Psycology
INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CLASS #5
Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
Today’s Lecture
The 5 senses
Organs
Receptors and sensory coding
Integrative pathway to the nervous system
5 senses
A sense is a physiological capacity of organisms
that provides data for perception.
Share processing
Each system begins with anatomical
structures for collecting, filtering,
and amplifying information from
the environment.
They have specialized receptor cells
that transduce the environmental
stimulus into neural signals.
Specialized receptors
These receptors transduce a specific type of
stimulus energy into electrical signals.
Sensory coding
The major sensory
modalities in humans
are mediated by
distinct classes of
receptor neurons
located in specific
sense organs.
Classification of sensory receptors
Intensity of the stimululation
The firing rates of sensory nerves encode the stimulus magnitude.
Anatomy of senses
These neural signals are
passed along their
specific sensory nerve
pathways and travel up
the spinal cord and
enter the brain to
terminate in different
parts of the thalamus.
Thalamus
The thalamus is a large mass of gray matter in the dorsal part of the
diencephalon of the brain with several functions such as relaying of sensory
signals to the cerebral cortex, but also the regulation of consciousness, sleep,
and alertness.
Anatomy of senses
Sensory inputs
about taste, touch,
smell, hearing, and
seeing travel to
specific regions of
the brain for initial
processing.
Primary sensory cortices
From the thalamus, neural connections these pathways travel first to
primary sensory cortex.
Approximate location of the five primary sensory areas and motor cortex
Further processing
Approximate locations of the secondary and tertiary sensory and motor cortices
Audition
Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sounds by detecting
vibrations, changes in the pressure of the surrounding medium through time,
through an organ such as the ear.
The sounds we hear can also be
classified as either pure tones or
complex sounds.
Pure tones have waveforms that are a
very regular shape, called a sine
wave.
Complex sounds are a mixture of
several frequencies.
Sound waves
In air the disturbances travels with the 343 m/s, the speed of sound.
Entering the ear
Sound waves arriving at the ear
enter the auditory canal where the
sound waves are amplified
It travel to the far end of the
canal, where they hit the tympanic
membrane (eardrum), and make it
vibrate.
These low-pressure vibrations then
travel through the air-filled
middle ear and rattle three tiny
bones, the malleus , incus , and
stapes , which cause a second
membrane, the oval window, to
vibrate.
Transduction along the cochlea.
The oval window is the “door” to
the fluid-filled cochlea.
Within the cochlea are tiny hair
cells located along the inner
surface of the basilar membrane .
The hair cells are the sensory
receptors of the auditory system.
The location of a hair cell on the
basilar membrane determines its
frequency tuning , the sound
frequency that it responds to.
Hair cells (Cilia)
Cilia tips are joined by a
fiber link.
Their movement produces
tension of the link which
opens an ion channel in the
adjacent tip.
Calcium and potassium ions
flow into the cilia and
produce a depolarization.
Auditory steps
Auditory integration
The output from the
auditory nerve projects to
the cochlear nuclei in the
brainstem.
Ascending fibers reach the
auditory cortex following
synapses in the inferior
colliculus and medial
geniculate nucleus.
Auditory integration
The tuning curves for auditory
cells can be quite broad.
Cochlear implants
Cochlear implant is a surgically
implanted device that bypass the
normal acoustic hearing process.
The sound sensation comes from
the sound that is converted to
electric signals which directly
stimulate the auditory nerve.
The brain adapts to the new
mode of hearing, and eventually
can interpret the electric signals
as sound and speech.
Olfaction
Smell is the sensory experience that results from the transduction
of neural signals triggered by odor molecules, or odorants
detected by receptors in the olfactory epithelium.
Odorant processing
The axons of these neurons
project to the olfactory bulb
where they terminate on
mitral and relay neurons
within glomeruli.
The relay neuron axons
project to the olfactory
cortex.
Olfactory receptors
Humans have approximately 350 different odorant receptors.
Opening of cyclic nucleotide-gated cation channels, causing cation in flux and a
change in membrane potential in the ciliary membrane
Odorants
Each odorant is recognized by a unique combination of receptors which explains
how mammals can distinguish between their similar chemical structures.
Odorants flow rate
The response across the
nostrils will be different
because of variation in
flow rates.
One nostril always has
a greater input airflow
than the other, and the
nostrils switch between
the two rates every few
hours.
Olfactory epithelium cells
The olfactory epithelium contains
sensory neurons interspersed with
supporting cells as well as a basal
layer of stem cells.
Cilia extend from the dendrite of
each neuron into the mucus lining
the nasal cavity. An axon extends
from the basal end of each neuron
to the olfactory bulb.
Olfaction central integration
The information is send to the glomeruli in the olfactory bulb, the axons of which
form the olfactory nerve that relays information to the primary olfactory cortex.
The orbitofrontal cortex is a secondary olfactory processing area.
Olfaction central integration
Targets include frontal and orbitofrontal areas of the neocortex, which are thought to
be important for odor discrimination, and the amygdala and hypothalamus, which
may be involved in emotional and physiological responses to odors.
Gustation
The sense of taste depends greatly on the sense
of smell since both begin with a chemical stimulus.
They are referred to as the chemical senses.
The primary function of the gustatory system is
nutritional.
Taste processing
Three different types of taste papillae span the surface of the tongue.
Each cell is sensitive to one of five basic tastes.
Taste qualities localisation
Taste sensitivity shows significant individual differences.
The number of taste buds declines with age.
Taste receptors
Different taste qualities involve different detection mechanisms
and receptors activations in the microvilli in the taste cells.
Humans can distinguish five
different taste qualities:
Sweet
Bitter
Salty
Sour
Umami (associated with
amino acids / glutamate)
Taste integration in the CNS
The taste pathway projects to the ventral
posterior medial nucleus of the thalamus and
information is then relayed to the gustatory
cortex in the insula.
The neural correlates of satiation
Participants use a 10-point scale to rate the motivation and pleasantness of
chocolate when offered a morsel seven times during the PET session.
Desire and enjoyment declined over time.
The neural correlates of satiation
Across presentations, activity dropped in primary gustatory cortex (left) and
increased in orbitofrontal cortex (right). The former could indicate an attenuated
response to the chocolate sensation as the person habituates to the taste. The
latter might correspond to a change in the participants’ desire (or aversion) to
chocolate.
Activation as measured
during PET 15O – H2O
scanning during repeated
presentations of chocolate
(red). Water was also
presented (blue).
Somatosensory system
Proprioception is the sense of oneself. Receptors in skeletal muscle, joint capsules,
and the skin enable us to have conscious awareness of the posture and movements
of our own body, particularly the four limbs and the head.
Exteroception is the sense of direct interaction with the external world as it
impacts on the body. The principal mode of exteroception is the sense of touch,
which includes sensations of contact, pressure, stroking, motion, and vibration, and
is used to identify objects.
Stimulus perception
Epidermis
Epidermis (Thin outer layer)
Dermis (Thick inner layer)
Humans loose 50 million
epidermal cells per day
Most somatosensory receptors
are mechanoreceptors
Mechanoreceptors
4 types of mechanoreceptor
Somatosensory receptors
Receptive field
The receptive field of a touch-sensitive neuron denotes the region of
skin where gentle tactile stimuli evoke action potentials in that neuron.
Receptive field
RF size: 2-10 mm RF size: several cm
Bipolar neurons
Physical interaction at the
nerve terminus forces Na+ ion
channels to open.
Influx of sodium results in
rapid depolarization triggers
an action potential.
Na+ ion influx
(depolarization)
Primary afferent axons
Aa, Ab, Ad, C
C fibers mediate pain and
temperature
Ab mediates touch sensations
Ad mediates acute, early pain
Axon size and propagation
Large-diameter fibers conduct
action potentials more rapidly
because the internal
resistance to current flow
along the axon is low, and the
nodes of Ranvier are widely
spaced along its length
Peripheral nerves innervating
The graphs illustrate the
distribution of four groups of
sensory nerve fibers
innervating skeletal muscle and
the skin.
Each group has a characteristic
axon diameter and conduction
velocity.
Myelinated peripheral nerve
fibers is approximately six
times the fiber diameter.
Major somatosensory pathway
Somatosensory map
Cortical volume changes with
mechanoreceptor density
variation across skin regions
(so-called “homunculus”)
Homunculus
This model shows what a man’s
body would look like if each
part grew in proportion to the
area of the cortex of the
brain concerned with its
sensory perception.
Temperature
Transient receptor potential (TRP) channels are membrane proteins with six
transmembrane domains.
TRP channels are gated by temperature and various ligands.
Different types respond to different temperature and have different thresholds.
Pain
Propagation of action potentials in different classes
of nociceptive fibers.
Visual perception
Visual perception is the ability to interpret the
surrounding environment using light in the
visible spectrum reflected by the objects in the
environment.
Visual information is contained in the light
reflected from objects. To perceive objects, we
need sensory detectors that respond to the
reflected light.
Electromagnetic radiation
Structure of the retina
Light activates the receptor cells of the retina.
There are two types of receptor cells: rods and cones.
The output of the receptor cells is processed and then relayed to the
central nervous system via the optic nerve, the axons of the ganglion cells.
Structure of the retina
The retina
comprises five
distinct layers of
neurons and
synapses.
Rod & cone
Rod and cone photoreceptors have similar structures.
The outer segment consists of a stack of membranous discs that
contain the light-absorbing photopigments.
On & Off
Rod
The rod cell responds to
light. Rhodopsin molecules
in the outer-segment.
The discs absorb photons,
which leads to the closure
of cGMP-gated channels
in the plasma membrane.
Visual photoreceptors
Human perception of colors results from the simultaneous activation of
different classes of photoreceptors in the retina.
Visual system
The input from each visual
field is projected to the
primary visual cortex in
the contralateral
hemisphere.
A small percentage of
visual fibers of the optic
nerve terminate in the
superior colliculus and
pulvinar nucleus.
A visual scene analyzis
Simple attributes of the visual
environment are analyzed to
parse the visual scene.
Local visual features are
assembled into surfaces,
objects are segregated from
background, local orientation is
integrated into global contours
and surface shape is identified
from shading and kinematic
cues.
Finally, surfaces and contours
are used to identify the object
Retinal implant
The tiny implant chip contains 1,500 light-sensitive microphotodiodes.
Color blindness
It is carried by the X chromosome recessively
Color blindness test
It is a color perception test for red-green color deficiencies.
Next class
Effect of music on the brain
Music therapy
Rhythm and Parkinson’s disease
That’s it for today!
Perceiving the world to understand who you are.
INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CLASS #9
Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
Today’s Lecture
Revision of the previous classes
I will answer any questions
Importance of Greek philosophers
The Greeks were important because they broke loose from the
accepted religious traditions and produced what they considered
to be better stories about the origin of the world.
They engaged in open, critical discussions of one another’s ideas
and speculated.
A life spent thinking
Dark ages (410 – 1000)
Greek and Roman books were lost or destroyed; little or no progress was made in
science, philosophy, or literature.
The Christian church became increasingly powerful. Europe was dominated by mysticism,
superstition, and anti-intellectualism.
Church dogma was no longer challengeable, it wielded tremendous power. People were
either believers or heretics, and heretics were dealt with harshly.
Islamic Golden Age
The end of the 7th century is marked the
inauguration of the House of Wisdom in
Baghdad.
Scholars from various parts of the world
were mandated to gather and translate
all of the world’s classical knowledge into
the Arabic language.
Renaissance (1450 – 1600)
Renaissance means “rebirth,” and during this
period, the tendency was to go back to the more
open-minded method of inquiry.
It was a time when Europe gradually switched from
being God-centered to being human-centered.
If God existed, he existed in nature; therefore, to
study nature was to study God.
Florence, Italy
When science challenge dogma
Born in Torun.
Published his book De Revolutionibus
Orbium Coelestium (The Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres).
Copernicus did argue successfully that,
rather than the sun revolving around the
earth (the geocentric theory), the earth
revolved around the sun (the heliocentric
theory).
To challenge the geocentric theory was to
challenge church dogma and was therefore
heretical.
Nicolaus Copernicus
1476 – 1543
Kuyavian-Pomeranian , Poland
A period during which Western philosophy embraced the belief that unbiased reason
or the objective methods of science could reveal the principles governing the universe.
Once discovered, these principles could be used for the betterment of humankind.
The Enlightenment
Contrast the period with the darkness of
irrationality and superstition that was
thought to characterize the Dark Ages.
Increasing skepticism concerning
religious dogma and the Enlightenment
were closely related.
The Enlightenment thinkers the most
important human attribute was
rationality.
Existentialism
Existentialism: The philosophy that examines the meaning in life and stresses the
freedom that humans have to choose their own destiny. Like romanticism, existentialism
stresses subjective experience and the uniqueness of each individual.
For the existentialists the most important aspects of humans
are their personal, subjective interpretations of life and the
choices they make in light of those interpretations.
We can trace the origins of existential philosophy at least as
far back as Socrates, who embraced the notion of “Know
thyself” and said, “An unexamined life is not worth living”.
Rise of experimental psychology
Franz Jospeh Gall
Phrenology
Hermann Ludwig von
Helmholtz
Nerve bio-electricity
The father of psychology
As early as 1862, Wundt performed an experiment
that led him to believe that a full-fledged discipline of
experimental psychology was possible.
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt
1832–1920
Baden, Germany
Wundt concluded that one
could either attend to the
position of the pendulum or
to the bell, but not both at
the same time.
He worked as an assistant
to Hermann von Helmholtz.
Theory of evolution
The reproductive capacity of all living organisms allows for many more offspring
than can survive in a given environment; therefore, there is a struggle for survival.
Among the offspring of any species, there are vast individual differences, some of
which are more conducive to survival than others. This results in the survival of the
fittest.
Thus, a natural selection occurs among the offspring of a species. This natural
selection of adaptive characteristics from the individual differences occurring among
offspring accounts for the slow transmutation of a species over the eons.
Evolution, then, results from the natural selection of those accidental variations
among members of a species that prove to have survival value.
Darwin defined fitness as an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce
From theory to fact
To say the least, Darwin’s theory was revolutionary. He changed the traditional view
of human nature and with it changed the history of philosophy and psychology.
In general, Darwin stimulated interest in the study of individual differences and
showed that studying behavior is at least as important as studying the mind.
Darwin’s tree of life, 1859
His direct comparison of humans with
other animals, along with his forceful
assertion that humans differ from other
animals only in degree, launched
modern comparative and animal
psychology.
It became clear that much could be
learned about humans by studying
nonhuman animals.
Conditioned Reflex
During his work on digestion, Pavlov
discovered the conditioned reflex (or
learned reflex).
While studying the secretion of gastric
juices in response to food (e.g., meat
powder), he noticed that events
associated also caused stomach
secretions.
For example, the mere sight of the
experimenter or the sound of the
footsteps.
Mental illness
Although the condition we now refer to as mental illness has
existed from at least the beginning of recorded history, when
the behavior and thought processes thought to characterize
mental illness are examined, several recurring themes become
evident.
Harmful behavior
Unrealistic thoughts and perception
Inappropriate emotions
Unpredictable behaviors
Definition: psychoanalysis
A therapeutic method originated by Freud for treating disorders of the
personality or behaviour by bringing into a patient’s consciousness his
unconscious conflicts and fantasies (which are attributed chiefly to the
development of the sexual instinct) through the free association of ideas,
analysis and interpretation of dreams and parapraxes, etc., and
allowing him to relive them by transference.
A theory of personality and psychical life derived from this, based on
concepts of the ego, id, and super-ego, the conscious, pre-conscious, and
unconscious levels of the mind, and the repression of the sexual instinct;
more widely, a branch of psychology dealing with the unconscious.
Oxford English Dictionary
The nervous system
The nervous system is generally divided
into two main parts.
The central nervous system includes the
brain and spinal cord.
The peripheral nervous system, comprising
the sensory and motor nerves and
associated nerve cell ganglia (groups of
neuronal cell bodies), is located outside
the central nervous system.
Synapse
Synapses are specialized regions that
permit chemical or electrical signaling
between neurons.
The nerve cell transmitting a signal is
called the presynaptic cell; the cell
receiving the signal is the postsynaptic cell.
Information is transferred across synapses
from one neuron to the next, or from a
neuron to a non-neuronal cell such as those
in muscles or glands.
Blood-brain barrier
The BBB limits which materials in the
blood can gain access to neurons in the
nervous system.
Astrocytes ensheath small arterioles
and capillaries throughout the brain.
The barrier is largely the result of
tight junctions between endothelial
cells and cerebral capillaries, a
feature not shared by capillaries in
other parts of the body.
Glia insulating the axons
Insulate: to separate from conducting bodies by means of nonconductors so as to
prevent transfer of electricity.
To increase the speed by which the electricity is conducted in axons.
This happen because they are wrapped in an insulating sheath of a lipid
substance, myelin.
In the CNS In the PNS
Recording of action potential
Their discovered the
basis for propagation
of nerve impulses.
They made their
discovery from the
giant axon of the
Atlantic squid.
