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HERSENEN EN GEDRAG samenvatting DEELTENTAMEN 1
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Hersenen en gedrag1. The science of mind, the discipline of psychology
What is psychology?
The study of the mind: the brain and its activities such as thought, emotion, behavior. Psychology
helps understand why we do things by providing context for understanding the mind and behavior.
Psychology means ‘the objective study of the mind, psyche = soul and logos = the objective study of.
The field is a scientific study of behavior, mental processes and brain functions. Behavior refers to all
actions we can observe. The study of mental processes and brain functions are dependent of the
available methods.
Introspection is a personal observation of our own thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Because these
observations aren't faultless, psychologists developed other methods to get scientific insight into the
mind; fmri shows activity in different areas of the brain.
Psychology’s roots
Psychology dates back to the 1870s, but topics of human thought can go further back in time.
Philosophy: systematically examines basic concepts such as the source of knowledge. Psychology
and philosophy share an interest in the nature of the self, effect of early experience, existence of free
will and the origin of knowledge. Both consider a combination of biological factors (nature) and
environmental factors (nurture) to be the cause of human behavior.
An important question for philosophers and psychologists is whether the mind is inborn or formed with
experience. Philosophers (384–322 bce) believed knowledge is gained through sensory experience.
British empiricists in the 17th century believed the mind was a ‘blank slate’ at birth and is filled with
ideas gained by observing. Modern psychologists believe experience and inborn characteristics
together shape the mind.
Natural sciences: study the physical and biological events that occur in nature. Ancient physicians
laid the foundation of our biological knowledge of the brain and nervous system, this helped develop
scientific methods for psychology. Beginning in the 17th and 18th century new technologies made
new discoveries about the human body and mind. For example, they demonstrated that a single
sensory nerve carried only one type of information and not multiple types. Because the toe is farther
from the brain than the thigh, signals from the toe require more time to reach the brain. These sorts of
discoveries show that the mind could be studied scientifically.
The beginning of the science of psychology
Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was the first psychologist, he made the first psychology in the University
of Leipzig in 1879. He saw mental experience as a hierarchy. One of his students, Edward Titchener,
expanded his view into the theory of structuralism: an approach in which the mind is broken into the
smallest elements of mental experience.
This theory was rejected by german psychologists (as Kurt Koffka, Max Wertheimer, and
Wolfgang Köhler) in the 29th century. They founded gestalt psychology: an approach that saw
experience as being different from the sum of its elements. Gestalt = whole, they believed that
breaking a whole perception into elements would result in loss of information.
Another type of psychology started partly as a response to the ideas of Charles Darwin.
Functionalism: an approach that saw behavior as purposeful and contributing to survival.
Functionalists were interested in why mental processes and behavior worked a certain way. William
,James (1842–1910) proposed and dominated this field for a long time. He invented the term ‘stream
of consciousness’ to describe the ideas people experience while awake.
Between the 17th and the 19th century supernatural explanations for psychological disorders started
to open up to scientific approaches: a medical model (emphasized physical causes of abnormal
behavior and medical treatments, such as medication) and a psychological model (suggested that
abnormal behavior can result from life experiences, leading to fear, anxiety, and other
counterproductive emotional responses).
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and his ideas on consciousness, sexuality, abnormal behavior, and
psychotherapy played a dominant role in psychology in the beginning of the 20th century. He
developed the techniques of psychoanalysis for treating mental disorders.
In the 1960s structuralism, gestalts psychology and functionalism were no longer distinct thoughts,
psychology was dominated by behaviorism and freud. They believed human behavior to be the same
as animal behavior, leading to the assumption humans naturally had aggressive impulses of animals.
Psychologists that were not pleased with these views proposed the idea of humanistic psychology:
an approach that saw people as inherently good and motivated to learn and improve. Abraham
Maslow (1908–1970) came with a theory of motivation. Carl Rogers (1902–1987) developed client
centered therapy.
The beginning of the 20th century was the start of behaviorism: an
approach that features the study and careful measurement of
observable behaviors. It concentrates on observable, measurable
behavior.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936) had a big impact on behaviorism
and psychology. He discovered classical conditioning while studying dogs when he realized that his
dogs could learn that certain signals meant food was on the way. Many emotional responses that are
associated with environmental cues are the result of learning by classical conditioning.
John B. Watson (1878–1958) researched learning in rats to conclude the same ideas as pavlov.
Watson restricted psychology to observable behavior, he focussed on the relation between
environmental cues and behavior. Other behaviorists were more interested in the effects of
consequences on behavior.
Edward Thorndike (1874–1949) proposed the law of effect: behavior with pleasant outcomes are
more likely to be repeated in the future whereas behavior with unpleasant outcomes are less likely to
occur in the future. This law was based on observing cats in a puzzle box.B. F. Skinner (1904–1990)
was also interested in the effect of consequences. He believed that inner, private states such as
thinking and feeling existed, but he viewed them as behaviors that followed the same rules as public
behaviors.
