Psychology
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In order for a relationship between two variables to be established, it has to be statistically
significant data, and there can be no other possible explanation
o Data also has to be repeatable
Mind over matter
o Brain and immune system are wired together and can influence one another
o Changes in consciousness can alter the immune system
o Consciousness has a physical basis
o Psychological phenomena have a physical basis
Look for evidence that something changes
o Can be as simple as a brain scan to prove that something changed
Barrier to psychology is dualism
o The idea that the mind cannot be measured and has no substance
Darwin influenced psychology
o A blind process can produce highly adapted and intelligent creatures
o Humans are as much a part of nature as all other animals
o Just as human and non-human anatomy overlap, so does human and non-human
psychology
Human exceptionalism
o The belief that human characteristics have no counterpart in the world
o The belief is that all species should be close because of natural selection
Genetic influences on psychology
o Genes obviously have some influence
 Identical twins share characteristics even if they live apart
 Means that there is some genetic psychology
o We are still looking for the degree to which psychological phenomena is inherited
o Schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease is a 50% rate that if one identical twin gets it that
the other doesn’t
 Why? You inherit the gene, but there are still many things that lead to the
disease progressing (environmental, personal, etc)
o Outside factors affect gene expression
 It will never be 100% of the people who have the gene get the disease at the
same time
o You inherit the DNA that leads to traits, which can be altered
o Diet, stressors, social interaction, learning, and physical exercise can all affect the
outcome
o Inheritance studies
 Instincts
 Stereotypical behavior patterns, elicited by specific stimuli, and perhaps
accompanied by specific emotions
 More complex than simple reflexes
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 Very high heritability rate
 Often involve fundamental behaviors that are essential to survival
Are facial expressions innate?
o Darwin found “the young and old of widely different aces, both with man and animals
have similar facial expressions”
o It is reasonable to imagine that infants need to communicate their state of being to
adults
Involuntary pathways
o Neural control centers in ancient lower brain areas
Voluntary pathways
o Neural control centers in more recent cortical brain areas
Instincts are imprinted
o Smiling in infants
o Emotional response to children
Temperament
o Identified aspects of personality that are stable and depend on biology
o Distinctive set of feelings that appear early in development
o Stable aspect of person
o Present day
 Outgoing
 Inhibited
 Unresponsive
o Discovered with tests early on
 Seem to be ingrained
o Found that this temperament can be changed based on the mother’s personality
 Her behavior during experiments predicted later change
o Shy child mimics mother and either gets better (if mom is outgoing) or stays the same (if
mom is shy)
Stress
o Short term stress is good and useful for the body
o Chronic long term stress is not healthy
o Triggers the fight/flight response
o Experiment shows that an increase in stress hormone receptors leads to more effective
adaptation to stressors
o More receptors, less cortisol needed
DNA and attitudes
o Twins living apart again had similar political views
o They established correlations between DNA and response to stressors
Addiction
o Drug use that remains compulsive despite its negative consequences
o Develop tolerance
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o Haven’t found a single “addiction” gene
Brain’s plasticity
o Can be changed if damaged
o Other parts take over for the damaged part
o Brain also learns more with repetition
Nervous system is responsible for
o Influencing internal events
o Move in environment
o Cognition
o Mood
How does the brain perform so many complex actions?
o Lego strategy: large numbers of modular, simple units are capable of highly complex
interconnections
o Brains are not designed or planner, the connections are shaped by evolution and
experiences
Identical twins had
o Similar IQ
o Similar smoking habits
o Similar idiosyncrasies
Sensory neurons enters the spinal cord on the dorsal side via the dorsal root
Motor leaves on the ventral root
Neuron impulses travel in only one direction
All or nothing (almost like binary code)
We are beginning to be able to read the brains code
Overdosing in new environments
o The brain recognizes common environments and releases compensation mechanisms
o When someone overdoses in a new environment, it is because this compensation
mechanism is not released
o Tested this with mice
Drug mechanisms
o Drugs influence synthesis and storage of neurotransmitters
o Some block the release of NT
o Some mimic NT effects
o Some block NT receptors
o Some affect the duration of NT/receptor bond
Humans have the largest brain to weight ratio in the world
Front lobe especially has grown
Could be for a variety of reasons
o Upright walking
o Hand eye coordination improvement
o Tendency to form social groups