This discovery earned
them the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine
in 1963.
Andrew Huxley
1917 – 2012
London, England
Alan Hodgkin
1914 – 1998
Oxfordshire, England
Giant atlantic squid
Its axon is the largest
axon known to science.
They have a diameter
of 1 mm.
Action potential
Voltage-gated ion channels located in the spike-triggering zone at the axon
hillock, and along the extent to the axon, open and close rapidly, changing
their conductance to specific ions and resulting in the action potential.
The time course of changes in membrane voltage during an action potential,
and the underlying causative changes in membrane conductance to Na+
(gNa) and K+ (gK).
Share processing
Each system begins with anatomical
structures for collecting, filtering,
and amplifying information from
the environment.
They have specialized receptor cells
that transduce the environmental
stimulus into neural signals.
Anatomy of senses
These neural signals are
passed along their
specific sensory nerve
pathways and travel up
the spinal cord and
enter the brain to
terminate in different
parts of the thalamus.
Thalamus
The thalamus is a large mass of gray matter in the dorsal part of the
diencephalon of the brain with several functions such as relaying of sensory
signals to the cerebral cortex, but also the regulation of consciousness, sleep,
and alertness.
Somatosensory map
Cortical volume changes with
mechanoreceptor density
variation across skin regions
(so-called “homunculus”)
Homunculus
This model shows what a man’s
body would look like if each
part grew in proportion to the
area of the cortex of the
brain concerned with its
sensory perception.
http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/comp.php?img=87494&frm=med&search=sensory&first=1
Electromagnetic radiation
Visual photoreceptors
Human perception of colors results from the simultaneous activation of
different classes of photoreceptors in the retina.
(Vuilleumier 2015)
Choose your music carefully
Range of emotions
Epigenetics
Epigenetics represents the science
for the studying heritable changes
of DNA, not involving changes in
DNA sequence, that regulate gene
expression.
Research on the changes in a
chromosome without alterations in
the DNA sequence
Histone modifications
DNA methylation
Epigenetic effects
Familial risk of psychiatric disorders
Correlations between monozygotic twins for psychiatric disorders are
considerably greater than those between dizygotic wins.
The risk of developing schizophrenia is greater in close relatives of a
schizophrenic patient.
Familial risk of other disorders
Comparing Identical and
Fraternal Twins: A higher
percentage of disease
incidence in both identical
twins is the first indication
of a genetic component.
Percentages lower than
100% in identical twins
indicates that DNA alone
does not determine
susceptibility to disease.
Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins
Wong, et al. Human Molecular Genetics, 2005, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddi116
Autistic savant
Savant syndrome is a condition in which someone with significant
mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of
average (look for Daniel Tammet).
The skills at which savants excel are generally related to
memory. This may include rapid calculation, artistic ability, map
making, or musical ability. Usually just one special skill is present.
Those with the condition generally have
a neurodevelopmental disorder such as autism
spectrum disorder or have a brain injury.
Kim Peek, who was the inspiration for the
main character in the movie Rain Man
Stroke
Also called apoplexy or cerebrovascular accident.
A blockage or hemorrhage of a blood vessel leading to the brain.
Information processing model
Chunking
A chunk is any memory pattern or meaningful unit of memory.
By creating these chunks, a process called chunking, we can fit
more information into the seven available slots of working
memory.
It expands working memory load
Which is easier to remember?
4 8 3 7 9 2 5 1 6
483 792 516
Chess pieces chunking
Chase and Simon (1973) used chess players.
Novices – <100 hours Experts – >10,000 hours
Place pieces on the board (up to 24 of a
middle game or random middle game) and
players viewed for 5 seconds. Information in
memory is stored as ‘chunks’
A chunk is a familiar pattern that can be
used as a unit
Masters have about 100,000 chunks
Chunks can be recognized instantly
It takes about 10 seconds to create a chunk
Chess pieces chunking
Information in memory is stored as
chunks (a familiar pattern that can be
used as a unit).
Masters have about 100,000 chunks.
They are linked to possible actions.
In chess: identification of weaknesses,
moves, plans.
Hippocampus
Research has found that one of
the first areas in the brain
affected by Alzheimer’s
disease is the hippocampus.
Atrophy was correlated to the
hippocampal areas with the
presence of Alzheimer’s disease.
Genetics of memory
At the nucleus level, important nuclear
transcription factor recruit the
transcriptional machinery and initiate the
transcription of immediate early genes.
Short-and long-term memory will lead to
the expression of numerous genes and
proteins.
Resting state
Resting state is a method of functional magnetic resonance imaging that is
used in brain mapping to evaluate regional interactions that occur in a resting
or task-negative state, when an explicit task is not being performed.
Five modules were identified in a functional network of the human brain,
represented by five different colors.
Surface representation of modular architecture of a functional brain network.
Brain correlates
Scientists still don’t understand exactly how
human consciousness works.
Magnetic resonance imaging brain scans of
coma patients (some recovered, more than half
died) and compared them with healthy
volunteers.
The team tracked 417 different brain regions
for changes in blood flow a marker of brain
activity. They then correlated synchronized
increases or decreases in activity between
different regions.
In healthy patients, about 40 regions lit up in
concert with many other parts of the brain.
Sleep
The purpose of sleep is unclear.
Restorative Hypothesis: busier we are, more sleep we need
◼ Species with higher metabolic rates typically spend more time in sleep
◼ CSF circulates during sleep to remove toxins
Adaptive Hypothesis
The amount of sleep depends on the availability of food and on safety
considerations.
Vulnerable animals without shelter (cattle) and those that need to spend hours
feeding (elephants) sleep very little.
Biological clock
Organisms from algae to people have evolved to keep time with the planet’s
light/dark beat. They do so using the world’s most important timekeepers.
Daily, or circadian, clocks that allow organisms to schedule their days so as not to
be caught off guard by sunrise and sunset.
Mother of all clock
A single-celled descendant
of the last universal common
ancestor (LUCA) may have
developed a primitive
circadian clock.
The ancient timer may have
arisen in an ancestor of
animals, plants and fungi to
meet environmental
challenges, such as oxygen
toxicity.
Circadian rhythm
INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CLASS #4
Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
Evidence for the existence of healed trepanations
(cranial surgery) from Ensisheim, Alsace, France.
Trepanation: a surgical intervention in which a
hole is made into the human skull to treat health
problems related to intracranial diseases or
release pressured blood buildup from an injury.
More than 1,500 trepinated skulls from the
Neolithic period have been uncovered throughout
the world.
Mesolithic brain surgery (5100 BC)
Lillie, 1998
17th Century B.C., is a document that
contains the earliest reference to the
brain.
It may have been a manual of military
surgery that describes 48 cases.
The papyrus is a scroll of 4.68 meters.
It is written right-to-left in the Egyptian
cursive form of hieroglyphs.
The red ink highlights the patients’
ailments and their prognoses.
The word “brain” occurs only 8
times in ancient Egyptian, 6 of
them on these pages.
The papyrus describes here the
symptoms, diagnosis, and
prognosis of two patients with
compound fractures of the skull.
It compares the surface of the
brain to “those ripples that
happen in copper through
smelting”.
Second part of the papyrus
Egyptians saw the preservation
of the body after death as an
important step to living well in
the afterlife.
It takes about 70 days to
completely mummify a dead
body.
The first step is to push a sharp
rod up the nose and into the
brain.
Mummification
Anubis
The Brain
With blood vessels Without blood vessels
Around 1.3 – 1.4 kg
1 trillion neurons
trillions of “support cells”
Cellular architecture
Camillo Golgi
1843 – 1926
Lombardy, Italy
He experimented with metal
impregnation of nervous
tissue, using mainly silver.
The Golgi method would
stain a limited number of
cells at random in their
entirety and was published
in 1973.
The first illustration by Golgi
Cellular architecture
Santiago Ramon y Cajal
1852 – 1934
Naverre, Spain
He was the first to identify the
unitary nature of neurons.
He articulated the neuron
doctrine that state that the
nervous system is made up of
individual cells.
Cajal and Golgi shared the nobel
prize for their work in 1906.
Afferent inflow to the
mammalian cortex
Today’s Lecture
A look at the nervous system
Brain cells
Neurons
Glia
Neuronal signaling
Chemical
Electrical
The nervous system
The nervous system is generally divided
into two main parts.
The central nervous system includes the
brain and spinal cord.
The peripheral nervous system, comprising
the sensory and motor nerves and
associated nerve cell ganglia (groups of
neuronal cell bodies), is located outside
the central nervous system.
The autonomous nervous system
The autonomic nervous
system is involved in
controlling the involuntary
action of smooth muscles,
the heart, and various
glands.
The sympathetic system
uses the neurotransmitter
norepinephrine, and the
parasympathetic system
uses acetylcholine as its
transmitter.
The two systems frequently
operate antagonistically.
The ventricules
The brain is immersed in a fluid called cerebrospinal fluid.
It is produced in the lateral ventricles and in the third ventricle.
It provide structural support and is essential in brain regulation.
Brain cells
The nervous system is composed of two main classes of cells:
Neurons
Glial cells
Neurons are the basic signaling units that transmit information throughout
the nervous system.
As Ramon y Cajal deduced, neurons take in information, by changes in their activity
levels, pass it along to other neurons.
Neuron’s structure
Typical neuron has four
morphologically defined regions:
(1) the cell body
(2) dendrites
(3) axon
(4) presynaptic terminals
An axon convey electrical signals over
distances ranging from 0.1 mm to 2 m.
These electrical signals, called action
potentials, are initiated at a specialized
trigger region near the origin of the
axon.
Type of neurons
Unipolar cells have a single
process emanating from the
cell. Different segments serve
as receptive surfaces or
releasing terminals. Unipolar
cells are characteristic of the
invertebrate nervous system.
Bipolar cells have two types of processes. The dendrite receives electrical signals and the
axon transmits signals to other cells.
Pseudo-unipolar cells carry somatosensory information to the spinal cord. During
development the two processes of the embryonic bipolar cell fuse and emerge from the
cell body as a single process that has two functionally distinct segments. Both segments
function as axons; one extends to peripheral skin or muscle, the other to the central spinal
cord.
Type of neurons
Multipolar cells have a single axon and many dendrites. They are the most common type of
neuron in the mammalian nervous system.
Three examples illustrate their large diversity.
Spinal motor neurons innervate skeletal muscle.
Pyramidal cells have a roughly triangular cell body; dendrites emerge from both the apex and the base.
Pyramidal cells are found in the hippocampus and throughout the cerebral cortex.
Purkinje cells of the cerebellum are characterized by a rich and extensive dendritic tree that accommodates
an enormous synaptic input.
Multipolar neurons
Neuron’s physiology
Overview
Intra-cellular
transport
Mitochondria
The most prominent roles
of mitochondria are to
produce the energy of
the cell (ATP) through
aerobic respiration and
to regulate cellular
metabolism.
Have a double-membrane of lipid layers.
Krebs cycle occurs in the matrix.
Citric acid cycle (Krebs cycle)
A series of chemical reactions used by all aerobic organisms to release stored
energy through the oxidation of acetyl-CoA derived from carbohydrates, fats,
and proteins into adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and carbon dioxide.
Synapse
Synapses are specialized regions that
permit chemical or electrical signaling
between neurons.
The nerve cell transmitting a signal is
called the presynaptic cell; the cell
receiving the signal is the postsynaptic cell.
Information is transferred across synapses
from one neuron to the next, or from a
neuron to a non-neuronal cell such as those
in muscles or glands.
Synaptic contact
Postsynaptic contact
can occur on:
the cell body
the dendrites
the axon
Glial cells
Glial cells are support cells and greatly outnumber neurons.
2 to 10 times more glia than neurons in the vertebrate central nervous system.
Although they arise from the same
embryonic precursor cells, they do not have
the same membrane properties as neurons.
They are not electrically excitable and are
not directly involved in electrical signaling.
Glia in the vertebrate nervous system can
be divided into two major classes:
microglia and macroglia.
Microglia
Microglia account for 10 – 15% of all cells
found within the brain.
They act as the first and main form of active
immune defense in the central nervous
system.
Microglia in the brain are derived from Bone
Marrow. Entering the central nervous system
early in development, they reside in all
regions of the brain throughout life.
Macrophage
Microglia constantly scavenge the CNS
for plaques, damaged or unnecessary
neurons or infectious agents.
Microglia can also become
macrophages, clearing debris after
strokes or other degenerative
neurological disorders.
Macrophage engulfs and digests
cellular debris, foreign substances,
microbes or anything else that does not
have the type of proteins specific to
healthy body cells on its surface.
Astrocytes
They constitute nearly half the number of
brain cells.
Owe their name to their irregular, roughly
star-shaped cell bodies.
The astrocytes help to create a barrier,
called the blood–brain barrier (BBB),
between the tissues of the central nervous
system and the blood.
Astrocytes help nourish surrounding neurons
by releasing growth factors and regulate
the potassium (K+) concentration in the
space between neurons.
Astrocytes support synaptic signaling
The processes of astrocytes are intimately associated with both presynaptic
and postsynaptic elements.
They prepare the surface of the neuron for synapse formation and stabilize
newly formed synapses.
Blood-brain barrier
The BBB limits which materials in the
blood can gain access to neurons in the
nervous system.
Astrocytes ensheath small arterioles
and capillaries throughout the brain.
The barrier is largely the result of
tight junctions between endothelial
cells and cerebral capillaries, a
feature not shared by capillaries in
other parts of the body.
Glia insulating the axons
Insulate: to separate from conducting bodies by means of nonconductors so as to
prevent transfer of electricity.
To increase the speed by which the electricity is conducted in axons.
This happen because they are wrapped in an insulating sheath of a lipid
substance, myelin.
In the CNS In the PNS
Myelination
Grey and white matters
White matter refers to areas that are mainly made up of myelinated axons.
Grey matter is a major component of the CNS, consisting of neuronal cell
bodies, dendrites and axons (myelinated and unmyelinated), glial cells,
synapses, and capillaries.
The colors
The color arises mainly from the whiteness of myelin. Grey matter has a very
light grey color which come from capillar
Organization of neurons in the CNS
Neurons can be organized in clumps
called nuclei (not to be confused with
the nucleus inside each neuron).
Sheets called layers which are most
commonly found in the cortex.
The cell bodies of glial cells are
located in the white matter (e.g.,
oligodendrocytes), and in the cortex.
Functional organization of neurons
Neuronal signaling
The voltage difference
across the neuronal
membrane in the resting
state is typically − 70
millivolts (mV) inside,
which is known as resting
membrane potential .
Membrane potential
It results from the separation of
net positive and net negative
charges on either side of the
membrane.
The excess of positive ions
outside the membrane and
negative ions inside represents a
fraction of the total number of
ions inside and outside the cell at
rest.
Membrane
It is formed by a series of
lipid (fat) molecules
oriented with the heads
facing outwards, and the
tails facing inwards.
Ion channel
The membrane’s selective permeability to some ions, and the concentration
gradients formed by active pumping, lead to a difference in electrical
potential across the membrane; this is the resting membrane potential.
The membrane potential, represented here by the positive charges outside
the neuron along the membrane and the negative charges inside.
Ion channel modulation
Several types of
stimuli control the
opening and closing of
ion channels.
Important for action
potential
Ion channel are proteins
Ion channels are integral membrane proteins and
composed of several subunits.
Some channels contain auxiliary subunits that modulate the
gating of the pore
Crystal structure of a channel
Side view of the tetrameric voltage-gated K+ channel
Channel distribution
Variants of a potassium channel are expressed in different regions of the
brain (autoradiography).
Ion channel pump
The Na+/K+ pump preserves the cell’s resting potential by maintaining a
larger concentration of K+ inside the cell and Na+ outside the cell.
The pump uses ATP as energy for active transport.
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is a complex organic chemical that
provides energy to drive many processes in living cells (muscle
contraction, nerve impulse propagation, chemical synthesis).
Found in all forms of life
ADP
Channels vs pumps
Channels have a continuous aqueous
pathway for ion conduction across
the membrane. This pathway can be
occluded by the closing of a gate.
Pumps have two gates in series that
control ion flux. The gates are never
open simultaneously, but both can
close to trap one or more ions in the
pore.
Recording of action potential
Their discovered the
basis for propagation
of nerve impulses.
They made their
discovery from the
giant axon of the
Atlantic squid.
This discovery earned
them the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine
in 1963.
Andrew Huxley
1917 – 2012
London, England
Alan Hodgkin
1914 – 1998
Oxfordshire, England
Giant atlantic squid
Its axon is the largest
axon known to science.
They have a diameter
of 1 mm.
Voltage clamp
Used to measure the ion currents through the membranes of excitable cells,
such as neurons, while holding the membrane voltage at a set level.
Measure the membrane potential, and then change the membrane potential
(voltage) to a desired value by adding the necessary current.
This “clamps” the cell membrane at a desired constant voltage, allowing the
voltage clamp to record what currents are delivered.
