PSYC 451 1

Jan. 10, 2006

 C.N.S.
1. Brain
2. Spinal Cord
 Peripheral N.S.—everything other than C.N.S.—autonomic
1. Sympathetic
2. Parasympathetic
 Nerve Cell = Neuron
o Receives electrical impulse through dendrites
o Passes through nucleus
o Transmitted out through axon
 Messages are:
1. Electrical Impulse
2. Neurotransmitters
 Behavior—ANY (conscious or unconscious) act of the organism

 Aristotle believed in “psyche” independent component of a person’s biological

form. The Spirit that drives the body.
 Descartes believed in notion of dualism = separation of mind and body
 Darwin—father of evolution
o Evolution Through natural selection

Jan. 12, 2006

 Traumatic Brain Injuries
o Result in tissue damage
o Damage in particular lobe affects other lobes in reaction
o Only defense mechanism is to hemorrhage (swell with blood)
 Stupid because leads to death
 Frontal Lobe
o Finias Gage
 Affected rational thought
 C.S.F.—cerebral spinal fluid surrounds spinal cord and brain
o C.S.F. in Brain
 Protects
 Immune system function
 Brocas Area
o Left temporal region
o Responsible for expressive language i.e. speech
 Separation between Man & Animals = enlarged cerebral cortex
o Cerebral Cortex surrounds midbrain = with in midbrain lies Limbic
Systemvery important to psychiatrists and psychologists
 Deals with emotions
 Frontal Lobes
o Prefrontal cortex involved in memory
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 Occipital lobe
o Responsible for vision
 Limbic System
o Hippocampus
o Amygdala
o Hypothalamus
o Limbic Cortex
 Includes gyrus
 Behavior = Patterns in Time
o Distinguishing features separating Man from Animals
 Language use is the most complex behavior
 Culture—complex system of beliefs, values, attitudes
 Darwin—materialist
o Materialist—believed that the body was essentially a machine
o Mind is epiphenomenal
 A phenomenon that we infer or conclude from another
 If the origins of all animals is the same then we must all be related
 Nervous system is not required for life

Jan. 17, 2006

Nervous System

Central Nervous Peripheral Nervous

System System

Autonomic Nervous
Brain Spinal Cord Somatic
System

Sympathetic

Parasympathetic

 Autonomic Structures
 Anterior—front portion of body
 Posterior—anything in the portion of the body pointing back from ears
 Superior—related to anything facing above: synonym = inferior
 Dorsal—similar to superior
 Ventral—inferior
 Lateral—anything to the side
 Medial—middle
 Proximal—lying very close or next to object
 Distal—away from object
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 Rostral—referring to front, beak area (used more in animal anatomy)

 Sagital—parallel from front to back often symmetrical

 Anatomy of Brain
o Dura Mater = hard mother
o Meninges
 Arteries feeding blood to the brain
o Cerebral artery
o Middle cerebral artery
o Posterior cerebral artery
 Arteries carry blood from heart to organs
 If any three arteries were severed it would result in stroke or
cerebral vascular accident
 White Matter
o Grey matter—outer portion of brain
o White matter—inner portion of the brain
 White matter is made up of myelin sheaths
 Grey matter is made up of cell bodies
 Grey matter is also present in Ventricles
 Ventricles
o Still not absolutely certain what they do?
o Believe:
 Create Cerebral Spinal Fluid
 Protect brain from damage
 Excrete metabolic waste
 Corpus Calosom
o Made up of 2 million nerve fibers
o Allows communication between the 2 brain hemispheres
 Limbic Structure
o Important to emotion
 Parietal Lobe
o Somato sensory
o Motor
 Meaning that it controls feelings and body movement

Sub-cortical Structure (Old Brain)

 Midbrain—oldest portion of brain (according to evolutionary biologists)
o Controls very basic functions
 Respiration
 Heart Beat
 Perspiration
 Fight or Flight reflex
 Brain Stem
o Includes Nuclei—bundle of serve fibers
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o Controls
 Breathing
 Arousal
 Fight/Flight
 Regulation of internal organs
 Basal Ganglia
o In charge of keeping body at rest
o Rich in dopamine and acetylcholine
o Damage to Basal Ganglia results in Parkinson’s disease & Huntington’s
chorea
o Substantia Nigra—damage also results in Parkinson’s disease
 Thalamus
o Regulates incoming and outgoing information
 Brain switchboard
o Also deals with vision
o Contains carious lobes—each have different functions
 Discriminate from essential to nonessential stimuli
 ADHD thought to result from damage to thalamus
 Schizophrenia also results from damage to thalamus
 Hypothalamus
o Smaller and below thalamus
o Responsible for functions of autonomic nervous system
 Sympathetic
 Arousal—alerts organs of body to incoming danger
 Problem with sympathetic system
o Body cannot maintain high level of arousal
o Sympathetic system keeps body engaged too long
 Parasympathetic—slows body down

