Brain and behaviour

Psy 101
 The Nervous System

 The nervous system is the body’s electrochemical communication system. Neuroscience is

the field of study of the nervous system. The researchers that conduct research on the
nervous system are called neuroscientists
 Characteristics
1. Complexity


The brain is composed of billions of nerve cells and the

a.
orchestration of these nerve cells allows a person to carry out a
variety of activities.
1. Integration


a. The brain integrates information from the environment so that

people can function in the world
Cont....

1. Adaptability

a. As the world is constantly changing, the brain and
nervous system allow person to adapt to those
changes.
b. The brain has a lot of plasticity, meaning it has a
vast capacity for modification and change.


1. Electrochemical Transmission
a. Electrical impulses and chemical messenger systems allow
the brain and nervous system to work as an information-
processing system.
 Electrochemical Transmission 
 Nervous system is an information-
processing system 
 Electrical impulses 
 Chemical messengers 
 Epilepsy  Electrochemical system is
short-circuited 
 Information processing is disrupted 
 Unable to engage in mental processing
and behaviour
 Pathways 
 Afferent nerves 
 Sensory nerves 
 Carry information to the brain and spinal cord 
Communicate information about external
environment and internal body processes 
 Efferent nerves 
 Motor nerves  Carry information out of the brain
and spinal cord –
 output  Communicate to other areas of the body
NS

 Very organised system 

 Effective functioning 
 Two main divisions 
 Central nervous system (CNS)

 Peripheral nervous system

(PNS)
CNS


 Central Nervous System 
 Brain and spinal cord
 99% of nerve cells
 Controls the activities of the body
 Processes information
 Sends out commands
 Peripheral Nervous
System
 The network of nerves that connects the brain
and the spinal cord to other parts of the body 
 Bring information to and from the CNS 
 Carry out the commands of the CNS 
 2 major divisions 
 Somatic nervous system 
 Autonomic nervous system
PNS

 Peripheral Nervous System 

 Somatic nervous system 
 Bring information from the skin and muscles to
the CNS
 It regulates information about pain and temperature.
 The autonomic nervous system’s function is to take messages to
and from the body’s internal organs and so it regulates breathing,
heart rate, and digestion.
 Autonomic Nervous System
 Carry information to and from body’s internal
organs 
 Sympathetic nervous system 
 Arouses body 
 Mobilise for action 
 Involved in stress actions 
 Parasympathetic nervous system 
 Calms the body
Nerve cells

 Cellular level of the nervous system 

 Two types of nerve cells 
 Neurons  Information processing 
 100-billion 
 Glial Cells (Glia) 
 Support cells 
 Provide support, nutritional benefits and
other functions 
 Keep neurons running smoothly
Typical anatomical
structure of a neuron
  Cell body 
 Contains the nucleus 
 Directs manufacturing of substances needed for
growth and maintenance 
 Dendrites  Tree-like fibres projecting from
the neuron 
 Receive information 
 Send information towards the cell body
 Axon
 Carries information away from cell body
towards other cells 
 Myelin Sheath  Layer of fat that
encases and insulates most axons 
 Allows for faster transmission of nerve impulses
 Protects the axon 
 Semi-permeable 
 Multiple Sclerosis 
 Myelin sheath is hardened
Neural impulse

 Neurons transmit information through:

 Brief electrical impulses through axon
 Source neuron needs an electrical charge

Axon
 Encased in a semi-permeable membrane
 Fluids inside and outside of the axon
 Fluids are filled with electrically charged ions
Ions
 Positive - Sodium and Potassium
 Negative – Chlorine
 Membrane prevents ions from randomly flowing
in and out

Ion Channels
 Gates in the semi-permeable membrane
 Control the flow of ions by opening and closing
Cont..