Action potential
Voltage-gated ion channels located in the spike-triggering zone at the axon
hillock, and along the extent to the axon, open and close rapidly, changing
their conductance to specific ions and resulting in the action potential.
The time course of changes in membrane voltage during an action potential,
and the underlying causative changes in membrane conductance to Na+
(gNa) and K+ (gK).
All or none
If the stimulation is not large enough, it will not occur.
Once the threshold is reach, it will provide an action potential always of
the same amplitude that will go through the entire neuron.
Refractory period
This is known as the absolute
refractory period. It is followed by
the relative refractory period,
during which the neuron can
generate action potentials, but
only with larger-than-normal
depolarizing currents.
The refractory period lasts only a
couple of milliseconds and has as
consequence that the neuron’s
speed for generating action
potentials is limited to about 200
action potentials per second.
Hyperpolarization state, the
voltage-gated Na + channels are
unable to open, and another action
potential cannot be generated.
Summation
Sometime, simultaneous post-synaptic stimulations are necessary to reach the
threshold to trigger an action potential.
Neuron conduction
The change in membrane potential along a neuronal process during
electric conduction decreases with distance.
Node of Ranvier
Node of Ranvier are periodic gap in the insulating sheath
(myelin) on the axon of certain neurons that serves to
facilitate the rapid conduction of nerve impulses.
Action potentials in myelinated nerves are regenerated
at the nodes.
Neuron conduction
Louis Ranvier
1835 – 1922
Lyon, France
Ranvier was born and studied medicine at Lyon,
graduating in 1865.
In 1867, Ranvier entered the Collège de France.
In 1875, he was appointed to its chair of
general anatomy.
In 1878, Ranvier discovered the nodes which
received his name.
Gap junction
Some neurons communicate via
electrical synapses. They are very
different from chemical synapses.
In electrical synapses, no synaptic
cleft separates the neurons. Instead,
the neuronal membranes are touching
at specializations called gap junctions.
These channels form a continuous
bridge that provides a direct
communication path between the two
cells where it provide an
instantaneous signal transmission.
Properties of synapses
Properties of synapses
Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease
A demyelinating disorder caused by
a single mutations (connexin gene)
expressed in the Schwann cell that
blocks gap-junction.
That’s it for today!
With the right tool you just need the right question!
INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CLASS #7
Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
Today’s Lecture
Sensory memory
Short-term memory
Long-term memory
Forgetting
Amnesia
Biology of memory
Inspired memories
Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory) in the Greek mythology were the parents of the
Muses, the guiding spirits of the Nine Arts.
What is memory?
An internal record or representation of some prior event or experience.
A set of mental processes that receives, encodes, stores, organizes,
alters and retrieves information over time.
It is a constructive process.
It can be excellent as shown by Franco Magnani painting which
were done from memonies, he was named the memory artist.
Information processing model
Mental processes
A model of memory in which information must pass through discrete stages
via the processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval.
Encoding: Transforming information into a form that can be entered and
retained in the memory system.
Storage: Retaining information in memory so that it can be used at a later time.
Retrieval: Recovering information stored in memory so that we are consciously
aware of it.
Sensory memory
Its function is to process basic physical characteristics
It can hold many items at once for a very brief retention.
Duration depends on the sense involved
0.3 seconds for visual information
2 seconds for auditory information
All senses have a sensory memory
Iconic memory (visual information)
Echoic memory (auditory information)
Sensory memory holds a large amount of information, far more than ever
reaches consciousness.
Attention is needed to transfer information to working memory
Short-term memory
Short-Term Memory, also known as working memory is the temporary
storage of sensory information that filter whether to send it on to
long-term memory or forgotten.
It can hold 5-9 items for about 30 seconds before they are forgotten.
Duration and capacity can be increased with maintenance rehearsal
and/or chunking
Sensory memories lasts just long enough
to dissolve into the next one, giving us the
impression of a constant flow.
The Sperling’s test
George Sperling flashed a group
of letters for 1/20 of a second.
People could recall only about
half of the letters
When he signaled to recall a
particular row immediately after
the letters disappeared with a
specific tone, they could do so with
near-perfect accuracy.
Sperling proved all letters were
available in sensory memory if
they can be attended to quickly.
Rehearsal
Repetition: Mental or verbal repetition of information allows
information to remain in working memory longer than the usual
30 seconds.
Meaningful association: Link the new information with existing
memories or knowledge already consolidated in long-term
memory.
Chunking
A chunk is any memory pattern or meaningful unit of memory.
By creating these chunks, a process called chunking, we can fit
more information into the seven available slots of working
memory.
It expands working memory load
Which is easier to remember?
4 8 3 7 9 2 5 1 6
483 792 516
Chess pieces chunking
Chase and Simon (1973) used chess players.
Novices – <100 hours Experts – >10,000 hours
Place pieces on the board (up to 24 of a
middle game or random middle game) and
players viewed for 5 seconds. Information in
memory is stored as ‘chunks’
A chunk is a familiar pattern that can be
used as a unit
Masters have about 100,000 chunks
Chunks can be recognized instantly
It takes about 10 seconds to create a chunk
Chess pieces chunking
Information in memory is stored as
chunks (a familiar pattern that can be
used as a unit).
Masters have about 100,000 chunks.
They are linked to possible actions.
In chess: identification of weaknesses,
moves, plans.
Chess pieces chunking
The chess master is better at reproducing actual game positions.
Master’s performance drops to level of beginner when pieces
are arranged randomly.
Frontal cortex in short-term memory
The monkey grabs a response lever
and fixates a small target. An
initial stimulus is briefly presented
and must be held in working
memory until the next stimulus
appears.
In the task illustrated here, the
monkey was required to remember
the sample (“what”) and its location
(“where”) and release the lever
only in response to stimuli that
“matched” on both dimensions.
Neural firing rates in the lateral prefrontal cortex during
the delay period in the task are often above baseline.
Long-term memory
Relatively permanent memory storage. As far as anyone knows,
there is no limit to the duration or capacity of the long-term memory.
It is essentially all of your knowledge of yourself and the world
around you. Unless an injury or illness occurs, this memory is limitless.
Information processing
Automatic processing
Unconscious encoding of information.
Examples:
What did you eat for lunch today?
Was the last time you studied during the day or night?
You know the meanings of these very words you are reading. Are you
actively trying to process the definition of the words?
Effortful processing
Requires attention and conscious effort.
Examples:
Memorizing your notes for your upcoming Introduction to Psychology exams
Repeating a phone number in your head until
you can write it down
Explicit vs Implicit learning
Explicit Memory
The types of memory elicited through the conscious retrieval of
recollections in response to direct questions.
Implicit Memory
A nonconscious recollection of a prior experience that is revealed
indirectly, by its effects on performance.
Explicit vs Implicit learning
People with amnesia who read a story once, will read it faster a
second time, showing implicit memory.
There is no explicit memory though as they cannot recall having seen the text
before
People with Alzheimer’s who are repeatedly shown the word
perfume will not recall having seen it.
If asked the first word that comes to mind in response to the letters per, the say
perfume readily displaying learning.
Type of long-term memories
Type of long-term memories
Remembering
Refers to the subsequent re-accessing of events or information from the past,
which have been previously encoded and stored in the brain.
There are two main methods of accessing memory: recognition and recall.
Recognition is the association of an event or
physical object with one previously experienced,
and involves a process of comparison of
information with memory ( e.g. recognizing a known
face). It is a largely unconscious process.
Recall involves remembering a fact, event or object
that is not currently physically present (in the sense
of retrieving a representation, mental image or
concept), and requires the direct uncovering of
information from memory, (e.g. remembering the
name of a recognized person).
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850 –1909)
Barmen, Prussia (Germany)
He founded the third psychological testing lab
in Germany (third to Wilhelm Wundt and
Georg Elias Müller).
He began his memory studies here in 1879.
In 1885, he published his groundbreaking Über
das Gedächtnis (“On Memory”, later translated
to English as Memory. A Contribution to
Experimental Psychology) in which he described
experiments he conducted on himself to
describe the processes of learning and
forgetting.
Forgetting
Forgetting curve for nonsense syllables
wyx
ghe
jek
lsm
Forgetting occurs most
rapidly immediately after
learning.
Relearning takes less time
than initial learning.
Forgetting
Forgetting can
occurs at any
stage.
Retrieval from long-term memory
Depending on interference, retrieval
cues, moods, and motives, some
things get retrieved, some don’t
Long-term storage
Some items are altered or lost
Short-term memory
A few items are both noticed
and encoded
Sensory memory
The senses momentarily register
amazing detail
Interference
Retroactive Interference is the tendency for new information to disrupt the
memory of previously learned material.
Proactive Interference is the tendency for previously learned material to
disrupt the recall of new information.
Decay
Memories fade away or
decay gradually if
unused.
Time plays critical role.
Ability to retrieve
information declines with
time after the original
encoding.
Others reasons for forgetting
Motivated forgetting:
Involves the loss of painful memories (protective memory loss).
Retrieval failure:
The information is still within the long-term memory, but cannot
be recalled because the retrieval cue is absent.
Amnesia
Amnesia is a form of memory impairment that affects all of the
senses.
Typically, amnesiacs display deficits in specific types of memory
or in aspects of memory processing.
Each type of functional deficit is associated with a lesion in a
different brain region.
Amnesia
Retrograde amnesia is a form of amnesia where someone will be
unable to recall events that occurred before the development of
amnesia.
Anterograde amnesia is a loss of the ability to create memories
after the event that caused the amnesia occurs
Concussion
The famous case of H.M.
He suffered from progressively worsening
epilepsy. Over the years, his physicians
had tried to control his seizures with the
available drugs, but they were largely
ineffective. It became so bad that he was
having 10 minor seizures a day and a
major seizure every few days
In 1953 at age 27, he had a bilateral
medial temporal lobectomy in an attempt
to cure his epilepsy.
Although the surgery was partially
successful in controlling his epilepsy, a
severe side effect was that he became
unable to form new memories
(anterograde amnesia).
Henry Gustav Molaison
1926 – 2008
Connecticut, USA
The surgery
Image prior to surgery
(left). MRI image following
removal of right amygdala,
hippocampus, andanterior
temporal lobe (right).
The effects
He allowed himself to be tested by
over 100 researchers.
He had no other cognitive deficits.
His problem was purely a memory
problem.
He could learn some things: tasks
that involved motor skills, perceptual
skills, or procedures became easier
over time, though he could not
remember practicing the new skill or
being asked to learn it.
Digit span
A sequence of five digits
was asked to be repeated.
If correct, one more digit
was added. If not, that
sequence was repeated until
the participant reported it
correctly.
Patients with amnesia may
have normal short-term
memory.
Evolved in time
His memory for well before the surgey is intact, but that in the 50s (during his severe
epilepsy and surgery) declines and then in the 60’s and 70s (in the anterograde
domain) his recognition is nonexistent.
%
C
o
rr
e
c
t
Famous Faces Recognition by Decade
H.M.
Comparison
Electroconvulsive therapy
Patients show a temporally grade retrograde memory loss. This tells us that
memory apparently changes for a long time after initial learning.
Some material is forgotten, and the material that remains becomes more
resistant to disruption.
Alzheimer’s disease
It is the most common form of dementia.
Clinical description of the disease that bears his
name in 1906.
It is a slowly progressive disease of the brain
that is characterized by impairment of memory
and eventually by disturbances in reasoning,
planning, language, and perception.
The pooled incidence rate of AD among people
65+ years of age in Europe was 19.4 per 1000
person-years.
The pooled data of population-based studies in
Europe suggests that the age-standardized
prevalence in people 65+ years old is 6.4 % for
dementia and 4.4 % for AD.
Aloysius Alzheimer
1864 -1915
Breslau, Germany
Hippocampus
Research has found that one of
the first areas in the brain
affected by Alzheimer’s
disease is the hippocampus.
Atrophy was correlated to the
hippocampal areas with the
presence of Alzheimer’s disease.
Effects on the brain
Effects on memory
This dysfunctional connectivity between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex
due to the loss of acetylcholine appears to play a role in the progressive loss of
ability to form new episodic memories in Alzheimer’s patients.
Memory brain anatomy
Various type of memories
For verbal working memory
tasks, they found activation
(increasing blood flow
coupled to increased neural
activity) in left -hemisphere
sites in inferolateral frontal
cortex.
For the spatial working
memory task, activation was
primarily in right-hemisphere
regions.
Memory brain anatomy
Amygdala: Emotional memory and memory consolidation.
Basal ganglia & cerebellum: Memory for skills, habits and rhythm.
Thalamus: Formation of new memories and working memories
Cortical areas: Encoding of factual memories, storage of episodic and semantic
memories, skill learning, priming.
Hippocampus: Memory recognition, spatial, episodic memory, laying down new
declarative long-term memories.
Electrical stimulation of circuits within
the hippocampus can lead to long-
term synaptic changes that seem to be
responsible for learning
The hippocampus
Importance of glutamate
It is by a wide margin the most abundant neurotransmitter in
the vertebrate nervous system.
It is used by every major excitatory function in the vertebrate
brain, accounting in total for well over 90% of the synaptic
connections in the human brain.
It also serves as the primary neurotransmitter for some
localized brain regions, such as cerebellum granule cells.
Memory receptors
Excitatory post-synaptic potential
Excitatory post-synaptic potential
Long-term potentialisation (LTP)
A stimulating electrode is placed in
the prefrontal path and a recording
electrode is placed in the dentrate
gyrus.
LTP can be induced by stimulating
the axons with a burst of electrical
pulses (i.e., 100) within a few seconds.
LTP is a persistent increase in synaptic strength following high-frequency
stimulation of a chemical synapse.
Synapses that have undergone LTP tend to have stronger electrical
responses to stimuli than other synapses.
Long-term potentialisation (LTP)
Synaptic Plasticity
The size of the first population EPSP tells us
the strength of the synaptic connections before
LTP is induced.
Evidence that LTP has occurred is obtained by
periodically delivering a single pulse and then
measuring the response in the DG to see if it is
bigger than the original response.
Chemistry of LTP
Activation of terminal button
releases glutamate, which binds with
NMDA receptors in the postsynaptic
membrane of the dendritic spine
If the membrane was depolarized
by a dendritic spike, then calcium ions
enter and activate CAM-KII
CAM-KII travels to the postsynaptic
density and causes the insertion of
AMPA receptors
LTP also initiates changes in synaptic
structure and production of new
synapses
Genetics of memory
At the nucleus level, important nuclear
transcription factor recruit the
transcriptional machinery and initiate the
transcription of immediate early genes.
Short-and long-term memory will lead to
the expression of numerous genes and
proteins.
Biological bases of memory
Of all our forms of memory, a few
are exceptionally clear and vivid.
We call these flashbulb memories.
These tend to be memories of
highly emotional events. Typically
people remember exactly where
they were when the event
happened, what they were doing
and the emotions they felt.
Hormones and limbic driven releases
also affect memory.
That’s it for today!
It is so much better to rememeber.
Next class
Emotions
INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CLASS #9
Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
Today’s Lecture
Consciousness
Sleep
Circadian rhythm
Genetic of sleep
The mind-brain problem
How can a purely physical system (the body and brain)
construct conscious intelligence (the mind)?
Dualism, famously expounded by Descartes, states that mind and
brain are two distinct and separate phenomena, and conscious
experience is nonphysical and beyond the scope of the physical
sciences.
Materialism asserts that both mind and body are physical mediums
and that by understanding the physical workings of the body and
brain well enough, an understanding of the mind will follow.
These philosophies ignores an inconvenient problem.
Dualism tends to ignore biological findings, and materialism
overlooks the reality of subjective experience.
Some definitions
In common parlance the term “cognition” means thinking and reasoning, a usage
closer to its Latin root cognoscere (getting to know or perceiving).
Thus the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “the action or faculty of knowing.”
In 1997, Harvard psychologist Steve Pinker proposed of breaking the problem of
consciousness into three issues: self-knowledge, access to information, and sentience.
Self-knowledge : Accurate information about being itself.
Access to information : Access awareness is the ability to report on the content of
mental experience without the capacity to report on how the content was built up in
the nervous system. The nervous system has two modes of information processing:
conscious processing and unconscious processing.
Sentience : It refers to subjective experience, phenomenal awareness , raw feelings,
and the first person viewpoint (what it is like to be or do something).
Through the lens of cognitive neuroscience, much can be said about access to
information and self-knowledge, but the topic of sentience remains elusive.
Access vs sentience
Blindsight refers to the phenomenon that patients suffering a lesion in their visual
cortex can respond to visual stimuli present in the blind part of their visual field.
Most interestingly, these activities happen outside the realm of consciousness.
Patients will deny that they can do a task, yet their performance is clearly above
that of chance. Such patients have access to information but do not experience it.
Coma
A coma is when a person shows no signs of being awake and no
signs of being aware.
A person in a coma lies with their eyes closed and doesn’t respond
to their environment, voices or pain.
A coma usually lasts for less than 2 to 4 weeks, during which time
a person may wake up or progress into a vegetative state or
minimally conscious state.
Vegetative state
A vegetative state is when a person is awake but is showing no signs of
awareness.