Jan. 19, 2006

Cortex
 Arachnoid space filled with cerebral spinal fluid
 Below arachnoid space is the pia-mader
 Between the pia and dura madur is space with many capillaries
 Beyond the pia mater lies the cerebral cortex (neo-cortex)
 Meaning newest cortex
o Distinctive feature between man and animal is size of frontal lobes of C.C.
o Outside of cortex is grey matter
o Inside of cortex is grey matter
o Look at page 49
 Diencephalons—frontal lobes of cerebral cortex (newest area)
Brain Stem
 Includes: midbrain, pons, medulla oblongata, thalamus, and the hypothalamus
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o Pons—is a major route by which the forebrain sends information to and

receives information from the spinal cord and the peripheral nervous
system.
 Reticular activating system or reticular formation
o One area of the medulla and the pons that has to do with regulation of
sensory inputs.
o Arranges them in a way that makes sense to us
 Affected by LSD—increase serotonin activity thus confusing the
reticular information a process known as synesthesia
Midbrain
 Superior and inferior colliculous
o Crucial to predators
o Assist in orientation of the head to sound
o Fine movements

White matter is considered to represent “the old brain”

Grey matter is part of the “newer brain”

January 24, 2006

Look at pages 49-52

Cranial nerves
 We have 12 cranial nerves
 Have overlapping functions:
 Reasons for overlap:
o Multiple nerve transmitions (processes) occurring at the same time
o Back in the day accepted theory of Serial Processing—one process for
each part of the brain
1. Olfactory nerves:
a. Related to sense of smell
2. Optic nerve:
a. Involved in the interpretation of what is seen and the transmition of
that stimuli back to the brain
3. Oculomotor nerve:
a. Has to do with tracking eye movement from side-to-side
4. Trochlear nerve:
a. Eye movement
b. Works in conjunction with the oculomotor nerve
5. Trigeminal nerve
a. Chewing or jaw movement (facial muscles)
b. Particularly involved with facial sensation—often damaged during
a stroke
6. Abducens
a. Also involved in eye movement
7. Facial nerve
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a. Face movement and face sensation—motor & sensory

8. Auditory vestibular
a. Involved with hearing and balance
9. Glossopharyngeal nerve
a. involved in tongue and throat movement
10. Vagus nerve
a. Involved in unconscious processes like heart rate, breathing,
viscera
11. Spinal accessory
a. Involved in neck muscles
12. Hypoglossal
a. Tongue movement and digestion
 Majority of paralyzing spinal injury occurs in cervical segments
 Majority of spinal pain occurs in lumbar segments, especially for women who are
pregnant or anybody who has gained weight
o Majority of a persons weight is carried in the lumbar segment

 Law of Belle & Magendie

o Involves the splitting of the areas of front and back of the spinal cord
 Dorsal side—sensory, sensations, has to do with afferent nerve
fibers 
 Ventral side—involved in movement, projections from the spinal
cord towards the muscles for movement 
 Ganglion
o A group of nerves that branch out, projecting away from the spinal cord
 Nuclei—bunch of nerve fibers
 Root—bunch of nerve fibers with a common purpose
Autonomic Nervous System
 Sympathetic
o Arousal (hypothalamus)
 Anti-anxiety medication sometimes work to inhibit the sympathetic
nervous system
 Also excite the Parasympathetic nervous system
o Inhibits the G.I. system
 Parasympathetic
o Calms down
o GABA
 produced by the parasympathetic nervous system
 Anti-anxiety medication work to increase the release of GABA

Eight Principles of Nervous System Function

1. Inprocessingaction
2. Sensory & motor functions are separated
3. A lot of brain circuitry or nerves are crossed
a. Many functions are handled in separate hemispheres of the brain
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4. Symmetrical and Asymmetrical

5. Inhibition and Excitation
6. Different brain areas involved in a single task
7. Brain systems are hierarchical (binding “problem” principle)
a. Coordinate activity
8. Brain functions are localized and spread out

January 26, 2006

Chapter 3

 Neuron
o Basic unit of communication
 Golgi technique
o Staining
 Neural communication
o Dendrite
 Branches
o Axon
 Long projection
o Glial cells
 Glue
 To bind together the different cells or unify their function
 Support and repair of neurons
 Provide nutrients to neurons
o Experience and learning affect the dendritic networks
 Produce change in the dendrites
o Dendritic spines receptive

January 31, 2006

 Motor Neurons
 Generate from different potions of the brain extending to the spinal cord
o Others start at the brain stem and move down the spinal chord.
o Efferent
 Most abundant in the body
 Somatosensory neurons
o Afferent—transitioning towards the brain
 Inter-neurons
o Type of interneuron that will project from an area of the brain to the
somatosensory cortex and connect with a neuron, regulate the firing of
the neuron
Pay Attention to pages 89

February 28, 2006

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Ch. 6
Structure and Function of Brain Correlated
1. Know Brain changes that take place expect and observe by change
2. Inversemake observation that by change that took place & identify related brain
area by change correlates with behavior
 PET Scan—Physiology
 MRI—Structure
3. Factors influencing brain structure by development
 During development
 Naturally w/in environment
 Reticular Activating System
i. Correlation vs. Causation
1. Linear/curvilinear
2. associations
 Mid-adolescent or early adulthood frontal lobe development

Brain Development History

1. Pre-formation
a. Seneca—fetus is simply a shrunken adult
b. Darwin—children little people
2. Middle of 19th century
a. Dispelling view of fetus being little individual
3. Early development—fetus head & tail similar to other species
a. Common ancestor
Zygote: fertilizationtwo weeks
Embryo: 2 8 weeks
Fetus: 8 weeks to birth
*60 dayssexual dimorphism
-sexual body parts—males, females
Origins of neuronseglia
 Stem cells—exist in the ventricular zone
 Progenitor cellsneoblastsneurons
glioblastsglial cells