Behaviorism led to cognitive revolution, cognitive psychology covers the internal mental processes
that the behaviorists avoided studying. It led to the development of the biological psychology
perspective: behavioral neuroscience. In the 1990s a combination of cognitive and biological
psychologists led to the field of cognitive neuroscience, which looks at brain structures and functions
that process information.
Psychological perspectives
Psychological scientists began focusing on specific perspectives instead of trying to answer
everything at once they began in-depth understanding one aspect of the mind at once. Halfway
,through the 20th century most psychologists only studied a few perspectives. The different
perspectives do not conflict, one aspect can be studied using different theories and methods from
multiple perspectives. Combining perspectives gives a more comprehensive view of a phenomenon, it
gives a better chance of understanding the human mind.
1. Biological psychology (behavioral neuroscience): psychological perspective that focuses on
the relationships between mind and behavior and underlying biological processes such as
genetics, biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology. It is interested in physical mechanisms
associated with behavior. In the beginning of the 1970 technological advances gave more
insight in the connections between brain and behavior.
Evolutionary psychology is a branch of the biological perspective. It's a
psychological perspective that investigates how physical structure and behavior have
been shaped by their contributions to survival and reproduction.
2. Cognitive psychology: psychological perspective that investigates information processing,
thinking, reasoning, and problem solving. Our ability to remember plays a big part in the
processing of information.
3. Developmental psychology: psychological perspective that examines the normal changes in
behavior that occur across the lifespan.
4. Social psychology: psychological perspective that examines the effects of the social
environment on the behavior of individuals. Personality describes the individual differences.
We construct our own realities and the social environment influences our thoughts, feelings
and behavior. Cultural diversity: variations in the practices, values, and goals shared by
groups of people, is included as an effect on behavior.
5. Clinical psychology: psychological perspective that seeks to explain, define, and treat
abnormal behavior. Recently the perspective has been expanded to general wellbeing.
Biological approach to behavior
The universe could have been different in many ways, most making life impossible. Many physicists
believe the hypothesis that there are many universes.
The mind-brain problem or mind-body problem is the question of how the mind relates to brain
activity. In a universe composed of matter and energy, why is there such a thing as consciousness?
So far there is no explanation for consciousness, some
suggest we treat it as a fundamental property. But
consciousness is different from other fundamental
properties. It only occurs in certain parts of the nervous
system, and not all of the time.
The goal of biological psychology is to relate biology to
issues of psychology. It views thinking and acting as the
result of brain mechanisms we evolved by ancient
animals surviving and reproducing.
Biological psychology mostly looks at brain activity.
There are two kinds of cells. Neurons: transfer messages to each other, muscles and glands. Glia:
are smaller than neurons, they have many functions to support the neurons.
, 3 general points
1. Perception occurs in your brain. When something touches your hand the hand sends a
message to the brain. The experience of senses is in your brain.
2. Mental activity and certain types of brain activity are inseparable. This position is monism:
the idea that the universe consists of one type of being. Neither causes the other; they are
just different ways of describing the same thing.
3. We should be cautious about what is an explanation and what is not, avoid overstating
conclusions from research.
Biological explanations of behavior
Physiological explanations: relate a behavior to the activity of the brain and other organs
Ontogenetic explanations: describe how a structure or behavior develops. This includes the
influences of genes, nutrition, experiences and interactions. Ontogenetic = the origin of being.
Evolutionary explanations: reconstruct the evolutionary history of a structure or behavior.
Characteristic features of an animal are mostly modifications of things found in their ancestral species.
These explanations show behavioral similarities among related species.
Functional explanations: describe why a structure or behavior evolved in the way that it did.
Genetic drift: process of a gene accidentally spreading through a population. That gene probably
provided an advantage in the past but is not necessary now.
Genetic and evolution of behavior
All behavior depends on genes and environment.
The influence of the environment on facial expressions is obvious, but does heredity influence facial
expressions? Studies show a remarkable similarity between facial expressions of blind people (who
couldnt have learned by imitation) and their sighted relatives. This suggests a role of genetics in facial
expression.
Mendelian genetics
Gregor Mendel demonstrated that inheritance occurs through genes: units of heredity that maintain
their structural identity from one generation to another. Genes are aligned along chromosomes:
strands of genes that come in pairs. Chromosomes consist of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). DNA
contains four bases: (A) adenine (G) guanine (C) cytosine (T) thymine. The order of those bases
determines the order of the bases in RNA, the order of RNA determines the order of amino acids that
form protein. Proteins can be part of the structure of the body or they can be enzymes.
A strand of DNA serves as a template for RNA (ribonucleic acid). Messenger RNA serves as a
template for the synthesis of protein molecules.
If you are homozygous for a gene you have the same gene on the two copies of a chromosome. You
are heterozygous for a gene if you have an unmatched pair of genes on the two chromosomes.
Dominant genes: show a strong expression, no matter if they are homozygous or heterozygous.
Recessive genes: only show effect if its homozygous.
Sex-linked genes are the genes on the sex chromosomes (X and Y: female mammals have XX, male
have XY). The genes on autosomal chromosomes are autosomal genes. During reproduction
females give an X chromosome, males give either X or Y. Most sex-linked gens are X-linked, the Y
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