A person in a vegetative state may:
They open their eyes.
They wake up and fall asleep at regular intervals.
They have basic reflexes.
They’re also able to regulate their heartbeat and breathing without assistance.
A person in a vegetative state doesn’t show any meaningful responses, also show
no signs of experiencing emotions.
If a person is in a vegetative state for a long time, it may be considered to be:
a continuing vegetative state when it’s been longer than 4 weeks
a permanent vegetative state when it’s been more than 6 months if caused by a non-
traumatic brain injury, or more than 12 months if caused by a traumatic brain injury
If a person is diagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state, recovery is
extremely unlikely but not impossible.
Minimally conscious state
A person who shows clear but minimal or inconsistent awareness is classified as
being in a minimally conscious state.
They may have periods where they can communicate or respond to commands,
such as moving a finger when asked.
In some cases a minimally conscious state is a stage on the route to recovery, but
in others it’s permanent.
But it’s more difficult to diagnose a permanent minimally conscious state because
it depends on things like:
The type of brain injury
How severe the injury is
How responsive the person is
In most cases, a minimally conscious state isn’t usually considered to be permanent until it’s
lasted several years.
Causes of these disorders
Traumatic brain injury
Occurs when an object or outside force causes severe trauma to
the brain.
Non-traumatic brain injury
Non-traumatic brain damage is usually caused by a health
condition (deprives the brain of oxygen) or a condition that
directly attacks brain tissue.
Progressive brain damage
In some cases, brain damage can gradually occur over time.
Resting state
Resting state is a method of functional magnetic resonance imaging that is
used in brain mapping to evaluate regional interactions that occur in a resting
or task-negative state, when an explicit task is not being performed.
Five modules were identified in a functional network of the human brain,
represented by five different colors.
Surface representation of modular architecture of a functional brain network.
Brain correlates
Scientists still don’t understand exactly how
human consciousness works.
Magnetic resonance imaging brain scans of
coma patients (some recovered, more than half
died) and compared them with healthy
volunteers.
The team tracked 417 different brain regions
for changes in blood flow a marker of brain
activity. They then correlated synchronized
increases or decreases in activity between
different regions.
In healthy patients, about 40 regions lit up in
concert with many other parts of the brain.
Brain correlates
Important consciousness brain correlates
The reticular formation is a collection of nuclei in the brainstem that project up to
the thalamus and cortex and are important for attention and arousal.
Anesthesia: artificial unconsciousness
Anesthetics inhibit neuronal activity.
As anesthetic dose is increased, metabolic activity in the brain decreases.
At some point, consciousness is abruptly lost.
Activity in high order association areas is reduced.
Significant decrease in thalamic activity.
Consciousness altering drugs
Psychoactive drugs
A chemical that alters perceptions, thoughts, moods, or behavior.
Physical dependence
An addiction in which a drug is needed to prevent withdrawal.
Psychological dependence
An addiction in which a drug is needed to maintain a sense of
well-being.
Consciousness altering drugs
Sedatives
Depressants; slow down central nervous system activity.
Alcohol is a sedative.
Stimulants
Excite the central nervous system; energize behavior.
Hallucinogens
Psychedelic drugs that distort perception and cause
hallucinations.
Opiates
Highly addictive drugs that depress neural activity and
provide temporary relief from pain and anxiety.
Consciousness altering drugs
Hypnosis
Hypnosis: A social interaction during which a person,
responding to suggestions, experiences changes in memory,
perception, and/or voluntary action.
Induction: Hypnotist makes a series of suggestions.
“You are becoming sleepy. Your eyelids are drooping”.
If all goes well, the subject(s) behave in ways consistent with
suggestions.
Hypnosis works primarily for people who are highly
suggestible (1 in 5 persons).
Theory explaining hypnosis
Social Influence Theory
Hypnotic subjects may simply
be imaginative people who go
along with the “subject” role
they have agreed to play.
Divided Consciousness Theory
Hypnosis is a special state of
dissociated (divided)
consciousness of our dual-track
mind.
19
Known benefits of hyponosis
Hypnotic analgesia: Clinical evidence shows hypnosis can be
used to treat immediate (e.g., surgery, burns) and chronic (e.g.,
arthritis, cancer) pain (Patterson & Jensen, 2003)
Self-hypnosis: Also be shown to be effective in improving
recovery from surgery
Clinical evidence: Hypnosis doesn’t reduce the sensation of
pain, but rather alters our interpretation (i.e., perception) of it
Reducing obesity, anxiety, and hypertension.
Improving concentration and performance.
Meditation
A mental procedure that focuses attention on an external
object or on a sense of awareness
Known effects:
One study found greater stress reduction and attention among
participants who meditated compared to a group that
underwent relaxation training (Tang et al., 2007)
Another study showed that when participants were made to
feel sad, those who received meditation training were less sad
than those who had not (Farb et al., 2010)
Sleep
The purpose of sleep is unclear.
Restorative Hypothesis: busier we are, more sleep we need
◼ Species with higher metabolic rates typically spend more time in sleep
◼ CSF circulates during sleep to remove toxins
Adaptive Hypothesis
The amount of sleep depends on the availability of food and on safety
considerations.
Vulnerable animals without shelter (cattle) and those that need to spend hours
feeding (elephants) sleep very little.
Sleep
Brainwaves
20 – 60 Hz
14 – 20 Hz
8 – 13 Hz
4 – 7 Hz
> 4 Hz
Brainwave speed is measured in Hertz (cycles per second) and they are
divided into bands delineating slow, moderate, and fast waves.
Sleep stages
Sleep stages
Non-REM sleep or Slow-waves sleep
REM sleep or Rapid-eyes movement
There are 5 Stages of sleep
(4) Non REM and (1) REM
During an 8 hour period, people typically progress
through all 5 full cycles,
Each cycle lasts about 90 minutes
Sleep stages
Stage 1
Light sleep, drift in and out, awaken easily
Eyes move slowly, muscle activity slows
May experience a sense of falling followed by
sudden muscle contractions
Stage 2
Eye movement stops
Brain waves are slower, occasional bursts of rapid
waves
Stage 3
Extremely slow waves-Delta waves
Interspersed with smaller faster waves
Considered deep sleep
◼ No eye or muscle movement, difficult to awaken
◼ Time when sleepwalking, bedwetting, or terrors occur
Stage 4
Almost exclusively Delta waves
Considered deep sleep
K-complex
It is the largest event in healthy human EEG.
They are more frequent in the first sleep cycles.
K-complexes have two proposed functions.
Suppressing cortical arousal in response to stimuli that the
sleeping brain evaluates not to signal danger.
Aiding sleep-based memory consolidation
REM sleep
REM sleep
Increased cerebral activity, erratic EEG (beta and theta
waves).
Rapid eye movements.
Loss of core muscle tone (paralysis).
Autonomic arousal (elevated heart rate, blood pressure and
respiration).
Narrative dreams with much visual imagery.
Initially referred to as “paradoxical sleep”
Functions REM sleep
Theories that REM sleep is required for normal
Mental health
Motivation
Cognitive processing
Interesting links between REM sleep and depression
REM deprivation has antidepressant effects
Most antidepressant drugs also reduce REM sleep.
There’s considerable research on links between REM
sleep and learning/memory.
Memory consolidation
REM vs awake state
Brain waves of an awaken person and of those of a person in rapid
eye movement (REM) sleep are similar in frequency and amplitude.
However, the muscle activity is very quiet during REM sleep.
Brain waves
Muscle activity
Eye mouvements
Dream
Products of an altered state of consciousness in which images
and fantasies are confused with reality.
REM dreams: More likely to be bizarre and include intense
emotions, visual and auditory hallucinations, and uncritical
acceptance of illogical events.
Brain structures associated with motivation, emotion, reward, vision are
active; pre-frontal cortex is not
Non-REM dreams: Relatively dull.
General de-activation of many brain regions
Lucid dream
Experienced through history
St. Augustine (5th century)
Tibetan Buddhists (8th century)
◼ ‘Dream’ Yoga – reaching the ‘light’
The “Conscious” Dream
Knowing you are dreaming, when you are dreaming.
Ability to make free decisions in the dream.
Memory functions as if in awake state.
Lucid dream
As demonstrated by LaBerge and
other researchers, lucid dreaming
does indeed exist. It is attainable
by almost everyone but however is
not our default state.
Brainwave Pattern Analysis proved
conscious thought during REM sleep.
Lucid dream
Sleepwalking
The cause of sleepwalking is unknown.
There may be a genetic component to
sleepwalking.
One study found that sleepwalking occurred
in 45% of children who have one parent
who sleepwalked, and in 60% of children if
both parents sleepwalked.
A number of hypotheses are suggested:
Delay in the maturity of the central nervous
system.
Increased slow wave sleep.
Sleep deprivation, fever, and excessive tiredness.
Insomnia
Inability to sleep or obtain quality
sleep
Can shorten the lifespan and may
contribute to obesity
Triggers include stress, depression and
using sleeping pills. It is more common in
people with mental health issues.
Drugs used in treatment can be addictive
Circadian phase delay or advance
Desynchrony between body temperature
and sleep period
Sleep deprivation
Early reports of bizarre or psychotic behavior.
Wide individual variability (personality and age
factors).
Most common effects of sleep deprivation:
Increased irritability
Decreased concentration
Confusion/disorientation
Performance on brief tasks or tasks involving high
motivation are generally not impaired.
REM sleep deprivation
Following REM deprivation,
there is a compensatory
increase in REM sleep, which
seems to suggest REM sleep is
a necessary brain function.
REM deprivation can produce
cognitive/memory deficits.
REM sleep increases following
new learning.
Recovery of sleep deprivation
Sleep Recovery (Randy Gardner story)
11 days (264 hours) sleep deprivation
1st night, ~ 15 hours; stage 4 increased at expense of stage 2
2nd night, ~10 hours; greatest REM recovery
Percentages of sleep recovery not equivalent across all stages:
7% of stages 1 and 2, 68% slow-waves sleep, 53% REM sleep
“made up”.
Slow-waves vs REM sleep
Sleep cycle
Sleep life changes
Variance in animals
What do animals dream about?
Neural mechanism of sleep
From animal lesions sleep studies
Sleep neurotransmitters
Neural mechanism of sleep
Neural mechanism of sleep
Slow-waves sleep REM sleep
Sleep-wake control
Schematic
representation of the
regulatory circuits that
control sleep–wake and
REM–NREM transitions,
as well as their key
inputs and outputs.
Sleep-wake control
Circadian rhythm
A circadian rhythm is any biological process
that displays an endogenous, entrainable
oscillation of about 24 hours.
Although circadian rhythms are endogenous
(self-sustained), they are entrained to the
local environment by external cues (ex.
Isolation chambers, jet lag).
24-h Day
25-h Day
24-h Day
Biological clock
Organisms from algae to people have evolved to keep time with the planet’s
light/dark beat. They do so using the world’s most important timekeepers.
Daily, or circadian, clocks that allow organisms to schedule their days so as not to
be caught off guard by sunrise and sunset.
Mother of all clock
A single-celled descendant
of the last universal common
ancestor (LUCA) may have
developed a primitive
circadian clock.
The ancient timer may have
arisen in an ancestor of
animals, plants and fungi to
meet environmental
challenges, such as oxygen
toxicity.
Circadian rhythm
Suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is the main “clock”.
Zeitgebers: environmental light based stimuli that regulate
sleep/wake cycle via the retinohypothalamic pathway.
Without light, our circadian rhythm tends to increase to 25 hours
Suprachiasmic nucleus
Circadian rhythm
Circadian hormones
Melatonin
Melatonin is a small sleep inducing hormone released from the
pineal gland of the brain.
It is synthesized from the essential amino acid tryptophan, which
also serves as the precursor to serotonin.
Tryptophan may be used as a supplement for people who have
trouble falling asleep.
Melatonin receptors
Melatonin exerts its effects through MT1 and MT2 melatonin receptors, which are
G-protein coupled receptors, a class of integral proteins that mediate diverse
signaling pathways in the cell.
Cortisol
Cortisol is a steroid hormone, in the
glucocorticoid class of hormones.
It is produced in humans by the zona
fasciculata of the adrenal cortex
within the adrenal gland.
It is released in response to stress and
low blood-glucose concentration. It
functions to increase blood sugar
through gluconeogenesis, to suppress
the immune system, and to aid in the
metabolism of fat, protein, and
carbohydrates.
Genetic of the clock in mammals
per codes for a protein (PER) that
gradually builds up over time.
tau codes for an enzyme that breaks
down PER.
tim codes for a protein (TIM) that binds
with PER to cross the membrane and
suppress transcription of PER.
Photoreceptor not yet known.
Cycle repeats every 24 h.
Genetic of the clock in mammals
The molecular basis
of the circadian clock
expressed in a single
cell of the
suprachiasmatic
nucleus of the
anterior
hypothalamus.
Consciousness
Next class
Time for revision!
That’s it for today!
We can all make the choices for a change.
Let’s keep on moving forward.
INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CLASS #3
Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
The father of psychology
As early as 1862, Wundt performed an experiment
that led him to believe that a full-fledged discipline of
experimental psychology was possible.
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt
1832–1920
Baden, Germany
Wundt concluded that one
could either attend to the
position of the pendulum or
to the bell, but not both at
the same time.
He worked as an assistant
to Hermann von Helmholtz.
Edward Bradford Titchener (1867 – 1927)
Sussex, England
He then went to Oxford where he developed an
interest in experimental and translated Wundt’s Principles
of Physiological Psychology into English.
Following his graduation, he went to Leipzig and
studied for two years with Wundt.
In 1892 he accepted the offer from Cornell University
and soon developed the largest doctoral program in
psychology in the United States.
The decline of structuralism
Titchener’s brand of psychology, which he called structuralism, was
essentially a psychology of pure consciousness with little concern for
practical applications.
It tried to analyze sensations, images and feelings into their most basic
elements.
By having a subjective study of the mind
which is unreliable, it was meant to fail.
The need of objective evaluations
Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)
Shropshire, England
Devised a theory of evolution that emphasized a
struggle for survival that results in the natural
selection of the most fit organisms.
By showing the continuity between human and
nonhuman animals, the importance of individual
differences, and the importance of adaptive
behavior, Darwin strongly influenced subsequent
psychology.
He signed on as an unpaid naturalist aboard the
Beagle, which the British government was sending
on a five-year scientific expedition (1831 – 1836).
Today’s Lecture
USA early psychology
Connectionism
Russian objective psychology
Behavioralism
Gestalt psychology
Psychoanalysis
Early USA psychology
Titchener structuralist program at Cornell University (1892) competed with
functionalism for several years.
Functionalism: Under the influence of Darwin, the school of functionalism
stressed the role of consciousness and behavior in adapting to the
environment.
For the structuralist, the assumptions concerning the mind were derived from
British and French empiricism, the goal of psychology was to understand the
structure of the mind, and the primary research tool was introspection.
For the functionalist, the assumptions concerning the mind were derived from
evolutionary theory, the goal was to understand how the mind and behavior
work in aiding an organism’s adjustment to the environment, and research
tools included anything that was informative, including the use of introspection,
the study of animal behavior, and the study of the mentally ill.
William James (1842 – 1910)
He helped incorporate evolutionary theory into
psychology which represented a major
departure from the pure psychology of both
voluntarism and structuralism.
According to pragmatism, which is the
cornerstone of functionalism, any belief, thought,
or behavior must be judged by its consequences.
Any belief that helps create a more effective
and satisfying life is worth holding, whether such
a belief is scientific or religious.
Believing in free will was emotionally satisfying
to James, so he believed in it.
For James, as well as for the functionalists who
followed him, usefulness defined both truth and
value.
New York, USA
Hugo Münsterberg (1863 – 1916)
Münsterberg became Wundt’s research assistant
and received his doctorate under Wundt’s
supervision in 1885, at the age of 22.
He met James in Paris at the first International
Congress of Psychology in 1889.
James needed someone to replace him as
director of the Harvard Psychology Laboratory.
In 1892 (the same year that Titchener arrived
at Cornell), James offered Münsterberg the job
despite the fact that Münsterberg could read
but not speak English.
Münsterberg accepted.
Danzig, Prussia
Today’s Gdanks
Münsterberg’s applied psychology
Clinical psychology:
In an attempt to understand the causes of abnormal behavior, he saw many
mentally ill people and never charged them a fee.
He felt that psychosis was caused by deterioration of the nervous system and
could not be treated.
Münsterberg employed reciprocal antagonism, which involved strengthening
the thoughts opposite to those causing problems.
Forensic psychology:
He was the first to apply psychological principles to legal matters.
Among other things, he pointed out that eyewitness testimony could be
unreliable because sensory impressions could be illusory, suggestion and stress
could affect perception, and memory is not always accurate.
Edward Thorndike (1874 – 1949)
Thorndike went to Harvard, where he became good
friends with William James.
His doctoral dissertation “Animal Intelligence: An
Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in
Animals,” was the first in psychology using nonhumans
as subjects.