Electrical impulse
 Moving positive and negative ions back and forth
through the membrane
 Resting Potential
 Neuron is not transmitting information
 Ion channels are closed
 Negative charge inside axon
 Positive charge outside axon
 Neuron is polarised
 Voltage: -60 to -75 millivolts
Depolarisation
 Incoming impulse raises neuron’s voltage
 Channels open
 sodium and potassium ions flow into axon
 chlorine ions flow outside cell
 Potassium channels open
 Potassium flows back out
 Axon charge returns to normal – polarised
again
Action potential
 This is the brief wave of positive electrical
charge that sweeps down the axon
 Neuron is “firing” – when it send an action
potential
 Abides by the “All-or-nothing principle”
 Once electrical impulse reaches a certain level
of intensity, it has reached threshold Then it
fires and moves all the way down the axon
without losing intensity
 Once initiated, it cannot be stopped
Chemical transmission

 Electric transmission
 Electric impulses flow within the neuron
 But, neurons do not touch each other  And,
electricity cannot jump gaps
 SO HOW DO NEURONS COMMUNICATE WITH
ONE ANOTHER?
 Chemical transmission
 Chemicals carry messages across gaps
Neurons & Synapses

Synapses
 Between axon of one neuron and dendrites/cell
body of another neuron

Synaptic Transmission
 Conversion of electrical signal
 Signal has to be chemical to cross synaptic gap
 Terminal buttons
 Fibre branches at the end of each axon
 Contain synaptic vesicles
Neurotransmitters

Neurotransmitters
 These are the chemicals that carry information
across the synaptic gap
 Released when nerve electrical impulse
reaches terminal button
 They flood synaptic gap
 Attach to receptors on receiving neuron
 Lock-and-key mechanism
 Remaining neurotransmitter is used up for
energy or reabsorbed into sending neuron
 Reabsorption = reuptake
 Reabsorbed neurotransmitters await next
neural impulse
 Different types
 Excitatory – stimulate a neuron to fire
 Inhibitory – inhibit neuron from firing
 Or both
 Lock-and-Key receptors
 Most neurons receive one type of
neurotransmitter
 Some substances can fit into receptor sites
Neurotransmitters
Types of
Neurotransmitters
Acetylcholine (ACh)
 Usually excitatory – it stimulates the firing of
neurons
 Is involved in the actions of muscles, learning,
and memory
 Alzheimer’s Disease – a degenerative brain
disorder that involves a decline in memory
 ACh deficiency
 Medication addresses the deficiency
GABA (Gamma Aminobutyric Acid)
 Throughout nervous system – 1/3 brain’s
synapses
 Inhibitory – it keeps many neurons from firing
Controls precision of signal being transmitted
 Anxiety
 Low levels of GABA
 Medication increases inhibitory actions of GABA
Norepinephrine (NE)
 Inhibitory – central nervous system
BUT
 Excitatory – heart muscles, intestines,
urogenital tract (includes kidneys, urethra,
bladder and sexual organs)
 Responds to stress – this stimulates the release
of NE
 NE (cont.)
 Controls alertness - Low levels – depression -
High levels – agitated, manic states For
example, cocaine and amphetamines
 Increase levels of NE Neurotransmitters can
work in teams of two or more to achieve a
certain outcome:
 Works with ACh Regulate sleep and
wakefulness
Glutamate
 Excitatory
 Involved in Learning and memory
 Involved in many psychological disorders Too
high, or too low:
 Anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s Disease,
Parkinson’s Disease (movement disorder)
 High levels
 Trigger headaches and seizures
Dopamine (DA)
 Inhibitory
 Controls voluntary movements
 Affects sleep, mood, attention and learning
 Ability to recognise rewards
 Low levels – Parkinson’s Disease
 High levels – Schizophrenia
Serotonin (SE)
 Mostly inhibitory
 Involved in sleep regulation, mood, attention,
and learning
 Sleep regulation
 Works with NE and ACh
 Low levels – depression (mood disorder)
Endorphins
 Natural opiates
 Excitatory
 Protect body from pain
 Elevate feelings of pleasure
 Opiates – mimic the effect of endorphins
 Heroin, morphine etc
 Stimulate receptors involved in pleasure and
pain
Oxytocin
 Hormone and neurotransmitter
 Love and social bonding
 - Mothers of new born babies
 - Following sexual intercourse
Drugs
 Interfere with the work of neurotransmitters
Medical/Therapeutic and recreational
Agonists
 Mimic or increase effect of neurotransmitter
For example, opiates mimic endorphins by
stimulating receptors in the CNS to increase
pleasure
Antagonist
 Blocks the effect of a neurotransmitter For
example, drugs that treat schizophrenia
interfere with dopamine
Neural networks

