Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?
Definition: Science of study of the mind (psyche) or mental process
Psyche is the totality of the human mind, consciousness, and unconsciousness
Problems:
- What are mental processes?
- Difficult to define
- Mental process cannot be observed
- They can be inferred
- Behavior can be observed
- How do we measure behavior?
How do we quantify behavior?
In ANY science:
- We must define our variables in ANY science (psychology is a science)
- Measure (quantify) our variables)
Behavior
Problems:
- Behavior can be observed
- How do we measure behavior?
- How do we quantify behavior?
Major divisions of psychology:
-
Experimental
- Clinical
-Applied
Experimental Psychology:
- Debate over whether the mind is physical or non-physical
- Functionalism (pragmatism)
- Developed by Williams James in the U.S. (father of American psychology)
- What is the function of our thoughts, consciousness and emotions?
Clinical Psychology:
- Counseling; psychotherapy
- Now the major field in Psychology
Applied Psychology:
- Social developmental, educational, industrial psychology
Schools of psychology:
- Cognitive
- Biological
- Behavioral
- Social
- Psychoanalytical
Cognitive:
- Study of higher mental functions
- Attempts to infer hypothetical mental states of information processing based on current
response behavior, pattern.
- Provides and exceedingly elegant means to scientifically test various cognitive functions
(mental events)
- Must be inferred on the basis of performance
Sub-division of cognitive psychology:
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Neural/cognitive modeling
Biological:
- Biological psychologists attempt tom measure actual mental events by monitoring brain
activity.
- Manipulate brain (stimulate, lesion, drugs and determine effect on psychology)
Behavioral:
- Psychology as an objective science
- All psychological events must be directly observable
- We learn to repeat behavior that has been reinforced
- A strict environmental (not inner mind) explanation of behavior.
- All behavior is learned
- No need to infer inner mental causes no need to postulate about hidden, repressed
motives.
September 11, 2014
Deterministic behavior is determined by unconscious drives
How can we ever prove that there is an unconscious? How can we prove that certain memories are
repressed?
Differences among psychoanalysis, psychiatry, clinical psychology, experimental psychology
May or may not be a psychiatrist. (Emphasis on Freud and post-Freudian theory
Psychiatrist
-
Clinical psychology
-
Experimental psychologist
-
Phenomenological/Humanistic Psychology
-
Psychology concepts
-
Theory
-
True Experiments
-
Sources of Variance
-
Explained variance
Unexplained variance
At times, our measures are not normally distributed (some are too high and/or others are
too low)
Logical positivism
-
proven otherwise
Thus, we assume the negative. We assume the hypothesis is false.
The null hypothesis
Ethics of research
-
Informed consent
Can children volunteer to participate? The parents must give the consent
Cal we allow children to be very violent in a school setting?
Psychological studies on aggression and video games end to rely on measures of
aggression that are a far cry from murder.
Statistical Significance
-
chance alone
Note: Statistical significance and practical significance are not the same thing
Case Studies
-
Problems
-
Generalization
Exceptions to the rule
True experiments
-
Quasi-Experiments
-
In the social (human) environment, the scientist cannot always manipulate the independent
variable.
Comparing one group to another
Assumed that the differences are caused bye independent variable
and the other half is given what they think is a valid treatment
This control condition is called the placebo condition
Placebo (contd)
-
Survey
-
One is asked to report their behavior, to attitude or beliefs typically using a survey
A major problem with surveys is determining if the sample is truly representative of the
population
Are those that volunteer to participate truly representative?
Scientist have shown that smoking cigarettes is much more addictive than smoking marijuana.
Should marijuana use be legalized in Canada?
September 22, 2014
Neurosciences: neuronal and synaptic transmission
-
Myelin Sheath:
-
Lipid materials
Protect axon
Insulating material
Speeds up transmission
Terminal Ending
Types of neurons
-
Cerebellum
Visual cortex
Auditory Cortex
Primary Cortex
Dentate gyros
3 Categories of Neurons:
-
Interneuron:
-
Interneuron communication
Often, far removed from either sensory or motor neurons
Communication can be excitatory or inhibitory
This allows for flexibility of behavior
This is the route to memory
Resting Potential
-
Depolarization
-
All-or-None Law
-
potential
Amplitude of the action potential cannot vary
Intensity could be coded by how often the neuron fires
Synaptic Transmission
-
Neurotransmitters are released into the synaptic gap (under influence of action potential)
The neurotransmitters are no longer protected by the cell membrane (when synaptic gap
Actions of Neurotransmitters
-
Causes depolarization
Possibility of action potential
An inhibitory neurotransmitter will decrease the likelihood that the post-synaptic cell will
fire. How?
