moral and
Religious Philosopher
Published the hugely
influential
two volume book
“The Principles of
Psychology” in 1890.
William James
• In that important book James described
consciousness as:
–individual (private)
–continuous and continually changing
–intentional (about something) and
selective
–a process, not a thing
Building on James
• Building on these basic insights provided by
James, we now also recognize that
consciousness has at least three features or
aspects that make it different from most other
biological phenomena (and make it more
difficult to study scientifically)
Qualitativeness
• qualitativeness: every conscious state has a
certain qualitative feel to it, what it feels like
to have that conscious experience.
• For example, the experience of tasting beer
is very different from hearing Beethoven’s 9th
symphony, and both of these have a
different qualitative character from seeing a
sunset.
Subjectivity
• subjectivity: conscious states exist only when
they are experienced by some human or
animal.
• In other words, in order for there to be a
qualitative feel to some event, there must be
some subject that experiences the event.
• Thus, all conscious states are essentially
subjective.
Unity
• unity: all conscious experience comes as part
of one unified conscious field.
• If I am sitting at my desk looking out the
window, I do not just see the sky and the
trees, at the same time I feel the pressure of
my body against the chair, the shirt against my
back, the aftertaste of coffee.
• In other words, I experience all of these as
part of a single unified conscious field or
experience.
Consciousness
• Consciousness (OUR AWARENESS) seems to
be constantly on the move
• A moment ago you were asking yourself
whether what I said made sense, now you
are listening to this sentence, in a moment
you will let your mind wonder elsewhere….
Consciousness
• WILLIAM JAMES referred to this FLOWING
QUALITY (constantly changing) as
THE “STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS”
MIDTERM # 3
Friday, April 5th
• 50 possible points
• Questions drawn from textbook (Chapters 20,
21, 22) and lecture material
Mind & Behavior
• Human mind and behavior need to be
understood by situating them properly within a
brain in a body that lives in an eventful world
abounding with objects and people.
• The brain offers the necessary biophysical basis
for individual cognition and consciousness; it
alone, however, is not sufficient to engender
the mind, behavior, or consciousness.
Interoception
• As humans, we perceive feelings from our
bodies that relate our state of well-being, our
energy and stress levels, our mood and
disposition. How do we have these subjective
feelings?
“The Material Me”
The Anterior Insular Cortex
• Recent findings from neuro-imaging studies
suggest a fundamental role for the AIC in
awareness, from bowel distention to cigarette
craving, from decision making to sudden
insight.
An increasing number of studies address the
functional role of the insular cortex. A
number of reports have connected the
insular cortex to important higher-level
cognitive functions, including social norm
violation, general task monitoring, selfawareness, and even consciousness.
Furthermore, the insular cortex might play a
crucial role in some neuropsychiatric
disorders, such as drug addiction.
Mind & Behavior
• The brain is embodied and the body is
embedded in its environment – you can’t
separate the activity of the brain from the
body or the environment
• Further, in humans, society and its culture
distributes cognitive activity across many
brains. We do not have an “isolated” mind.
In contrast, non-human animals do. What
they know is what they have experienced
directly.
Starting from scratch, guided by only
the preceding generation
Because of our use of language, because of our
extended period of development (and the
scaffolding its requires), because of our societies
and cultures and their artifacts, we don’t have to
“start over” each generation.
Just by being born human, we each “inherit” an
enormous potential store of knowledge and
information. We can stand on (and benefit from)
the shoulders of the many generations of people
who came before us, and who left us their
insights, experiences, failures and successes.
Extelligence
In humans, society and its culture
distributes cognitive activity across
many brains. We do not have an
“isolated” mind. In contrast, nonhuman animals do. What they know is
limited to what they have experienced
or observed directly.
When children are educated, ideas and
technologies are maintained across
generations, spanning the gaps left by the
passing of individual brains. When reading
and writing are mastered, ideas and
technologies can be maintained by anyone
with access to a teacher, books, and more
recently a computer (including the ideas and
histories of a different culture, different
country, different era).
The combination of prospective thinking and
extelligence extends the mind’s reach, allowing
for long-term planning, formulation of possible
scenarios, “virtual” experiences to guide,
constrain and add meaning to our “real” or
direct experiences.
This allows a wide range of human activities
not seen in other animals, including art, music,
literature, film, as well as multiple forms of
“entertainment”, such as sports, gambling,
video games, shopping, amusement parks,
etc.
The external environment, actively structured
by us, becomes a source of cognitively
enhancing “wideware” - external items,
artifacts, tools, etc. that scaffold our cognitive
skills and abilities.
Examples: smart phones, calculators, calendars,
audio and video recordings, etc.
“externalizing the nervous system”
Our trans-generational advantage
Psychiatric Disease
• The general characteristics of psychiatric
(mental) disease:
–perceptual awareness and orientation
–symbolic conceptual functioning
–emotional responses
–executive control
Psychiatric Disease
• A given syndrome or disorder is not:
– “just a matter of biochemistry” or
– “just a matter of neuroanatomy”, or
– “just a matter of genetics”, or
– “just a matter of individual history”
• It is always some combination of these
varied factors. Thus, no two patients will
be alike and no two successful
treatments will be alike.