Neural networks are clusters of neurons that are

interconnected to process information.
 However, neural networks are not static and
can be altered through changes in synaptic
connections
 Strength of connected neurons
 Improves ability to apply previous knowledge
 Improves efficiency
The
brain
Brain studies

Brain Lesions
 Is an abnormal disruption in the tissue
of the brain resulting from injury or
disease
 Focus on naturally occurring lesions in
humans
 Induced in animals – by removing brain
tissue, damaging with a laser, or
injecting with a drug to make the brain
area inactive
Techniques

Modern Techniques
 Brain lesions
 Electrical recordings
 Brain imaging
Electrical recordings

Electroencephalograph
(EEG)
 Record brain activity – detect brain waves
 Assess brain damage, epilepsy etc
Surface recordings usually – use electrodes
with small metal disks
Single-cell recordings possible
 Insert thin probe in/near a neuron
 These provide information on the electrical
activity of a single neuron.
Brain Imaging

Computerised Axial
Tomography (CAT/CT Scan)
Scan – 3-D image from several x-rays of
the head
Information about location and extent of
damage
Structural scan – in order locate location
and extent of brain damage
Positron Emission Tomography
(PET scan)
Metabolic (chemical) changes related to
brain activity
 Measures amount of glucose in the
brain areas – glucose levels vary with
the level of brain activity
  Functional scan – shows brain activity
thus giving us insight on which areas of
the brain are involved in different
activities
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(MRI)
 Creates a magnetic field (over 50 000 times
more powerful than the earth’s magnetic field)
around person’s body and uses radio waves to
construct images – the hydrogen atoms in
water that is in neurons align themselves with
the magnetic field and the resulting contrast
provides
 Very clear image – structural (can show size of
brain areas and thus allows us to see if and how
experience or learning changes the size of
those brain areas)
 fMRI – functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging
 Functional scan – shows what is happening in
the brain as it is working
 So the person goes onto the scan performing
the activity in question
 Changes in blood oxygenation levels –

Transcranial Magnetic
Stimulation (TMS)
 Functional
Brain organisation

 Nervous system starts as a long,

hollow tube in the embryo’s back
 3 weeks after conception
 Tube differentiates into mass of
neurons
 3 major regions
 Hindbrain
 Midbrain
 Forebrain
Hind brain

Next to the top part of the spinal cord

Medulla
 Begins where spinal cord enters
the skull
 Controls many vital functions –
breathing, heart rate
 Regulates reflexes
Cerebellum
 Just above medulla
 Motor coordination
 Looks like a tree
 Damage  Small – awkward and
jerky movements
 Extensive – cannot even stand up
Pons
 Bridge: Connects cerebellum and brain
stem
 Involved in sleep and arousal
Brain stem
 Includes most of hindbrain and midbrain
 Connects with spinal cord and reticular
formation  Regulates survival type
functions
Midbrain

 Located between hindbrain and forebrain

Nerve-fibre systems ascend and descend to
connect to higher and lower portions of the
brain  Relays information between brain and
the eyes and ears Reticular formation
 Reticular formation  collection of neurons
involved in regular patterns of behaviour, i.e
walking, turning to a sudden noise

Substantia Nigra
 Role in reward, addiction, and movement
Damage – Parkinson’s disease
Forebrain

Largest division of the brain

Highest level of the brain
Limbic System Loosely
connected network of
structures Important in
memory and emotion
Amygdala and hippocampus
Limbic system