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o Increased energy available when fire was created
Grey versus white matter
o Grey matter-areas of the NS with a high density of cell bodies and dendrites, few
myelinated axons
o White matter-nerve tracts
Parts of the Brain (with a brief description)
o Broca’s area
 Left frontal area of the brain, responsible for the motor patterns of speech
o Brain stem
 Oldest part of the brain
 Control basic life functions
 Reflexes such as breathing
o Cerebellum
 Essential for proper motor functions
 Motor learning and memory
o Subcortical structures
 Limbic system
 Adaptive behaviors such as eating and drinking
 Hypothalamus
 Master gland/regulator
 Thalamus
 Receives sensory info and organizes and relays it to the cortex
 Exception is the sense of smell
 Hippocampus
 Role in memory
 And spatial arrangements
 Amygdala
 Almond shaped
 Association with emotional responses
 Elicits fear
 Basal ganglia
 Plan and produce movement
o Cortex
 Complex mental activity takes place
 4 lobes
 Occipital
o Vision
 Parietal lobes
o Touch
 Temporal
o Hearing
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o Specialized visual areas for faces
 Frontal lobes
o Planning and moving
o Prefrontal cortex controls decisions
3 types of brain plasticity
o Evolutionary-changes in DNA mediates brain changes
o Maturational
o Experiential
 Both related to gene expression
Learning
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Enduring change in behavior resulting from experience
Classic conditioning-two events go together
Operant conditioning-behavior leads to outcome
UR=unconditioned response
o Occurs without prior training
US=unconditioned stimulus
o Occurs without prior training
CS=conditioned stimulus
o After learning takes place
CR=conditioned response
o After learning takes place
Acquisition
o Gradual formation of an association between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli
o Occur together in time-contiguity
Conditioned response can be extinguished when it no longer predicts an action
o Can be spontaneously recovered
Generalization occurs
o Similar stimuli produce the conditioned response
Stimulus discrimination
o Organisms can distinguish between similar stimuli if one is positive and the other is not
Phobia
o Acquired fear that is out of proportion to the real threat of the object
Fear conditioning
o Condition an organism to fear something
o Ex: Watson and baby albert experiment (baby afraid of white fluffy things)
Drug addiction
o Drugs become the conditioned stimuli
Learning involves cognition
o Classical conditioning is a way for animals to predict the occurrence of events
o A stimulus can act as a trigger for the conditioned stimulus
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Operant conditioning
o Learned process where the consequences of an action determine the likelihood that it
will be performed in the future
Law of effect
o Good consequence-likely to perform behavior again
o Shaping utilizes law of effect to reward animals for part of the behavior
 Ex: spin around part way
Reinforcers can be conditioned
o Primary-satisfy biological needs
o Secondary-established through classical conditioning
o How strong a reinforcer is depends on how often the task would be completed during
free time
o Premack principle
 More valued activity can be used to reinforce the performance of a less valued
activity
o Either positive or negative reinforcement
 Increases or decreases a behavior
o Use to modify behavior
Watching can affect learning
o Imitation is called modeling
o Observational learning
 The acquisition or modification of a behavior after exposure to at least one
performance of that behavior
o Ex: bobo doll study
Biological basis of learning
o Dopamine is involved in the reward pathway
Two types of learning
o Habituation
 Decrease in behavioral response after repeated exposure to a nonthreatening
stimulus
o Sensitization
 Increase in behavioral response after exposure to threatening stimulus
Long term potentiation
o Strengthening of a synaptic connection, resulting in postsynaptic neurons that are more
easily activated
o NMDA channel is required for the LTP
Reinforcement
o Fixed interval
 Fixed amount of time, then the next response earns a reinforce
o Variable interval
 Variable amount of time, then the next earns a reinforcement
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Variable ratio
 After a variable number of responses, the next earns a reinforcer
 Ex: slot machine
Impulsivity
o Problem of impulsivity is that there are evolutionary trends that promote it, yet society
does not promote it
Dunedin Longitudinal Study
o Drug use and self control
o The more impulsive a person is the more likely the person exhibits:
 Poor health habits
 Procrastination
 Self-destructive drug use
The impulsive action is better in the short term than in the long term
Punishment
o A behaviorally contingent event that reduces the likelihood of the behavior that
produced it
o Many drawbacks:
 Teaches to avoid the punisher
 Hard to make severe enough
 Severe corporal punishment is correlated with negative outcomes
o We should be rewarding desirable behaviors not punishing undesirable ones
Memory
o Find the connections between experiments and the various types of memory
o Explicit memory is episodic and semantic
o Implicit memory is procedural (skills)
H.M.