Psychiatric Disease
• The example of schizophrenia:
–Type I. psychotic episodes, delusions,
hallucinations, disordered and
paranoid thoughts
–Type II. Loss of emotional response
(flat affect), abnormal postures, lack of
spontaneous speech
broken brains
Psychiatric Disease
• The general characteristics of psychiatric
(mental) disease:
–perceptual awareness and orientation
–symbolic conceptual functioning
–emotional responses
–executive control
Psychiatric Disease
• A given syndrome or disorder is not:
– “just a matter of biochemistry” or
– “just a matter of neuroanatomy”, or
– “just a matter of genetics”, or
– “just a matter of individual history”
• It is always some combination of these
varied factors. Thus, no two patients will
be alike and no two successful
treatments will be alike.
Risk and Protective Factors
• Individuals vary in their exposure to certain
environments and the biological systems they
inherit.
• Mediators and moderators: influence the
onset and maintenance of psychiatric and
developmental disorders.
Risk Factors
• Examples of Risk Factors are:
– Chronic sexual/physical abuse
– Lack of family structure
– Low SES
– Biological risk factors (e.g. genetic, neurological,
hormonal)
Protective Factors
• In addition to risk factors, protective factors
help to explain differential onsets outcomes in
psychopathology.
• Examples are:
– High intelligence
– Adaptability
– Maintenance of physical health
– Diet
Multifinality
Shared
Experience or
Trait
Equifinality
Shared
Outcome
Psychiatric Disease
• The example of schizophrenia:
–Type I. psychotic episodes, delusions,
hallucinations, disordered and
paranoid thoughts
–Type II. Loss of emotional response
(flat affect), abnormal postures, lack of
spontaneous speech
Schizophrenia
• Characterized by core symptoms:
– Hallucinations (physical manifestations and/or
“hearing voices”). Can be pleasant or unpleasant.
– Delusions
– Actions that are controlled by outside influence
– “Je suis Napoleon!”
Epidemiology of Schizophrenia
• Onset is variable, but most common onset is
in the 20’s and 30’s.
• Some evidence for early life development risk
factors.
• A “spectrum” disorder
• Thought to involve abnormalities in:
– Hippocampus
– Cortex (loss of grey matter)
– Dopamine imbalance
“Paris Syndrome”
Treatment
• Some success with antidopaminergic
medications, but not without consequence.
• As of now, there is no “cure” for chronic
schizophrenia, however episodic
manifestations may come and go based on
environmental context.
• Animal models of the disorder have proven
elusive.
Developmental Disorders
• Atypical development of brain/body systems
leads to developmental disorders such as:
– Fetal alcohol syndrome
• Physical and cognitive impairments (a spectrum disorder).
– Down Syndrome
• Low IQ (around 50), high susceptibility to heart disease,
thyroid disorders, and some forms of cancer.
– Autism
• Inability to recognize other’s emotions and intentions, low
language production, high degree of emotional reactivity,
self-stimulation, and repetitive behaviors (a spectrum
disorder).
The Use of Robotics to Discover the
Dynamics of Embodiment
Embodied or Epigenetic Robotics
• Makes the assumption that behavior is
result of the complex interaction between
the system and its circumstances, and not
directly specified by or predicted from a
description of its initial state
• Rodney Brooks, a pioneering roboticist, has
termed this “intelligence without
representation”
Assumptions
• The key idea is that an intelligent system will be emerge
from initially limited perception-action couplings.
• Such a system is defined not by its”programmed”
function (knowledge representation) but by its activity.
• The range and possibilities for actions are context
dependent, that is depend on the situation the system
finds itself in.
• This embeds development in a physical, biological, and
social world
The Challenges of Epigenetic Robotics
• Learning about objects and events
• Learning about people
• Learning about the self
(sound familiar?)
Lessons from Human Development
how does a learner who does not know what
there is to learn manage to learn anyway?
(remember, you don’t know what you don’t know)
be multi-modal
be incremental
be physical (explore)
be social
learn a language
The costs of extended consciousness
• knowing danger, fear, pain, loss, and
death
• Our extended knowledge is obtained in a
bargain we did not choose
-the cost of a deeper and wider existence is
the loss of innocence about that
existence
• As humans, we are aware from a young age
that we and those we love will certainly die
Free Will
• Do we control our own minds?
– Most people assume they have conscious
access to their intentions and motives and
assume they consciously guide their choices
and actions
– Evidence from psychology and neuroscience
suggests these assumptions are optimistic at
best. Indeed, many of our actions and ideas
spring to life in a way that can only admire –
or at times regret.
BEHAVIOUR
SENSORY
STIMULATION
Patterned
neural activity
Neural
connectivity
Individual
nerve cell
activity
Neural
growth
Cell membrane
Non-neural
activity
Non-neural
growth
Extracellular
biochemistry
Intracellular
biochemistry
Protein
synthesis
GENETIC
ACTIVITY
PHYSICAL
INFLUENCES
Johnston & Edwards (2002)