Amygdala
 @ the base of temporal lobe
 Discrimination of objects necessary for survival
– appropriate food, mates, social rivals etc.
 Emotional awareness and expression

Hippocampus
 Special role in memory
 Damage – cannot retain new memories
 Determine what is stored in memory
Basal Ganglia
 Large clusters of neurons
 Above thalamus; under cerebral cortex
 Control and coordinate voluntary
movements
 Works with cerebellum and cerebral
cortex to coordinate movement
 Damage – jerky movements, or slow
movements
Thalamus
 Sits at top of brain stem
 Relay station - Sorts information and sends it to
relevant places for interpretation

Hypothalamus
 Just below thalamus
 Regulates body’s internal state
 Monitors pleasurable activities: eating, drinking,
sex
 Involved in stress, emotion, and reward
Cerebral cortex

 Part of the forebrain

 Most recently developed part of the
brain – evolutionary timeline
 Responsible for most complex mental
functions – such as thinking and
planning
 Neocortex
 Outermost part of the brain
 80% of cerebral cortex
Lobes
 Brain is divided in two hemispheres
 Each hemisphere has 4 regions
 Occipital lobe
 Temporal lobe
 Parietal lobe
 Frontal lobe
Occipital lobe
 Back of the head
 Respond to visual stimuli – colour, shape, motion


Temporal Lobe
 Just above the ears
 Involved in hearing, language processing, and memory

 Parietal Lobe
 Top and toward back of head
 Involved in registering spatial information, attention, and
motor control
Frontal Lobe
 Behind the forehead
 Involved in personality, intelligence, and
control of voluntary muscles

Prefrontal cortex
 Involved in higher cognitive functions
 Planning, reasoning, self-control
 Phineas Gage
Somatosensory cortex
 Processes information about bodily sensations
 Located at front of parietal lobes

Motor cortex
 Back of the frontal lobes
 Processes information about voluntary
movement
Surface anatomy of the
cerebral cortex
  Somatosensory cortex and motor cortex 
Representations of the human body
 Point-to-point relation between part of body
and location on the cortex
 Face and hands have more space
 Require finer, more precise movements
Homunculus
 Wilder Penfield – research with epileptics
Association cortex

Association cortex
 Site of highest intellectual functions
 Integrates information
 Damage – problems in planning and problem
solving
 Largest portion in frontal lobes
 Association areas
 Integrate sensory/motor information
Split brain research

 Do hemispheres have different functions?

 The cerebral cortex is split into two halves – left and
right hemisphere

Corpus Callosum
 Large bundle of axons connecting the 2 hemispheres
 Responsible for relaying information between
hemispheres
 Sever the connection – no communication between
hemispheres
 Roger Sperry – a leader in this area discovered this
using cats  W.J – An epileptic patient examined by
Sperry after his corpus callosum was severed  Split
brain – 2 minds working independently
Lateralisation
 Hemispheric specialisation of functions ***The
left hemisphere receives info only from the right
and vice versa.

Left Hemisphere
 Most language processing and production 
Singing words in a song  Recognise words,
grammar, and numbers  Locations of objects 
Only process information from right side of body
 Broca’s Area – speech production  Wernicke’s
Area – language comprehension
Right Hemisphere
 Dominates processing of nonverbal information
 Spatial perception, visual recognition, emotion
 Only process information from left side of body
Interpret meanings of stories, intonation
 Melodies of songs
 Prosopagnosia – impaired facial
recognition
Endocrine system

 Consists of a set of glands that regulate the

activities of certain organs by releasing
hormones into the bloodstream
 Connected to nervous system through the
hypothalamus
 Works slower than nervous system
Glands
Organs or tissues in the body
Create chemicals that control many of our bodily
functions
Monitored and controlled by nervous and hormonal
signals
The autonomic nervous system acts on the glands to
produce physiological responses as per fight/flight
response and other strong emotions such as rage