o Temporal lobes removed
o Took out the hippocampus
o Removed his ability to go from STM to LTM
Serial position curve
o Remember more things at the beginning and end of the list
o End of the list exhibits a recency effect (just seen it)
Eating
o Biological and metabolic needs to eat
o Need fat, glucose, and AA
o Nature has added a metabolic trigger to hunger
o It is inefficient to eat constantly in small portions, which is why we eat large meals
 We evolved mechanisms to store energy
o Initiate eating:
 Hypoglycemia
 Lipoprivation-depriving cells of lipids
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Diets
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 Empty stomach releases hormones that promote eating (ghrelin)
 Other factors such as a decrease in body temp
 Intestinal factors such as CCL and PYY (hormones)
Leptin slows down eating
 Regulates body weight
 Lack of leptin causes obesity
Hunger can act as independent of the metabolic state
 If they taste good, we continue to eat it
 Also individual differences in response to the taste of food and the effort
required to eat them
 Taste better, eat more
People tend to eat more if a large group is dining together
 Think family meals at holidays
Average body weight has increased over time
 Changes in diet and exercise
Price and the health consequences of food
 Serving size has increased
 Food is not available
 Fat and salt content increased
Exercise and a change in overall lifestyle is essential for a reduction of weight and fat
content
Maintaining a count of daily calorie intake is best for dieting
Consciousness
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Learn about the outside world using the 5 senses
We need to figure out a relationship between the source of stimulus and the organism
o We cant see air but we can sense it with our eardrum
Sensory system
o A system that transforms external events into neural activity
o Energy taken from one form and transduced into another
Perception
o Further processing of sensory information and its context, leading to perceptual
experience
Consciousness is a mental state characterized by awareness, including awareness of one’s own
state
Levels of consciousness
o Awake
o Reduced states
 Sleep
 Coma
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Altered consciousness
 Meditation
 Drug induced changes
Complexities
o Play out in head and consciousness help make a decision
o Personal (like marrage)
o Social/political (abortion or other controversies)
o Cognitive (problem solving)
Are there unique qualities of consciousness
o Dualism
o Mind over matter
Depth perception
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3d vision
Monocular
o Pictoral cues and motion parallax
Binocular
o Convergence and retinal disparity
Motion parallax
o Relative position of objects on retina change as we move
o The closer an object is the faster the object appears to move
Convergence
o The object in perceived as closer if the angles are larger
Are we born with depth perception?
o Evidence suggests that we learn depth perception from experience
o It increases as we get older
o Reach its maturity at 7 months
o Not innate
Artists can use perception to create depth in a painting (on a flat surface)
Attention
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Sleep
The world is complex
Need to selectively attend to certain things
o Ex: cocktail phenomenon
Knowing what to look for dramatically improves performance
o Attention to detail
Attention uses resources just like physical devices do
o To varying degrees, we are blind to what does not get our full attention
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Suspension of consciousness during which the powers of the body are restored
Modification of the definition
o The natural periodic alteration of consciousness during which responses to
environmental stimuli are greatly reduced, voluntary movement shrinks, muscles relax,
and the powers of the body particularly the brain and the immune system are restored
General nature of sleep
o You have a drive to sleep (similar to eating)
o The purpose of sleep has been hard to determine
Deep sleep (stage 3/4)
o Delta wave activities
Light sleep (stages 1 and 2)
o Theta wave activity
REM sleep
o EEG looks like a person is awake but harder to wake up
o Deepest stage of sleep
o Both alpha and beta wave of activity
o If awakened, “I was having a dream”
o Interesting patterns of brain activity
 Primary visual cortex is silent
 Associate visual cortex is active
 Prefrontal cortex is silent
 Eye movements correspond to dream content
 Active brain areas correspond to dream content
Purpose of sleep (theories)
o Physical restoration
 Mental restoration is more important
 Large changes in physical activity have surprisingly little effect on sleep
 But regular exercise lead to self-reported better sleep
 Mental effort during the day
 Increase in slow wave sleep
o Sleep deprivation studies
 Some rebound in time
 But mostly compensation of slow wave sleep
 Also REM, but more slow wave comensation
o Improvements in learning during sleep
 Learn at night and test in the morning, perform better than learning in the
morning and testing at night
What makes you fall asleep?
o Day and night cycle
 Circadian rhythm
 Trigger the pinal gland to release melatonin
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SCN=circadian clock
 In the ventromedial preoptic nucleus where GABA acts at inhibitory synapses
 In the lateral and posterior hypothalamus-there are excitatory
neurotransmitters released
REM Mechanisms
 Pons releases Neurotransmitters at 90 minute intervals
 Lead to the inhibition of spinal motor neurons
 Create atonia (paralysis)
Sleep walking occurs in stage 3 and 4 sleep
 Not during REM, because paralyzed
Overall
 Stage 1=theta waves
 Stage 2=sleep spindle and K complex form
 Stage 3 and 4= delta waves (slow wave sleep)
 REM= alpha and beta waves (appears that you are awake)
Sleep is adaptive
 Restores mental health
 Circadian rhythm intact
 Facilitates learning
Dreams
o The succession of images, emotions, thoughts that occur involuntarily at night,
particularly during REM sleep
o Remember them more if you keep a journal and write down right after waking up
o In addition, we carry on dialogues in our sleep
 Helps us learn
o Biological changes driven by the pons can lead to dreams
o Occur in REM sleep due to the activation of the brain
o Random activation synthesis explains the timing of dreams
 Includes both the biology and psychology of others
Coma
o Research found that people in comas are conscious
o Extreme state of consciousness
 Vegetative state
 Induced comas
o Brain activity is still present (fMRI)
Unconscious processing
o Subliminal perception
 Processing of info by sensory systems without conscious awareness