He did pioneer work not only in learning theory (for
which he is most famous) but also in the areas of
educational practices, verbal behavior, comparative
psychology and intelligence testing.
He had a significant influence on psychology, and it
can be seen as representing the transition from the
school of functionalism to the school of behaviorism.
Massachusetts, USA
Cat puzzle box
To investigate systematically the trial-and-error
he used a puzzle box.
If the cat performed a certain response, the door
opened allowing him to escape.
It also received a reward such as a piece of fish.
He concluded:
Learning is incremental. That is, it occurs a little bit at a time rather than all at once.
With each successful escape, subsequent escapes were made more quickly.
Learning occurs automatically. That is, it is not mediated by thinking.
The same principles of learning apply to all mammals. That is, humans learn in the same
manner as all other mammals.
Connectionism
Thorndike’s concern was not with how
ideas become associated but with how
neural connections or bonds between
sensory impressions and responses
change their strength as a function of
experience.
Connectionism: The term often used to
describe his theory of learning because
of its concern with the neural bonds or
connections that associate sense
impressions and impulses to action.
Fate of functionalism
It did not die as a school as structuralism had but was absorbed.
As a systematic point of view, functionalism was an overwhelming success,
but largely because of this success it is no longer a distinct school of
psychology. It was absorbed into the mainstream psychology.
Russian objective psychology
Sechenov sought to explain all psychic phenomena
on the basis of associationism and materialism, thus
showing the influence of the Berlin physiologists’
positivism.
He strongly denied that thoughts cause behavior.
Rather, he insisted that external stimulation causes all
behavior.
He did not deny consciousness or its importance, but
he insisted that there was nothing mysterious about it
and sought to explain it in terms of physiological
processes triggered by external events.
Ivan Sechenov
1829 – 1905
Simbirsk, Russia
The importance of inhibition
The most important concept that Sechenov introduced in Reflexes of
the Brain (1863) was that of inhibition.
Inhibition: The reduction or cessation of activity caused by stimulation,
such as when extinction causes a conditioned stimulus to inhibit a
conditioned response.
It was this discovery that led
him to believe that all human
behavior could be explained
in terms of brain physiology.
The experiment
When middle regions of the frog brain and the medulla oblongata
were stimulated chemically or electrically, inhibition of reflex activity
usually occurred: i.e., it was more difficult to provoke defensive
reflexes (bending of the leg).
Inhibition was particularly intense with excitation of the thalamus and
somewhat weaker when the medulla oblongata was excited directly.
This experiment disproved the concept that the regulatory functions of
the brain and spinal cord are ensured only by certain excitory
processes.
Ivan Pavlov (1849 – 1936)
Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or
Medicine in 1904, becoming the first Russian
Nobel laureate.
His principles of classical conditioning have been
found to operate across a variety of behavioral
therapies and in experimental and clinical
settings.
During his first 10 years at St. Petersburg, Pavlov
pursued his interests in the digestive system.
Using the latest antiseptic surgical techniques he
prepared a gastric fistula (channel) leading from a
dog’s digestive organs to outside the dog’s body
before its digestive processes were investigated.
Ryazan, Russia
Conditioned Reflex
During his work on digestion, Pavlov
discovered the conditioned reflex (or
learned reflex).
While studying the secretion of gastric
juices in response to food (e.g., meat
powder), he noticed that events
associated also caused stomach
secretions.
For example, the mere sight of the
experimenter or the sound of the
footsteps.
Following the discovery
Pavlov had a low opinion of psychology
with its prevailing use of introspection.
He resisted the study of conditioned
reflexes for a long time because of their
apparently subjective nature.
After pondering Sechenov’s work, he
concluded that conditioned reflexes, like
natural reflexes, could be explained in
terms of the neural circuitry and the
physiology of the brain.
At the age of 50, Pavlov began studying
the conditioned reflex. His work would
continue for 30 years.
Behaviorism
Behaviorism: The school of psychology
that insisted that behavior (psychology’s
subject matter and goal) be prediction and
control of behavior.
What Watson and the Russian psychologists
had in common was a complete rejection of
introspection and of any explanation of
behavior based on mentalism.
Consciousness could not cause behavior. It
was merely a phenomenon that
accompanied certain physiological
reactions caused by stimuli.
John Watson
1878 – 1958
South Carolina, USA
Watson’s influence
Watson’s view of psychology had lasting effects.
First, he changed psychology’s major goal from the
description and explanation of states of consciousness to
the prediction and control of behavior.
Second, he made apparent behavior the almost-exclusive
subject matter of psychology
Through approach, Watson conducted
research on animal behavior, child
rearing, and advertising.
The little Albert experiment
They showed Albert a white rat, and he expressed
no fear of it. He reached out and tried to touch it.
As Albert reached for the rat, a steel bar behind
him was struck with a hammer. The loud,
unexpected noise caused Albert to jump and fall
forward.
Again Albert was offered the rat, and just as he
touched it, the steel bar behind him was again
struck. Again Albert jumped, and this time he
began to cry. So as not to disturb Albert too much,
further testing was postponed for a week.
The little Albert experiment
A week later, five more times. Albert, who had at first been attracted to the rat,
was now frightened of it.
Five days later, Albert’s fear of the rat was just as strong as it had been at the
end of testing and that the fear had generalized to other furry objects such as a
rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, and a Santa Claus mask.
Behvior therapy
Mary Cover Jones
1896 – 1987
Instead, Watson and Jones aimed to find
children who had already developed a fear
and would try to eliminate it.
The researchers found Peter, a three-year-old
who was intensely frightened of rats, rabbits, fur
coats, frogs, fish, and mechanical toys.
Finally, Peter was able to eat with one hand and
play with the rabbit with the other.
Another type of behaviorism
William McDougall
1871 – 1938
Lancashire, England
He worked at University college of London,
moved to Oxford until the war, then move to
Harvard replacing Münsterberg as chair of the
psychology department.
He moved to Duke university in North Carolina in
1927 where he felt out of place since he tried
to promote a psychology that emphasized
instinct in the increasingly anti-instinct climate of
U.S. psychology.
Unlike Watson, he did not deny the importance
of mental events. McDougall thought that one
could study such events objectively by observing
their influence on behavior.
The battle of behaviorism
Two of the world’s most famous psychologists take
opposite side.
While they both agree psychology should be the
science of behavior:
McDougall said that the instincts are the motivators of all
animal behavior, including that of humans.
Watson said that instincts do not exist on the human level and
that psychology should rid itself of the term instinct.
On February 5, 1924, they confronted one another
before the Psychological Club in Washington where
more than 300 people attended. Proceedings publsihed in 1929
Neobehaviorism
Neobehaviorism resulted when behaviorism was combined with
logical positivism.
Logical positivism: The philosophy of science according to which
theoretical concepts are admissible if they are tied to the observable
world through operational definitions.
Although there were major differences among the neobehaviorists,
they all tended to believe the following:
Nonhuman animals should be used as research subjects:
Relevant variables are easier to control than they are for human
Perceptual and learning processes occurring in nonhuman animals differ only
in degree from those processes in humans
The learning process is of prime importance because it is the primary
mechanism by which organisms adjust to changing environments.
Edward Tolmann (1886 – 1959)
In adapting the concepts of purpose and
cognition, he helped shape the tradition of
cognitive psychology during a time when it was
nearly eclipsed by the ascendancy of classical
behaviorism.
He was able to do so by demonstrating that such
concepts were compatible with a more
sophisticated behaviorism.
To avoid even the possibility of introspection in his
research, he used only rats as his experimental
subjects.
Massachussets, USA
Tolman’s maze
The delayed reward took longer to reach the end of the maze
because there was no motivation for them to perform.
Gestalt psychology
When the behaviorists were rebelling against structuralism and
functionalism in the United States, a group of young German psychologists
was rebelling against Wundt’s experimental program that featured a
search for the elements of consciousness.
Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the
ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently
chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind
forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies.
German word for “configuration,” “form,” or “whole” is Gestalt.
Founding of the Gestalt psychology
In 1910 he was on a train, on his way
from Vienna when he had an idea that
our perceptions are structured in ways
that sensory stimulation is not. That our
perceptions are different from the
sensations that comprise them.
In this sense, perception can shape vision
and the other senses. He work on gestalt
psychology with his colleagues.
Max Wertheimer
1880 – 1943
Prague, Czech Republic
Multistability
Multistable perception is the tendency of ambiguous perceptual
experiences to pop back and forth unstably between two or
more alternative interpretations.
Reification
The generative aspect by
which the experienced
percept contains more
explicit spatial information
than the sensory stimulus on
which it is based.
Reification can be
explained by progress in
the study of illusory
contours, which are treated
by the visual system as
“real” contours.
It’s legacy
Gestalt psychology played a major role in directing the attention
of psychologists away from insignificant bits of behavior and
consciousness and toward the holistic aspects of behavior and
consciousness.
As with functionalism, many of the basic features of Gestalt
psychology have been assimilated into modern psychology, and
therefore Gestalt psychology has lost its distinctiveness as a
school.
You see an old or
a young lady?
Mental illness
Although the condition we now refer to as mental illness has
existed from at least the beginning of recorded history, when
the behavior and thought processes thought to characterize
mental illness are examined, several recurring themes become
evident.
Harmful behavior
Unrealistic thoughts and perception
Inappropriate emotions
Unpredictable behaviors
Early explanations
The proposed explanations of mental illness that
have been offered throughout history fall into
three general categories:
Biological
Psychological
Supernatural
It was estimated that in Europe between 1450 and 1750
over 200,000 people were accused of witchcraft and
100,000 of them were executed. Of those executed,
approximated 80% to 85% were women.
Improvement in treatment
Pinel was upset by the greed and insensitivity of his
fellow physicians that he moved to Paris, where he
treated the poor people.
He wrote influential articles in which he argued for
the humane treatment of people with mental
disturbances.
In 1793 he was appointed director of the Bicêtre
Asylum.
He gradually removed more inmates from their
constraints, improved rations, stopped bloodletting,
and forbade all harsh treatment such as whirling an
inmate in a chair.
Philippe Pinel
1745 – 1826
Tarn, France
Improvement in treatment
Under his leadership, the
number of inmate deaths
decreased greatly, and the
number of inmates cured
and released also.
His success at Bicêtre led to
his 1795 appointment as
director of La Salpêtrière,
the largest asylum in Europe,
housing 8,000 insane
women. He had similar
result.
Pinel releasing the insane from their chains
Impressive advances in neurology
He became the director of La Salpêtrière in
1862, he immediately converted it into a
research center.
He carefully observed his patients’ symptoms,
and upon their death he correlated those
symptoms with specific abnormalities in the
brain and spinal cord.
He described a disease of the motor neurons
still referred to as Charcot’s disease.
He helped identify brain structures associated
with a number of behavioral and
physiological functions.
Jean-Martin Charcot
1825 – 1893
Paris, France
Hysteria and hypnosis
Among those attending his lectures
William James, and Sigmund Freud.
His interests increasingly turned to
hysteria, and because both hysteria
and hypnosis produce the same
symptoms (such as paralyses and
anesthesia), he concluded that
hypnotizability indicated the
presence of hysteria.
Toward the end of his life he
admitted he was wrong.
Charcot demonstrating various
hypnotic phenomena
Hysteria and hypnosis
Charcot believed for many years that only
individuals predisposed to hysteria could be
hypnotized.
His explanation of hysteria and hypnotic
phenomena combined biology (the inherited
potential for hysteria) and psychology (the
pathogenic ideas caused by trauma or
suggestion).
By coincidence, Freud was studying with Charcot
as he was formulating the theory. Freud accepted
the theory uncritically and returned to Vienna
believing that ideas could lodge in the unconscious
portion of the mind where they could produce
bodily symptoms.
Psychoanalysis
He was an Austrian neurologist and the
founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method
for treating psychopathology through
dialogue between a patient and a
psychoanalyst.
He encouraged patients into Free association
where the patient is asked to relax and say
whatever comes to mind, no matter how
embarrassing or trivial. A way to study the
unconscious mind.
Sigmund Freud
1856 – 1939
Pribor, Czech Republic
Definition: psychoanalysis
A therapeutic method originated by Freud for treating disorders of the
personality or behaviour by bringing into a patient’s consciousness his
unconscious conflicts and fantasies (which are attributed chiefly to the
development of the sexual instinct) through the free association of ideas,
analysis and interpretation of dreams and parapraxes, etc., and
allowing him to relive them by transference.
A theory of personality and psychical life derived from this, based on
concepts of the ego, id, and super-ego, the conscious, pre-conscious, and
unconscious levels of the mind, and the repression of the sexual instinct;
more widely, a branch of psychology dealing with the unconscious.
Oxford English Dictionary
Psychoanalysis
Personality structure
ID is a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy constantly striving to satisfy basic
drives to survive, reproduce, and aggress.
The id operates on the pleasure principle: If not constrained bu reality, it seeks immediate
gratification.
Ego is the largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to
Freud, mediates the demands of the id, superego, and reality.
The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will
realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.
Superego represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the
conscious) and for future aspirations.
Psychosexual stages
Stage
Oral (0-18 months)
Anal (18-36 months)
Phallic (3-6 years)
Latency (6 to puberty)
Genital (puberty on)
Focus
Pleasure centers on the mouth-sucking, chewing, biting
Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination;
coping with demands for control
Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous
sexual feelings
Dormant sexual feeling
Maturation of sexual interest
Nazi book burnings
Alternatives Psychoanalysis
Jung worked as a research scientist at
the famous Burghölzli hospital.
During this time, he came to the
attention of the Viennese founder of
psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.
The two men conducted a lengthy
correspondence and collaborated, for
a while, on a joint vision of human
psychology.
Carl Jung
1875 – 1961
Kesswil, Switzerland
Jung separation from Freud
Jung met Freud for the first time in Vienna in February 1907. They talked
virtually non-stop for 13 hours and Jung vividly describes in Memories,
Dreams, Reflections how the foundations were laid for their eventual
separation.
He subsequently proposes that sexuality is not the sole source of psychic
energy, but that ‘libido’ is a general psychic energy which may flow in
channels serving a range of instincts.
For Jung the ego is the centre of consciousness and, as such, does not
encompass or understand the whole person or self.
Collective unconscious
From treating psychotic patients and wide reading Jung came to the
conclusion that the unconscious material that emerged could not have come
from the subject’s personal learning or experience. He postulated that it
came from a collective unconscious derived through aeons of repetition of
human experience.
Jung wrote: ‘there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal,
and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals.
The archetype
Jung said that the collective unconscious also consists of pre-existent forms
that Jung called archetypes.
He first called them primordial images in that he considered them to be
archaic or primordial types of universal images that date back to
humankind’s remotest beginnings.
Everyday realities like mother, father, husband and wife create the
mightiest archetypes.
The shadow
The inferior being in ourselves is what Jung calls the
shadow. It consists of all that we are ashamed of and that
we do not want to know about ourselves.
It constitutes part of our personal unconscious, but we also
have an archetypal shadow in the realm of our collective
unconscious. It represents an encounter with evil and facing
it can be a shattering experience.
The shadow of every person has to be firmly grasped and
acknowledged for a person to achieve a state of
wholeness.
Next class
Cognitive psychology
Introduction to modern psychology experiments
That’s it for today!
What you see is not always what you get.
INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CLASS #6
Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
Today’s Lecture
Genes and behavior
Brain disorders
Huntington’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease
Parkinson’s disease
Schizophrenia
Depression
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Traumatic brain injury
External / Internal traumas
Stroke
Genetic material
Genes are made of DNA which is passed on from one generation to the next.
DNA is made of two strands, each of which has a deoxyribose-phosphate
backbone attached to a series of four subunits called nucleotides.
Desoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA)
Chromosomes
Map of normal human chromosomes illustrate their distinctive morphologies.
Epigenetics
Epigenetics represents the science
for the studying heritable changes
of DNA, not involving changes in
DNA sequence, that regulate gene
expression.
Research on the changes in a
chromosome without alterations in
the DNA sequence
Histone modifications
DNA methylation
Epigenetic code
Gene silencing
Epigenetic marks:
Small chemical tags on top of
chromatin and help instruct it
whether to open or to compact.
Epigenetic effects
Twins differences in gene expression
Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins
Fraga, et al. PNAS, 2005; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0500398102
The 50-year-old twin pair shows
abundant changes in the pattern of
DNA methylation observed by the
presence of green and red signals
that indicate hypermethylation and
hypomethylation events, whereas the
3-year-old twins have a very similar
distribution of DNA methylation
indicated by the presence of the
yellow color obtained by equal
amounts of the green and red dyes
Twins: identical vs fraternal
Familial risk of psychiatric disorders
Correlations between monozygotic twins for psychiatric disorders are
considerably greater than those between dizygotic wins.
The risk of developing schizophrenia is greater in close relatives of a
schizophrenic patient.
Familial risk of other disorders
Comparing Identical and
Fraternal Twins: A higher
percentage of disease
incidence in both identical
twins is the first indication
of a genetic component.