Hormones
Chemical messengers secreted by the endocrine glands
Carried by bloodstream to all parts of the body
Pituitary Gland
 Pea-sized
 Just below hypothalamus
 Controls growth and regulates other glands – hence “Master
Gland”
 Controlled by hypothalamus

Adrenal Glands
 Top of each kidney
 Regulates moods, energy levels, and ability to cope with stress
 They each secrete epinephrine (adrenaline) and
norepinephrine (noradrenaline)
 Act quickly unlike other hormones
 Epinephrine  Stimulates reticular formation to activate
sympathetic nervous system
Pancreas
 Under the stomach
 Digestive and endocrine functions
 Number of hormones – eg insulin
Ovaries and Testes
 Ovaries
 Sex-related glands
 Produce hormones involved in women’s sexual
development and reproduction – e.g. estrogen

Testes
 Sex-related glands
 Produce hormones involved in men’s sexual
development and reproduction – e.g.
testosterone
Brain plasticity

Brain repair mechanisms

 Collateral sprouting
 Substitution of function
 Neurogenesis
Collateral sprouting
 Axons of healthy neurons next to damaged
cells grow new branches
Substitution of function
 Damaged region’s function is taken over by
other area(s) of the brain

Neurogenesis
 New neurons are generated
 Hippocampus (involved in memory) and
olfactory bulb (involved in smell)
 Brain cannot recover from all damage

Brain tissue implants - Aka brain grafts

 Implant of healthy tissue into damaged brain More
successful when brain tissue from foetal stage is used
 Research has been conducted on animals such as
mice Could it be done in humans - via aborted
foetuses?
 Stem cells
 Unique primitive cells that have the capacity to
develop into most types of human cells
 Harvested from embryos left over from in-vitro
fertilisation - but the embryos die
Genetics & behaviour

Chromosomes
 Nucleus of each human cell – 46 chromosomes
 Threadlike structures that come in 23 pairs
 One member of each pair is from one parent
 Contain DNA
 A complex molecule that carries genetic information

Genes
 Units of hereditary information  Short segments of
chromosomes composed of DNA  Enable cells to
reproduce and manufacture proteins necessary for
maintaining life  Do not act independently
Genetics and behaviour

Human Genome
 Complete genetic material – a complete set of
instructions for making an organism
 Many genes that collaborate with each other  Also
collaborate with non-genetic factors inside and outside
the body
 Human Genome Project  Documenting the human
genome  Over 21 000 genes  Researchers still
investigating a lot about how genes work
 Dominant-recessive genes principle  If one gene in
the pair is dominant, it will override the other
 Polygenic inheritance  Complex characteristics such
as personality and intelligence are influenced by multiple
genes
Study of Genetics
 Gregor Mendel
 Studied heredity in pea plants
 Mid-nineteenth century
 Discovered predictable patterns of heredity that
laid the foundation for modern genetics study

3 types of study
 Molecular genetics 
 Selective breeding
 Behaviour genetics
 Study of Genetics
Molecular Genetics
 Manipulation of genes using technology to
determine their effect on behaviour
 Discover specific locations on genes that
determine susceptibility to diseases

Selective Breeding
 Organisms are chosen for reproduction based
on how much of a particular trait they may
display
 Both genes and experience are important
Behaviour genetics
 Study of the degree and nature of heredity’s
influence on behaviour
 Less invasive
Twin study
 Compare identical and fraternal twins
 However, identical twins viewed as a “set” by
caregivers so similarities may be a result of the
environment rather than genetics
 Separate environments
Genes and the environment
 Nature vs nurture debate
 Genes alone do not determine where a person
will stand on any given variable
 Environment influences characteristics
Genotype – individual’s collection of genetic
material

Phenotype – actual, observed characteristics

Genes and the environment
 Environment alters how gene types develop 
Physical and psychological characteristics
 Genetic expression
 Gene activity that affects the body’s cells
 Influenced by the environment
 Gene x environment interaction
 Interaction of a specific measured variation in
DNA and a specific measured aspect of the
environment