Resting potential becomes more negatively charged than normal
Hyper polarization
Increase in the critical threshold for the firing the action potential of the post-synaptic
neuron.
Six ways drugs may affect synaptic transmission (1-3 not very common)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Neurotransmitters
-
Acetylcholine
Norepinephrine
GABA
Dopamine
Acetylcholine (ACh)
-
Predominately inhibitory
Insufficient quantity of DA: Parkinsons disease
Implicated in movement, attention, and learning
Tremors & paralysis
Too much DA: psychosis
Serotonin (5HT)
-
Endorphins
-
Orientation
-
Medial-Lateral
Ventral-Dorsal (belly-back)
Anterior-Posterior aspects of the brain (front-back)
Superior Inferior aspects of the brain (upper-lower)
Slices
-
Coronal
Sagittal
Horizontal
Imaging Techniques
-
Anatomical techniques
o Slicing the human brain
o Viewing macrostructures with the human eye or microstructures with a microscope
Appropriate for cadavers
MRI
o Advantages: provide high resolution images of the human brain
o Problems:
Static: provides an image of the structures but does not show exactly what
Very expensive
Cerebral organids model human brain development and microcephaly
What areas of the brain are responsible for different animal and human functions?
In the clinical setting: Observe function lost because of brain injury (trauma, stroke,
tumors, etc).
Problem: human brain injuries are often widespread and not highly specific.
In the experimental setting: Lesion a specific part of animal brains to determine its function
Stimulate a specific area of the brain to observe the function it controls
Optogenetics (show movie)
o Controlling the Brain with Light (MIT video)
o The light activates nerve cells that make the mouse go around in circles (right
cortex is activated)
o Using light to control function of the cells.
o Proteins: channelrhodopsin2
o Gene+ promoter put them in a virus then inject virus into mouse to
Human Stimulation
-
Functional Techniques
-
Visual Processing
Basic visual processing = regions in primary visual cortex along the acalcarine sulcus (left). Visual
search for change = extrastriate visual areas in the fusiform hyrus and intraparietal sulcus (right)
Huettel et al., 2001).
Disadvantages of MRI
-
Slow
Expensive
Imaging techniques
-
EEG/Evoked Potentials
Electrodes attached to the scalp
Provides an indication of the electrical activity of the brain
When a stimulus is presented, the changes in the electrical activity (the evoked potential)
Advantages:
o Rapid. Processing in the brain can be determined every 1 ms
o Very inexpensive
Disadvantages
o Poor spatial resolution
o Provides poor indication of the actual underlying structure of the brain
Sensory Receptors
Ganglia
Hindbrain
o Medulla; pons
Midbrain
Forebrain
o Diencephalon; cerebrum
The Brainstem
-
Cerebellum
The Thalamus
-
The Hypothalamus
-
The diencephalon:
Thalamus: located superior to the brain stem
o This is the first place where all sensory systems merge. (Massive grey area)
specific sensory nuclei
o
The thalamus can thus act as a type of receptionist for the neocortex, filtering
through which sensory afferents are relevant (and in which case, the message will
be relayed to the very busy cortex) and those that are not (in which case, further
processing will be inhibited).
Their action is thus general. This results in general nonspecific drives and urges.
The neuron comes directly in contact with its target (axonal communications). It
communicates directly with the target through neurotransmitters
Cerebellum. Properly speaking not part of the brainstem but it is connected to it via the pons, the
bridge over the brainstem that will also provide connections to the motor cortex of the cerebrum.
Inter-neuronal communication within the cerebellum is enormously complex. We do know that a
good deal of our motor skills must be learned. The formation of these motor memories, motor
programmes and circuits are stored in the cerebellum. But, we are typically not conscious of the
motor programmes. Thus, if I were to ask you how to ride a bicycle, you would have a very
difficult time demonstrating to me how to ride the bicycle (because you are not conscious of the
various steps in the motor programme). You could nevertheless demonstrate to me how to ride the
bicycle. The motor programme must thus be stored. This is also a very important example of softwiring and plasticity. The circuits for the specific motor skill were not established at birth (i.e.,
established genetically). Rather the circuit is established though experience and learning after
considerable practice. By contrast, most of the connections in the brainstem are hard-wired and are
established through genetics, not through learning and experience.
Peripheral Nervous System. Add point 5:
-
Architecture (6-layerd)
Complex interconnections
Sulci and gyri
Self-Consciousness:
- Theory of mind. (learn whats appropriate and inappropriate)
Parietal Lobe:
- Post-Central Gyrus
- Permanent memory systems (?) (me must store memories)
- Switching of attention. (you are forced to switch attention)
- Naming object (?) (associates with your memory, has nothing to do with your visual cortex,
you can still see shapes and describe, just do not remember what it is)