Percentages lower than
100% in identical twins
indicates that DNA alone
does not determine
susceptibility to disease.
Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins
Wong, et al. Human Molecular Genetics, 2005, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddi116
Genetic disease
An autosomal dominant disease is aquire if you get the abnormal gene from
only one parent. Often, one of the parents may also have the disease.
An autosomal recessive disorder means two copies of an abnormal gene must
be present in order for the disease or trait to develop.
Huntington’s disease
He contributed a classic clinical description of the disease
that bears his name in 1872.
Huntington disease is a hereditary autosomal dominant
disorder that affects men and women equally at a
frequency of 5 to 10 per 100,000 individuals.
The onset of the disease occurs most often after the third
decade of life and is characterized by the gradual
development of motor symptoms abnormalities.
Nonmotor disturbances such as depression, behavioral
disturbances, and cognitive impairment are also very
common. Death occurs as the result of medical
complications of the underlying neurological disease, in
most cases 15 to 20 years after onset.
George Huntington
1850–1916
Long-Island, USA
Huntingtin gene and protein
Huntingtin gene and protein
A CAG tri-nucleotide sequence is called the polyglutamine repeat
(codes for 23 of the amino acid).
Expansion of this repeat region is what causes Huntington’s disease.
It translates to an unstable polyglutamine repeat in the huntingin
protein (repeats in excess of 40 are considered to be pathological.)
C
hr
o
m
o
so
m
e
4
in
hu
m
a
n
CAG repeat
This figure shows
that the longer the
length of the chain
of CAG repeats in
the gene, the earlier
the age of disease
onset.
Effects on the neuron
This mutant protein may
lead to abnormal
endocytosis and
secretion in neurons. In
addition, it causes
striatal neurons to die
by the process of
apoptosis.
Effects on the brain
The first target is always the striatum, a part of the basal ganglia.
As the disease progresses, other areas of the brain are also ravaged and in the
end no brain structure is completely spared.
Basal ganglia
The basal ganglia are a
group of structures found
deep within the cerebral
hemispheres.
The separate nuclei all have
extensive roles of their own,
but when referring to them as
one network the function most
frequently associated with the
basal ganglia involves
movement.
Parkinson’s disease
He contributed a classic clinical description of the
disease that bears his name in 1817 in his An Essay on
the Shaking Palsy.
This disease is neurodegenerative and leads to motor,
cognitive and affective impairments.
People of every ethnicity and sex are affected and the
prevalence of PD is estimated at 0.3% while reaching
1% in elderly people over the age of 60 years old.
Every year, 8 to 18 per 100 000 people risk to newly
develop the pathology.
James Parkinson
1755–1824
London, United-Kingdom
Parkinson’s disease
Motor features
Resting tremor
Bradykinesia
Rigidity
Postural instability
Non motor features
Autonomic
Cognitive
Increase chances of falls.
Left: Healthy individual; Right: Parkinson’s patient
Neural correlate
Symptoms appear when 80% of striatal
dopamine and 50% of the nigra
compacta cells of the basal ganglia
undergo degeneration.
They are asymmetric to the affected brain
areas and worsen over time bilaterally.
Alpha-synuclcein inclusion
The surviving dopaminergic neurons are characterized by the presence of
alpha-synuclein inclusions.
Misfolded alpha-synuclein proteins are converted into pathological
oligomers and aggregates that form fibrils and deposit into Lewy bodies
and Lewy neurites in affected neurons of the PD brain.
Pathway to cell death
Known genes in Parkinson’s disease
Effects of dopamine depletion
Dopamine replacement
Stage of the disease
First the disease reach the locus coeruleus (norepinephrine)
Sleep
Mood
The reach the substentia negra (dopamine)
Motor manifestations
Finally in the later stage affect the cortex
Dementia
Behavioral symptoms
Dementia
Symptoms include loss of memory, judgment and
reasoning, and changes in mood and behavior.
Can be caused by conditions that may be treatable,
such as depression, thyroid disease, infections or drug
interactions but can also be due to damage to the
nerve cells in the brain.
A lot of individual variability.
Alzheimer’s disease
It is the most common form of dementia.
Clinical description of the disease that bears his
name in 1906.
It is a slowly progressive disease of the brain
that is characterized by impairment of memory
and eventually by disturbances in reasoning,
planning, language, and perception.
The pooled incidence rate of AD among people
65+ years of age in Europe was 19.4 per 1000
person-years.
The pooled data of population-based studies in
Europe suggests that the age-standardized
prevalence in people 65+ years old is 6.4 % for
dementia and 4.4 % for AD.
Aloysius Alzheimer
1864 -1915
Breslau, Germany
Effects on the brain
Hippocampus
Research has found that one of
the first areas in the brain
affected by Alzheimer’s
disease is the hippocampus.
Atrophy was correlated to the
hippocampal areas with the
presence of Alzheimer’s disease.
It explain why one of the early
symptoms involve memory
impairments.
Amyloid and tau deposit
Both amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are visible by microscopy in brains
of those afflicted.
Plaques are dense, mostly insoluble deposits of amyloid-beta peptides.
Tangles (neurofibrillary tangles) are aggregates of the microtubule-associated
protein tau accumulate inside the cells themselves.
Alzheimer’s disease
Known genes in Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s medication
Familial vs Idiopathic
Another feature observed in most common neurodegenerative
diseases (as well as in other common disorders) is a dichotomy
between familial (rare) and seemingly nonfamilial (common)
forms.
The latter are also frequently described as “sporadic” or
“idiopathic,” although there is a growing body of evidence
suggesting that a large proportion of these cases are also
significantly influenced by genetic factors.
Mental condition involving
distorted perceptions of
reality and inability to
function in most aspects of life
Schizophrenia
Most common mental illness – 1-2% of the population.
Common in all cultures, genders, and races but men tend
to develop symptoms earlier.
Etiologie
There is not one essential symptom that must be present for a
diagnosis.
Instead, patients experience different combinations of the main
symptoms of schizophrenia.
There are positive and negative symptoms
Symptoms
Exaggerations or distortions of normal processes or
behaviors
Delusions (somebody is after them, possession of their soul,
they are famous or powerful, etc.)
Hallucinations (unreal perception, happen is all 5 senses)
Disorganized speech (speak very little, change thought
mid-sentence)
Thought disturbances (psychosis, lack of touch with reality)
Motor disturbances (frozen limbs, catatonia)
Innapropriate behavior (childlike behavior, violence)
Positive symptoms are generally more responsive to
treatment than negative symptoms
Positive symptoms (increase of)
Behavioral deficits that endure beyond an acute
episode of schizophrenia
Anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure, interest or enjoyment)
Avolition (lack of energy to engage in routine or activities)
Alogia (lack of meaningful speech, quantity or quality)
Asociality (impairments in social relationships)
Flat affect (absence of normal behavior or emotion)
Some negative symptoms might be secondary to
medications and/or institutionalization
Negative symptoms (lack of)
Familial genetics predispositions
Prenatal damage (malnutrition, viruses)
Environment (stress, trauma, drug intake)
Neurotransmitters disregulation
High dopamine
Low serotonine and glutamate
Brain abnormalities
Reduced number of neurons
Enlarged ventricles
Thalamus abnormalities
Causes unknown
Twin mystery
Lost of grey matter
In early onset schizophrenia there is a wave of gray matter
loss that begins in the parietal cortex and spreads forward.
Treatments
Use of anti-psychotic drugs (block and alter dopamine and
serotonin receptors), but many patients are non-responsive.
To responsive patients it reduce symptoms but have side-
effects (tremor, dystonia, weight-gain)
Cognitive psychological therapy
and goal directed occupations.
Autistic spectrum disorder
Autism spectrum disorder is a neurological and developmental disorder that begins
early in childhood and lasts throughout a person’s life.
It affects how a person acts and interacts with others, communicates, and learns.
Autistic savant
Savant syndrome is a condition in which someone with significant
mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of
average (look for Daniel Tammet).
The skills at which savants excel are generally related to
memory. This may include rapid calculation, artistic ability, map
making, or musical ability. Usually just one special skill is present.
Those with the condition generally have
a neurodevelopmental disorder such as autism
spectrum disorder or have a brain injury.
Kim Peek, who was the inspiration for the
main character in the movie Rain Man
Depression
Depression is a heterogeneous disorder with complex and
mutifactorial factors – ranging from genes (e.g., serotonine) to
environment (epigenetic).
Family, twin, and adoption studies provide ample evidence of the
importance of genetic and familial factors in the development of
mood disorders.
Two categories of core symptoms:
Hyperactive and impulsive behaviors occur together
Inability to sit still or inhibit behavior
Observed by age 4, peaks age 7-8, then hyperactive
symptoms decline but impulsive symptoms persist
Inattention
Reduced ability to focus attention, reduced speed of
cognitive processing and responding
Apparent at 8-9 years old, usually lifelong
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
School age children 8-10%
Most common neurobehavioral disorder of childhood
More common in boys than girls
Male to female ratios:
4:1 for predominantly hyperactive type
2:1 for predominantly inattentive type
Overall prevalence 2-18%
Etiologies
Genetic factors account for ~80% of etiology
Twin studies demonstrate concordance as high as
92% in monozygotic twins and 33% in dizygotic
twins
5-6x higher risk of first degree relatives affected
Genes that may play a role:
Dopamine and serotonin receptors and transporters
Dopamine beta-hyroxylase
Glutamate receptors
Neurobiology
Frontal-striatal
dysfunction
mediated by GABA
modulated by
catecholamines
Catecholaminergic
dysregulation
Delay in cortical
maturation
Comorbid disorders
Prevalence of comorbid disorders for
children with ADHD vs those without
Larson et al, 2007
Treatment
Preschool children (4-5 years-old)
Behavior therapy administered by parent or teacher
Addition of medication (stimulant) if fails behavioral
therapy
School age children (6-11 years-old) and
adolescents (12-18 years-old).
Medication and behavioral therapy
Treat coexisting conditions concurrently with ADHD
Brain scalp anatomy
Scalp
Skull
Epidural Space
Dura
Subdural Space
Arachnoid
Subarachnoid Space
CSF
Brain
Traumatic brain injury
Falls, 28%
Motor Vehicle-
Traffic, 20%
Struck
By/Against, 19%
Assault, 11%
Unknown,
9%
Other, 7%
Pedal Cycle
(non MV), 3%
Suicide, 1%
Other Transport,
2%
A nondegenerative, noncongenital insult to the brain from an external mechanical force,
possibly leading to permanent or temporary impairments of cognitive, physical and
psychosocial functions with an associated diminished or altered state of consciousness
Close or open head injury
Coup contre coup
When the head is struck,
the impact causes the
brain to bump the
opposite side of the skull.
Damage occurs at the
area of impact and on the
opposite side of the brain.
Stroke
Also called apoplexy or cerebrovascular accident.
A blockage or hemorrhage of a blood vessel leading to the brain.
Cerebrovascular system
Localize brain damage
Frontal
lobe Parietal
lobe
Occipital
lobe
Temporal
Lobe
Limbic
Lobe
Frontal lobe
The frontal lobe is the area of the brain
responsible for our “executive skills” – higher
cognitive functions.
These include:
Problem solving
Spontaneity
Memory
Language
Judgment
Impulse control
Social and sexual
Temporal lobe
The temporal lobe plays a role in
emotions, and is also responsible
for smelling, tasting, perception,
memory, understanding music,
aggressiveness, and sexual
behavior.
The temporal lobe also contains
the language area of the brain.
Parietal lobe
The parietal lobe plays a role
in our sensations of touch,
smell, and taste. It also
processes sensory and spatial
awareness, and is a key
component in eye-hand co-
ordination and arm movement.
It also contains a specialized
area called Wernicke’s area
that is responsible for matching
written words with the sound of
spoken speech.
Occiptal lobe
The occipital lobe is at
the rear of the brain
and controls vision and
recognition.
Limbic system
The limbic system is the area
of the brain that regulates
emotion and memory. It
directly connects the lower
and higher brain functions.
That’s it for today!
Life goes on even with mental disorders.
INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CLASS #2
Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
Last class look through time
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Greece
Roman Empire
Rise of Christianity
Islamic Golden Age
Renaissance
Importance of Greek philosophers
The Greeks were important because they broke loose from the
accepted religious traditions and produced what they considered
to be better stories about the origin of the world.
They engaged in open, critical discussions of one another’s ideas
and speculated.
The rise of Monotheism
The Christian church became increasingly powerful. Europe was dominated by
mysticism, superstition, and anti-intellectualism.
Church dogma was no longer challengeable, it wielded tremendous power.
People were either believers or heretics, and heretics were dealt with harshly.
Islamic Golden Age
The end of the 7th century is marked
the inauguration of the House of
Wisdom in Baghdad.
Scholars from various parts of the
world were mandated to gather and
translate all of the world’s classical
knowledge into the Arabic language.
Renaissance
During this period, the tendency was to go
back to the more open-minded method of
inquiry.
It was a time when Europe gradually switched
from being God-centered to being human-
centered.
If God existed, he existed in nature;
therefore, to study nature was to study God.
Today’s Lecture
Empiricism, sensationalism and positivism
Rationalism
Romantism and existentialism
Rise of experimental psychology
Voluntarism, structuralism
Early appaches to psychology
Descartes legacy
He was so influential that most of the philosophies that
developed after him were reactions to aspect of his
philosophy, this happened in several regions of Europe.
British
Empiricism
French
Sensationalism
German
Rationalism
Return on Descartes
He made subjective experience respectable again,
Descartes paved the way for the scientific study of
consciousness.
Descartes attempted a completely mechanistic
explanation of many bodily functions and of much
behavior.
He laid the foundation for 17th-century rationalism and
opposed by the empiricist.
Despite efforts to appease the church, Descartes’s
books were placed on the Catholic index of forbidden
books in the belief that they led to atheism.
A period during which Western philosophy embraced the belief that unbiased reason
or the objective methods of science could reveal the principles governing the universe.
Once discovered, these principles could be used for the betterment of humankind.
The Enlightenment
Contrast the period with the darkness of
irrationality and superstition that was
thought to characterize the Dark Ages.
Increasing skepticism concerning
religious dogma and the Enlightenment
were closely related.
The Enlightenment thinkers the most
important human attribute was
rationality.
British Empiricism
Empiricism: The belief that all knowledge is derived from experience, especially
sensory experience.
The term experience, in the definition of empiricism, complicates matters because
there are many types of experience:
Inner experiences (dream, imagining, fantasies, etc.)
Logical (mathematical deduction)
It has become general practice, however, to exclude inner experience from a
definition of empiricism and to refer exclusively to sensory experience.
John Locke (1632 – 1704)
Opposition to Innate Ideas.
He protested Descartes’s notion of innate ideas (God had
instilled in humans innate ideas of morality).
Since mainly clergymen accepted the innateness of morality,
he was attacking the church.
Locke observed that if the mind contained innate ideas, then
all humans should be similar, which they are not.
An idea was simply a mental image that could be
employed while thinking. He believed that all
knowledge is ultimately derived from sensory
experience that allows him to be properly labeled an
empiricist.
Was the first to define the self through a continuity of
consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was
a blank slate (tabula rasa).
French Sensationalism
We refer to the French philosophers as sensationalists because some of them
intentionally stressed the importance of sensations in explaining all conscious
experiences.
In general, however, the French and the British philosophers of that time were
more similar than they were different.
The question asked by both the British empiricists and the French sensationalists
was, If everything else in the universe can be explained in terms of mechanical
laws, why should not humans, too, obey those laws?
French sensationalists pursued their metaphor of man as a machine with
courage and boldness despite intense opposition from the church.
The man machine
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1709 – 1751
Brittany, France
Mettrie stressed that the mind is much more intimately
related to the body than Descartes had assumed.
If the mind is completely separate from the body and
influences the body only when it chooses to do so, how
can the effects of such things as wine, coffee, opium, or
even a good meal on one’s thoughts be explained?
In fact, La Mettrie was among the first modern
philosophers to suggest that “you are what you eat.”
“Let us then conclude boldly that man is a machine, and
that in the whole universe there is but a single
substance differently modified”.
Positivism
The British empiricists and the French sensationalists had in common the belief that all
knowledge comes from experience; that is, that there are no innate ideas.
Positivism: The contention that science should study only that which can be directly
experienced.
Scientism: The almost religious belief that science can answer all questions and solve
all problems.
Publicly observed events
or overt behavior.
Was the sensations
of the scientist.
Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857)
The only thing we can be sure of is that which is
publicly observable, that is, sense experiences that
can be shared with other individuals.
The data of science are publicly observable and
therefore can be trusted.
Comte was a social reformer and was interested in
science only as a means of improving society.
For him, introspection was out because it examined
only private experiences.Hérault, France
The law of Three stages
According to Comte, societies pass through stages
that are defined in terms of the way its members
explain natural events.
The first stage, and the most primitive, is
theological, and explanations are based on
superstition and mysticism.
In the second stage, which is metaphysical,
explanations are based on unseen essences,
principles, causes, or laws to rule over the world.
During the third and highest stage of development,
the scientific (positive) description is emphasized
over explanation, and the prediction and control of
natural phenomena becomes all important.
Religion of Humanity
By the late 1840s, Comte was discussing positivism as if it were religion.
To him, science was all that one needed to believe in and all that one should
believe in.
He described a utopian society based on scientific principles and beliefs and
whose organization was remarkably similar to the Roman Catholic Church.
However, humanity replaced God, and scientists and philosophers replaced
priests.
Disciples of the new religion would be drawn from the working classes and
especially from among women.
Religion to him gave structure
Ernst Mach (1838 – 1916)
The two men differed radically, however, in what
they thought scientists could be certain about.
For Mach, the job of the scientist was to note which
sensations typically cluster together and to describe
in precise mathematical terms the relationships
among them.
He also agreed that we experience only sensations
or mental phenomena.
Moravia, Austrian
German Rationalism
Rationalism: The philosophical position postulating an active mind that transforms
sensory information and is capable of understanding abstract principles or concepts not
attainable from sensory information alone.
The empiricists tended to describe a passive mind, that is, a mind that acts on
sensations and ideas in an automatic, mechanical way. The rationalist tended to
postulate a much more active mind, a mind that acts on information from the senses
and gives it meaning that it otherwise would not have.
For the rationalist, the mind added something to sensory data rather than simply
passively organizing and storing it in memory. That truths must be arrived at by such
processes as logical deduction, analysis, argument, and intuition.
In most cases, the difference between an empiricist and a rationalist was a matter of
emphasis.
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677)
Descartes was severely criticized for conceptualizing
God as a power that set the world in motion and
then was no longer involved with it (deism).
For Spinoza, God was nature. It follows that he
embraced pantheism, or the belief that God is
present everywhere and in everything.
Spinoza combined physiology and psychology into
one unified system, double aspectism, or the
contention that material substance and consciousness
are two inseparable aspects of everything in the
universe, including humans.Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Spinoza influence
Descartes’s philosophy is usually cited as the beginning of modern psychology,
yet most of his ideas have not been amenable to scientific analysis (mind body
dualism, innate ideas, from theological influence).
Considering just the broad general scientific principles that are at the basis of
modern scientific psychology, we find them in abondance in Spinozistic but
lacking in Cartesian thought.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 – 1716)
Leibniz combined physics, biology, introspection, and
theology into a worldview that was both strange and
complex.
One of Leibniz’s goals was to reconcile the many new,
dramatic scientific discoveries with a traditional belief
in God.
He believed in that bodily and mental events are
correlated but that there is no interaction between
them. Since, in his view, the universe is composed in such
a way that it is in a continuous harmony, this explained
why mental and bodily events were coordinated.
Famous for his accomplishment in the field of
mathematics.
Saxony, Germany
Kant never traveled more than 40 miles from his
birthplace in the 80 years of his life. Kant’s thoughts
were to him the center of his universe.
His rationalism relied heavily on both sensory
experience and innate faculties.
He postulated a single, unified mind that possessed
various attributes or abilities. The attributes always
interacted and were not housed in any specific location
in the mind and certainly not in the brain.
He had a considerable influence on psychology leading
to a lively debate concerning the importance of innate
factors in such areas as perception, language, cognitive
development, and problem solving.
Königsberg, Germany
now Kallingrad
Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804)
Criticism of the Enlightment
Some philosophers began to argue that humans consist of more than an intellect and
ideas derived from experience. Humans, they said, also posses a wide variety of
irrational feelings (emotions), intuitions, and instincts. Those philosophers emphasizing
the importance of these irrational components.
Another philosophy also emphasized the importance of meaning in one’s life and one’s
ability to freely choose that meaning.
Romantism
Existentialism
Romantism
The romantics sought to elevate human emotions,
intuitions, and instincts from the inferior
philosophical position they had occupied to one of
being the primary guides for human conduct.
Romanticism: The philosophy that stresses the uniqueness of each person and that
values irrationality much more than rationality. According to the romantic, people can
and should trust their own natural impulses as guides for living.
They believed that rational thought had often led humans astray in their search for
valid information and that empiricism reduced people to unfeeling machines.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778)
Know mostly for his writing, but also as a
philosopher.
He stated that as an incontrovertible rule that the
first impulses of human nature are always right;
there is no original sin in the human heart.
Rousseau claimed that if a noble savage could be
found (a human not contaminated by society), we
would have a human whose behavior was
governed by feelings but who would not be
selfish.
According to Rousseau, education should take
advantage of natural impulses rather than distort
them. It should create a situation in which a child’s
natural abilities and interests can be nurtured.
Genève, Switzerland
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)
He was one of the most revered individuals in the
intellectual life of Germany.
He believed life consisted of opposing forces such
as love and hate, life and death, and good and
evil. The goal of life should be to embrace these
forces rather than to deny or overcome them.
To him goes much of the credit for awakening
scholars to the problem of esthetics and for
infusing philosophical writing with a regard for
what is creative and dynamic in the human psyche.
Frankfurt, Germany
Faust from Goethe
Old Dr. Faust is filled with despair and is contemplating suicide. Satan appears and
makes a deal with him.
He could take his soul if Faust had an experience he wished would continue eternally.
With that bargain sealed, Satan turn him into a wise and handsome youth. The young
Faust then begins his search for a source of happiness so great that he would choose to
experience it forever.
Faust finally bids time to stand still when he encounters people allowed to express their
individual freedom.
He views human liberty as the ultimate source of happiness.
Existentialism
Existentialism: The philosophy that examines the meaning in life and stresses the
freedom that humans have to choose their own destiny. Like romanticism, existentialism
stresses subjective experience and the uniqueness of each individual.
For the existentialists the most important aspects of humans
are their personal, subjective interpretations of life and the
choices they make in light of those interpretations.
We can trace the origins of existential philosophy at least as
far back as Socrates, who embraced the notion of “Know
thyself” and said, “An unexamined life is not worth living”.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)
For him, truth is always what a person believes
privately and emotionally. Truth cannot be taught by
logical argument; truth must be experienced.
Kierkegaard was melancholic and withdrawn. Many
entries in his diary referred to the fact that even when
others saw him as happy, he was actually crying inside.
He was ridiculed by other philosophers, the public
press, and his fellow townspeople, who considered him
eccentric.
Kierkegaard was deeply concerned that too many
Christians, rather than having a true relationship with
God, were praying reflexively and accepting religious
dogma rationally instead of allowing it to touch them
emotionally.Copenhagen, Denmark
Either / Or
Kierkegaard said that the approximation of full personal
freedom occurs in stages.
First is the aesthetic stage. People are open to experience and
seek out many forms of pleasure and excitement, but they do not
recognize their ability to choose. People operating at this level are
hedonistic, and such an existence ultimately leads to boredom and
despair.
Second is the ethical stage. People operating at this level accept
the responsibility of making choices but use as their guide ethical
principles established by others (for example, church dogma).
People operating on the level are still not recognizing and acting
on their full personal freedom.
Third is the religious stage. People recognize and accept their
freedom and enter into a personal relationship with God. The
nature of this relationship is not determined by convention but by
the nature of God and by one’s self-awareness. People existing on
this level see possibilities in life that often run contrary to what is
generally accepted, and therefore they tend to be nonconformists.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Nietzsche believed that there are two major aspects of
human nature, the Apollonian aspect of human nature
represents our rational side, our desire for tranquility,
predictability, and orderliness and the Dionysian aspect
of human nature represents our irrational side, our
attraction to creative chaos and to passionate, dynamic
experiences.
Perspectivism: He argued that there are no universal
truths, only individual perspectives.
The death of God: Nietzsche has a madman proclaim
that “God is dead” and hail this as one of the most
significant events in human history. When people ignore
him, the madman concludes, “I come too early… My time
is not yet.” He continues, “This deed is still more remote
to them than the remotest stars, and yet they done it
themselves.”
Saxony, Germany
Nietzche’s superman
Will to Power: The answer to our predicament can be
found only within ourselves. Humans need to acquire
knowledge of themselves and then act on that
knowledge. Meaning and morality cannot (or should not)
be imposed from the outside.
The will to power causes a person to seek new
experiences and to ultimately reach his full potential.
Such individual growth cannot (or should not) be
inhibited by conventional morality and thus must go
“beyond good and evil.” People approaching their full
potential are supermen because standard morality does
not govern their lives. Instead, they rise above such
morality and live independent, creative lives.
Nietzsche declared that “All gods are dead: now we
want the Superman to live”.
Rise of experimental psychology
Franz Jospeh Gall
Phrenology
Hermann Ludwig von
Helmholtz
Nerve bio-electricity
Closer look to phrenology
Rise of experimental psychology
John Hughlings Jackson
Localizationist view
Jean-Pierre Flourens
Aggregate field view
VS
Rise of experimental psychology
A = Wernicke’s sensory speech center
B = Broca’s area for speech
Pc = Wernicke’s area concerned with language comprehension and meaning
Psychology as a science?
By now it was widely believed that conscious sensations were triggered by
brain processes, which themselves were initiated by sense reception. But the
question remained: Are mental sensations and sensory processes related?
Ernst Heinrich Weber
1795–1878
Saxony, Germany
It was assumed that a science of psychology was
impossible unless consciousness could be measured as
objectively as the physical world.
Weber’s research consisted largely in exploring
new fields, most notably skin and muscle sensations.
He was among the first to demonstrate that the
sense of touch is not one but several senses.
His work provided the first statement of a
systematic relationship between physical and mental
events.
The father of psychology
As early as 1862, Wundt performed an experiment
that led him to believe that a full-fledged discipline of
experimental psychology was possible.
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt
1832–1920
Baden, Germany
Wundt concluded that one
could either attend to the
position of the pendulum or
to the bell, but not both at
the same time.
He worked as an assistant
to Hermann von Helmholtz.
Voluntarism
Voluntarism: The name given to Wundt’s school of psychology because
of his belief that, through the process of apperception, individuals could
direct their attention toward whatever they wished.
Wundt’s goal was not only to understand consciousness as it is
experienced but also to understand the mental laws that govern the
dynamics of consciousness.
Voluntarism was the first psychology school of thoughts where the study of
the mind should have the same standard as chemistry or physic.
Wundt’s experiments
His scope was vast, his output incredible.
His writings, totaling an estimated 53,000 pages, include: articles on
animal and human physiology, poisons, vision, spiritualism, hypnotism,
history, and politics; text- and handbooks of “medical physics” and human
physiology; encyclopedic tomes on linguistics, logic, ethics, religion, a
“system of philosophy;” not to mention his magna opera, the Grundzüge der
physiologischen Psychologie and the Völkerpsychologie (in ten volumes).
Look at this reference :
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/#Aca
Homework and a questions at the exam.
Wundt’s experiments
Try to understand what he
aimed with his life work.
Edward Bradford Titchener (1867 – 1927)
Sussex, England
He then went to Oxford where he developed an
interest in experimental and translated Wundt’s Principles
of Physiological Psychology into English.
Following his graduation, he went to Leipzig and
studied for two years with Wundt.
In 1892 he accepted the offer from Cornell University
and soon developed the largest doctoral program in
psychology in the United States.
Structuralism
Titchener set as goals for psychology the determination of the what, how,
and why of mental life.
The what was to be learned through careful introspection. The goal here was
a cataloging of the basic mental elements that account for all conscious
experience.
The how was to be an answer to the question of how the elements combine.
The why was to involve a search for the neurological correlates of mental
events.
It was the structure of the mind that he wanted to describe, and thus he
named his version of psychology structuralism.
The decline of structuralism
Structuralism was essentially an attempt to study scientifically what had
been the philosophical concerns of the past.
It tried to analyze sensations, images and feelings into their most basic
elements.
By having a subjective study of the mind
which is unreliable, it was meant to fail.
The need of objective evaluations
Theory of evolution
The reproductive capacity of all living organisms allows for many more offspring
than can survive in a given environment; therefore, there is a struggle for survival.
Among the offspring of any species, there are vast individual differences, some of
which are more conducive to survival than others. This results in the survival of the
fittest.
Thus, a natural selection occurs among the offspring of a species. This natural
selection of adaptive characteristics from the individual differences occurring among
offspring accounts for the slow transmutation of a species over the eons.
Evolution, then, results from the natural selection of those accidental variations
among members of a species that prove to have survival value.
Darwin defined fitness as an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce
Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)
Shropshire, England
Devised a theory of evolution that emphasized a
struggle for survival that results in the natural
selection of the most fit organisms.
By showing the continuity between human and
nonhuman animals, the importance of individual
differences, and the importance of adaptive
behavior, Darwin strongly influenced subsequent
psychology.
He signed on as an unpaid naturalist aboard the
Beagle, which the British government was sending
on a five-year scientific expedition (1831 – 1836).
Journey around the world
The Galapagos Islands
Influence on Darwin
Although he was only in the Galapagos for five weeks in 1835, it was the wildlife
that he saw there that inspired him to develop his Theory of Evolution.
“Many years ago, when comparing, and
seeing others compare, the birds from the
separate islands of the Galapagos
Archipelago, both one with another, and with
those from the American mainland, I was
much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary
is the distinction between species and
varieties.”
From theory to fact
To say the least, Darwin’s theory was revolutionary. He changed the traditional view
of human nature and with it changed the history of philosophy and psychology.
In general, Darwin stimulated interest in the study of individual differences and
showed that studying behavior is at least as important as studying the mind.
Darwin’s tree of life, 1859
His direct comparison of humans with
other animals, along with his forceful
assertion that humans differ from other
animals only in degree, launched
modern comparative and animal
psychology.
It became clear that much could be
learned about humans by studying
nonhuman animals.
Evolution of the nervous system
Cisek et al. 2018
The comparison of the
nervous systems of those
species allows us to
determine when in evolution
specific circuits appeared
and make inferences about
the behavioral innovations
they conferred.
The nervous system
The nervous system is generally divided
into two main parts.
The central nervous system includes the
brain and spinal cord.
The peripheral nervous system, comprising
the sensory and motor nerves and
associated nerve cell ganglia (groups of
neuronal cell bodies), is located outside
the central nervous system.
Thalamus
The thalamus is a large mass of gray matter in the dorsal part of the
diencephalon of the brain with several functions such as relaying of sensory
signals to the cerebral cortex, but also the regulation of consciousness, sleep,
and alertness.
Primary sensory cortices
From the thalamus, neural connections these pathways travel first to
primary sensory cortex.
Approximate location of the five primary sensory areas and motor cortex
Next class
Functionalism
Behaviorism
Neobehaviorism
Early diagnosis
Psychoanalysis
INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
CLASS #1
Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
Welcome to Introduction to Psychology
Lecturer: Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit
Email: [email protected]
Province of Quebec
French Canada
City of Trois-Rivières
How did I came to Poland?
Bachelor Degree in Pharmacology
Sherbrooke University
Sherbrooke, Canada: 2002 – 2005
Exploring the brain
Master Degree in biological neuroscience
Douglas Institute
Montreal, Canada: 2006 – 2010
Research at the master level
The genetic of memory
Doctoral studies in Europe
University of Finance and Management
Warsaw, Poland: 2010 – 2011
Max Planck Institute
Leizpig, Germany: 2011 – 2012
Euromov
Montpellier, France: 2013 – 2015
PhD in psychology
Research at the doctoral level
Effect of rhythm and music on Parkinson’s disease
Post-doctoral fellowship
Catholic university of Louvain
Brussels, Belgium: 2016 – 2018
Post-doctoral research
+
Pupil dilatation and mental fatigue
Respiratory rhythm
Nasal breathing
– Generate a respiratory-
entrained rhythm affecting
important memory brain
areas.
– It positively modulate
encoding, consolidation
and recall of momory.
preBötzinger
complex
– Molle & Benoit, J Neuroscience 2019
Altered respiration
– Molle & Benoit, J Neuroscience, 2019
preBötzinger
complex
Locus Coeruleus
Fast or irregular nasal or
mouth breathing
Modulate noradrenalin who
play a role in memory,
awereness and attention.
Now we turn to you!
Where are you guys from??
What to expect for this class.
10 x classes of 3h.
9 lectures and an exam preparation
1 exam only
Class structure – Big thematics
History of human reasoning
From the first civilisations to early experimental psychology
Modern cognitive psychology
A quick view of the brain
Psychological research and methods
Disease of the mind
Perception and attention
Effects of music on the brain
Thinking and reasoning
Consciouness and artificial intelligence
Sources
B. R. Hergenhahn-An Introduction to the History of
Psychology -Wadsworth Publishing (2008)
Michael W. Eysenck, Mark T. Keane-Cognitive
Psychology_ A Student’s Handbook-Psychology
Press (2010)
2 copies of each at the library
Today’s Lecture
What is psychology?
An overview of most early marking figures in
psychology up to the renaissance.
What is psychology?
The term psychology comes from the Greek roots
psyche meaning soul or mind and logos meaning word
or study.
Psychology is the science of human behavior and
mental processes.
Behavior is anything we do
Actions and reactions
Mental processes are our internal experiences
Thoughts, feelings, memories, sensations, dreams.
No evil in knowing yourself.
The symbol for psychology
represents letter of the Greek
alphabet, psi, which is also the
first letter of the Greek word
psuche (psyche).
What is psychology?
At various times in history, psychology has been
defined as the study of the psyche or the mind, of the
spirit, of consciousness, and more recently as the study
of, or the science of, behavior.
What is science?
From the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge“.
In other word, is a systematic enterprise that builds
and organizes knowledge in the form of testable
explanations and predictions about the universe.
From science’s inception, its ultimate authority has
been empirical observation.
Importance of the scientific methods
Today’s look through time
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Greece
Roman Empire
Rise of Christianity
Islamic Golden Age
Renaissance
The first documented psychology experiment
trace back to the 7th century BC in the 26 th
dynasty (Saite period) in ancient Egypt.
Ancient Egypt
Great Sphinx of Giza
Isis
Goddess of healing and
protection.
Wahibre Psamtik I (664 – 601BC)
The pharaoh who tried to discover the
origin of language.
He gave two newborn babies to a
shepherd, with the instructions that no one
should speak to them while listening to
determine their first words.
The hypothesis was that the first word
would be uttered in the root language of
all people
Egyptian or Phrygian?
When one of the children cried “βεκός”
(bekós) with outstretched arms, the
shepherd concluded that the word was
Phrygian because that was the sound of
their word for “bread”.
They concluded that the Phrygians were
an older culture than the Egyptians, and
that Phrygian was the original language
of men.
Phrygian language (8th century BC to 5th
century AD) vs Egyptian language (2690
BC – 6th century BC).Egyptian
Phrygian
Magic, superstition, and mysticism, in one form or another,
dominated attempts to understand nature for most of early
history.
It was therefore a monumental step in human thought when natural
explanations were offered instead of supernatural ones.
Ancient Greece
Acropolis in Athens
Asclepius
God of medicine, healing,
rejuvenation and physicians.
Life during ancient greece
Democracy was for Athenian citizen man only (no more than 30%)
A citizen completed his military training had right to vote
They had a voice and it was to them to be listened and thus eloquence was
key to have influence
Total population is estimated around 100 000 habitants
Arranged marriage between young women and older man.
The women had limited rights and privileges, restricted movement in public,
and were very segregated from the men.
Slavery was very much a thing
Quality of life through commerce
Importance of Greek philosophers
The Greeks were important because they broke loose from the
accepted religious traditions and produced what they considered
to be better stories about the origin of the world.
They engaged in open, critical discussions of one another’s ideas
and speculated.
A life spent thinking
The first philosophers were
called cosmologists because they
sought to explain the origin, the
structure, and the processes
governing the universe.
These philosophers asked
questions about “the essence of
things“. (e.g. How might we
describe nature mathematically?)
We have only fragment or
scripture
Pre-Socratic philosophy
Thales of Miletus
624 – 546 BC
Considered the first to
have engaged in scientific
philosophy
Pythagoras of Samos
570 – 495 BC
Credited with many
mathematical and
scientific discoveries.
Gem cutter to geometry
His father was an engraver of gems
Pythagoras saw the pure shapes of nature
Sees the nature of reality as mathematic
The four elements
Were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all
matter in terms of simpler substances
Greek philosophers debated which substance was the
primordial element from which everything else was made
Socrates used a method sometimes called inductive
definition, which started with an examination of
instances of such concepts as beauty, love, justice, or
truth and then moved on to such questions as: What
is it that all instances of beauty have in common?
In other words, Socrates asked what it is that makes
something beautiful, just, or true.
What Socrates sought was the essence, it’s basic
nature, its identifying, enduring characteristics.
Cultivation of the soul, developing yourself by our
ability to reflect on things.
Socrates (470 – 399 BC)
Importance of values at the central element of human reflection by engaging on
rigorous arguments. Asking questions where there is questions to be asked.
Plato (427 – 347 BC)
Founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of
higher learning in the Western world.
Theory of forms: ultimate reality consists of abstract ideas
that correspond to all objects in the empirical world.
Knowledge of these abstractions is innate and can be
attained only through introspection.
Plato created a dualism that divided the human into a body,
which was material and imperfect, and a mind (soul), which
contained pure knowledge. Furthermore, the rational soul was
immortal.
Because science depends on empirical observation, his
philosophy did little to promote science and much to inhibit it.
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC)
Student at the Academy in Athens for 20 years while later
he founded his own school called the Lyceum considered
the world’s first university.
In his vast writings, he covered memory, sensation, sleep,
dreams, geriatrics, and learning. He also began his book
De Anima (On the Soul) with what is considered to be the
first history of psychology.
Instead of urging the avoidance of sensory experience,
he claimed that it was the source of all knowledge.
Introduced a fifth element: Ether (quintessence, is the
material that fills the region of the universe above the
terrestrial sphere)
Differences in view
For Plato, first principles were arrived at by pure thought; for
Aristotle, they were attained by examining nature directly.
For Plato, essences corresponded to the forms that existed
independently of nature and that could be arrived at only by
ignoring sensory experience and turning one’s thoughts inward
(introspection).
For Aristotle, essences existed but could become known only by
studying nature. He believed that if enough individual manifestations
of a principle or phenomenon were investigated, eventually one could
infer the essence that they exemplified.
The fall of Athens
Aristotle’s death marked the end of the Golden Age
of Greece
Philosophers either began to rely on the teachings of
past authorities or turned their attention to questions
concerning models for human conduct.
It was not until the Renaissance that the critical
tradition of the early Greek philosophers was
rediscovered and revived.
Sparta defeated Athens in the
Ponnesian War (431–404 B.C.)
A search for the good life
In this time of great personal strife, complex and
abstract philosophies were of little comfort.
A philosophy that addressed the problems of
everyday living was needed.
The major questions were no longer,
What is the nature of physical reality?
What and how can humans know?
But rather
How is it best to live?
What is the nature of the good life?
What is worth believing in?
Philosophy as a way of life
Skepticism
Pyrrho of Elis
360 – 270 BC
Skepticism: The belief that all beliefs
can be proved false; thus, to avoid
the frustration of being wrong, it is
best to believe nothing.
His primary goal was the
achievement of a state or freedom
from worry, and that could be brought
about by avoiding beliefs about
thoughts and perceptions.
More about doubt than about
negative assertion to reach a serinity.
Cynicism
Diogenes the Cynic
214 – 323 BC
Cynicism: The belief that the best life is
one lived close to nature and away from
the rules and regulations of society.
Diogenes made a virtue of poverty.
Tansform your life to achieve freedom,
self-sufficiency and happiness through the
simple pleasures of life.
Stoicism
Zeno of Citium
334 – 262 BC
Stoicism: The belief that one should
live according to nature’s plan and
accept one’s fate with indifference
or, in the case of extreme hardship,
with courage.
Believed that the world was ruled
by a divine plan and that
everything in nature, including
humans, was there for a reason.
Emphasis on goodness and peace of
mind gained from living a life of
Virtue in accordance with Nature.
Epicureanism
Epicurus of Samos
214 – 323 BC
Epicureanism: The belief that the
best life is one of long-term pleasure
resulting from moderation.
The good life for the Epicurean
consisted more of the absence of
pain than the presence of pleasure at
least while living a modest life.
Wise individuals attempt to live their
lives unnoticed to reach serenity.
Roman Empire
Stoicism won out over Epicureanism, perhaps because it was
compatible with the Roman emphasis on law and order.
The rise of Monotheism
A major influence on Roman thought was
Judaism. The Jews believed in one supreme
god who, unlike the indifferent Olympian
and Roman gods, was concerned with the
conduct of individual humans.
The Jews had a strict moral code, and if an
individual’s conduct was in accordance with
this code, God rewarded the person; if it
was not, God punished the person.
The early Christian church is best thought of
as a blending of the Judeo-Christian
tradition with Platonism.
Jesus of Nazareth
6 BC – 33c
Emperor Constantine
Changed the course of Christianity by pretenting to have
a vision to inspire his troups. He instructed his soldiers to
mark their shields the word “Christ,” while they were
greatly outnumbered, they won the battle decisively.
He attributed his victory to the Christian god.
In 313, he signed the Edict of Milan, making Christianity a
tolerated religion in the Roman Empire.
Constantine the Great
272 – 337
Battle of the Milvian Bridge
The fall of Rome
Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 lead by king Alaric.
Rome, although not the capital, was “the eternal city” and a
spiritual center of the Empire.
The sack was a major shock to friends and foes of the Empire.
It is considered by many as the beginning of the dark ages.
Dark ages (410 – 1000)
Greek and Roman books were lost or destroyed; little or no progress was made in
science, philosophy, or literature.
The Christian church became increasingly powerful. Europe was dominated by mysticism,
superstition, and anti-intellectualism.
Church dogma was no longer challengeable, it wielded tremendous power. People were
either believers or heretics, and heretics were dealt with harshly.
Other parts of the world
The dark ages only refer to the Western world.
Other cultures expended their minds during that time
Islamic Golden Age
Chinese early
experimentations
Confucius (551 – 479 BC)
He provided rich psychological thoughts
whose teaching has for centuries exerted
a profound influence on China’s cultural
history.
He emphasize on human nature, education,
human development and interpersonal
relationship.
He categorize people into 3 classes:
superior, medium an inferior, and argue
that everyone should be educated
according to their abilities.
Early psychological testing
Various methods for measuring talents and
behaviors such as response speed, eliciting
personality across situations and
measuring mental attributes in interview
trace back to 3000 years.
In the 6th century, Xin Lie designed what
appeared to be the first experimental
psychological test in the world.
He asked people to draw a square with
one hand and at the same time draw a
circle with the other to show that with
interference, neither task could be done
correctly.
Islamic Golden Age
Islam was a powerful force in the world.
Within 30 years after Muhammad’s death, the
Muslims had conquered Arabia, Syria, Egypt,
Persia, Sicily, and Spain.
Within 100 years, the Islamic empire extended
to an area larger the Roman Empire.
This brought the Muslims into contact with
ancient works long lost to the Western world
(Greek and Roman).
Muhammad
570 – 632
Islamic Golden Age
The end of the 7th century is marked the
inauguration of the House of Wisdom in
Baghdad.
Scholars from various parts of the world
were mandated to gather and translate
all of the world’s classical knowledge into
the Arabic language.
Islamic Golden Age
Prodogy who memorized the Koran at age
10 and could cite by heart Aristotle’s work
as an adolescent.
He wrote books on many topics, including
medicine, mathematics, logic, metaphysics,
Islamic theology, astronomy, politics, and
linguistics.
His book on medicine, The Canon, was used
in European universities for more than five
centuries.
He described phenomena we now
recognize as neuropsychiatric conditions.
Abu Ali Sina aka Avicenna
980 – 1037
Reconciliation of Christian faith and reason
Scholasticism: The synthesis of Aristotelian
philosophy with Christian teachings.
He argued effectively that reason and faith
are not incompatible and that God could now
through examination of inner experience, or
through logic, reason, and the examination of
nature.
Aquinas at least partially shifted attention
away from the heavens and back to earth,
although his emphasis was still on the heavens.
This shift had to occur before the Renaissance
could take place however at that point the
church still controlled most human activities.
Thomas Aquinas
1225 – 1274
Sicily, Italy
Renaissance (1450 – 1600)
Renaissance means “rebirth,” and during this
period, the tendency was to go back to the more
open-minded method of inquiry.
It was a time when Europe gradually switched from
being God-centered to being human-centered.
If God existed, he existed in nature; therefore, to
study nature was to study God.
Florence, Italy
Humanism
Individualism: Concern with human potential. The belief
in the power of the individual to make a positive
difference in the world created a spirit of optimism.
Personal religion: Although all devout Christians, they
wanted religion to be more personal and less ritualistic.
Intense interest in the past: The works of the early
Greek and Roman philosophers were of special interest.
They sought to assign correct authorship to old
manuscripts. These activities introduced Renaissance
scholars to a wide range of viewpoints from the past.
Francesco Petrarca
1304 – 1374
Tuscany, Italy
Challenge of the Church
He was an ordained priest but had no taste for a
monastic life, preferring instead a life of study, travel,
and independence.
Erasmus was opposed to a fanatical belief in anything.
He completed his book The Praise of Folly in 1512.
Attacked the church and the papacy, philosophers,
nobility, and superstitions of all kinds.
More precisely the excesses of the Catholicism
His philosophy had much in common with ancient
Cynicism
Desiderius Erasmus
1466 – 1536
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Reformation
Reformation: The attempt to reform the Christian church.
This effort resulted in the division of western European
Christianity into Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.
He was disgusted by what Christianity had become in his
day, especially the sale of indulgences, which allowed
sinners to reduce the retribution for their sins by paying a
fee to church officials.
For Luther, a major reason for the downfall of Catholicism
was its assimilation of Aristotle’s philosophy.
When Luther was excommunicated in 1521, the protest
that he represented grew into a new religious movement.
Martin Luther
1483 – 1546
Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Protestantism
The new religion denied the
authority of the pope and insisted
that every individual had the right
to interpret the Bible.
It insisted on accepting the
existence of God on faith alone;
attempting to understand him
through reason or empirical
observations was foolish and to be
avoided thus being regressive.
However, Protestantism was a
liberating influence the belief that
individual feelings can provide the
only truth needed in life.
The notion of free Will
vs
In 1524 Erasmus wrote The Free Will, and
in 1525 Luther responded with The
Bondage of the Will.
Erasmus defined free will as “the power of
the human will whereby man can apply to
or turn away from that which leads unto
eternal salvation” Erasmus quoted numerous
Biblical passages where God indicates to
humans what is good and what is evil and
encourages them to choose the former.
Contrarily, Luther said, “God foresees,
purposes and does all things according to
His immutable, eternal and infallible will.
This thunderbolt throws free will flat and
utterly dashes it to pieces”
When science challenge dogma
Born in Torun.
Published his book De Revolutionibus
Orbium Coelestium (The Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres).
Copernicus did argue successfully that,
rather than the sun revolving around the
earth (the geocentric theory), the earth
revolved around the sun (the heliocentric
theory).
To challenge the geocentric theory was to
challenge church dogma and was therefore
heretical.
Nicolaus Copernicus
1476 – 1543
Kuyavian-Pomeranian , Poland
When science challenge dogma
Like Copernicus, he was seeking the simple
mathematical harmony that describes the
universe.
He is best known for his laws of planetary motion.
Perhaps Kepler’s most important contribution to
science, however, was his insistence that all
mathematical deductions be verified by empirical
observation.
Johannes Kepler
1571 – 1630
Stuttgart Region, Germany
When science challenge dogma
He viewed the universe as a perfect machine
whose workings could be understood only in
mathematical terms.
He used a telescope to discover the mountains of
the moon, sunspots, and the that the Milky Way is
made up of many stars not visible to the naked
eye. He also discovered four moons of Jupiter,
which meant that there were at least 11 bodies in
the solar system instead of 7, as claimed by the
church.
Most refused to look through the telescope
because they believed it to be an act of heresy.
With his studies of the dynamics of projectiles, he
demonstrated that the motions of all bodies
under all circumstances are governed by a single
set of mathematical laws.
Galileo Galilei
1564 – 1642
Tuscany, Italy
Exploration of the humanities
Renaissance humanism was a response to the utilitarian approach associated with medieval
scholasticism.
This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis, today known as the
humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, art and moral philosophy.
Leonardo Da Vinci
A renaissance man
He was at one time or another a soldier,
mathematician, philosopher, scientist, and
psychologist. In addition, he was a man of the world
who enjoyed gambling, dancing, and adventure.
Descartes showed how geometry and algebra could
be integrated, making it possible to represent
astronomical phenomena such as planetary orbits
with numbers.
Descartes concluded that the only thing of which he
could be certain was the fact that he was doubting;
but doubting was thinking, and thinking necessitated
a thinker. Thus, he arrived at his celebrated conclusion
“Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am).
René Descartes
1596 – 1650
Loire, France
Dualism – The mind-body interaction
Descartes believed that he had discovered the fact
that the mind was nonmaterial, and thus could not be
located anywhere.
Dualist: One who believes that a person consists of
two separate entities: a mind, which accounts for
one’s mental experiences and rationality, and a
body, which functions according to the same
biological and mechanical principles as do the
bodies of nonhuman animals.
Interactionism: The version of dualism that accepts
the separate existence of a mind and a body and
claims that they interact.
His contribution to psychology
He attempted a mechanistic explanation of bodily
functions (reflex actions) are the beginning of both
stimulus-response and behavioristic psychology.
He focused attention on the brain as an important
mediator of behavior, and he specified the mind-
body relationship with such clarity that it could be
supported or refuted by others.
By investigating the bodies of animals to learn more
about their functioning and thus about the functioning
of human bodies, he gave birth to both modern
physiological and comparative psychology.
He made subjective experience respectable again,
Descartes paved the way for the scientific study of
consciousness.
That’s it for today!
Renaissance was the path to a new vision of the world.
