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Psyc 1100 notes - professor Umay Suanda
General Psychology I (PSYC 1100)
University of Connecticut
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LECTURE 1
Evolution of psychological sciences - Nativism vs. empiricism - Big psych questions - Why are we the way we are - Where does our behavior, knowledge, personality come from - Nature vs. nurture - Plato vs. aristotle - Kant vs. locke - Developmental psychology - Infant cognition - What do babies know about their world? - Comparative / evolutionary psychology - Window to where our knowledge comes from - Compare our knowledge to a less evolutionized species - Dualism vs. materialism - Materialism - All mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomenon - All comes down to brain processing - Thomas hobbs, francis crick - Dualism - The mind and body are 2 distinct things - Rene descartes - Human mind is what the brian does - Phrenology - Franz joseph gall - Now discredited - Every part of brain does something different, and how big part is, and bumps and indents on skull - Cognitive neuroscience - Field of study that attempts to understand the links between cognitive processes and neural activity - Face processing - fusiform gyrus, responsible for recognizing faces, damage can lead to loss of facial recognition - Structuralism & functionalism - Structuralism - Analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind - Wihelm wundt and edward titchener - Influenced by physiology
- Introduced experimental approach to understand mind and behavior
- Experiments used reaction time as insight to mental process
- Ex.
- Condition 1: Press a button when they see a light
- Condition 2: press button is light is green not red
- Results: takes us 90 ms to judge color
- Functionalism
- Study of how mental processes enable people to adapt to their environment
- William james
- Father of modern day psych
- Influenced by biology
- Argued that psychologist go beyond studying mental processes in the laboratory
- Understanding everyday behavior in the real world
- Both treat mind as a topic of scientific inquiry
- Behaviorism and its critics
- School of thought that advocated that psychologists restrict themselves to the scientific study of objectively observable behavior
- John B Watson, B. skinner
- Stimulus → response
- Branched off into many different psychological studies
- Noam Chomsky
- Wrote a critique against B. Skinner's book
- Kids do not learn language through behaviorism
LECTURE 2 3 challenges to stuffing human psychology - Variability: no 2 individuals ever do, say, think or feel the same - Different cultures are not easily as tricked (line thing) - Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democracies - WEIRD, most people in psych experiments were in this group - 96% of psych participants come from 12% of the world population - Complexity: there are many processes, factors, and variables that shape every single one of our thoughts, feelings, actions - Reactivity: people often think, feel, and act one way when they're being observed and a different way when they are not - The hawthorne effect - Wanted to make workers more effective
- A technique for establishing the causal relationship between variables
- Key feature of an experiment is manipulation
- Question of interests
- How does the manipulation of one variable affect the measurement of another variable
- Independent (manipulated) and dependent (result) variables
LECTURE 3 Why do correlational research - Not all research is about causation - Prediction is valuable in and of itself - We can detect autism earlier than 2-3 years - Correlational research is the main tool for observations of behavior in the wild - Some variables cannot be manipulated/ unethical to manipulate Neurons - 86 billion neurons - Cells in the nervous system that communicate with each other to perform information processing tasks - Dendrites - Receives information from other neurons - Axon - Carries info to other neurons muscles or glands - Soma - Coordinates the information processing tasks - Either triggers signal or does not - Myelin sheath - Speeds up communication within neuron - Insulates axon - Deterioration leads to multiple sclerosis - Types of neurons - Sensory neurons - Take in info - Motor neurons - Puts out info, makes us move - Interneurons - Connect motor and sensory neurons, or to other interneurons - Neuronal communication is an electrochemical process - Conduction (electrical) - The movement of an electrical signal within neurons - Resting potential
- Natural negative electric charge of neuron
- Have a negative charge (-70)
- Action potential
- An electrical signal conducted along neurons axon
- Channels open up sending rush of positive charges
- Transmission (chemical)
- Movement of a chemical signal across the neurons
- There is a gap between the neurons
- Synaptic gap
- Synapse
- Region between the axon of one neuron and the dendrites of another
- Neurotransmitter
- Chemicals that transmit information across the synapse
- Receptors
- Parts of the cell membrane that receive neurotransmitters
- When neurotransmitters bind
- Reuptake
- Neurotransmitters are absorbed back by the presynaptic neuron
- Enzyme deactivation
- Synaptic enzymes breakdown neurotransmitters
- Diffusion
- Neurotransmitters drift out of the synapse
- Agonist drugs
- Drugs that increase the action of neurotransmitter bu
- Increasing production of neurotransmitters
- Increasing the release of neurotransmitters
- Blocking reuptake of neurotransmitters
- Mirror neurons
- Single unit recording
- Analyze firing of single neurons
- Neurons fire when we watch someone do a behavior that would fire when you do a behavior
LECTURE 4 Antagonist drugs - Bind with receptor sites preventing neurotransmitters from binding - Prevents production and release of nt Brains hemispheres
- Creating new memories and integrating new memories with existing ones
- Brains gps
- London taxi drivers hippocampus is bigger than normal hippocampus
- Neuroplasticity
- ability of brain to modify, change, adapt both structure and function throughout life and in response to experience
- Place cells
- Cells in hippocampus that fire specifically when an animal occupies a location in the environment
- Not all neurons fire in same sizes, some have large place fields, others have small
- Dorsal (upper) hippocampus
- Small palace field
- Ventral (lower) hippocampus
- Larger place field Amygdala
- Center of fear aggression anxiety
- Central role in many emotional processes, and formation of emotional memories
- When we are scared our amygdala is very active
- Ptsd
- Experience overactive amygdala response
- Overtime ptsd patients have a larger amygdala
- Psychopaths
- Individuals reduced amygdala
- Smaller than normal
LECTURE 5 Brain lobes - Frontal - Parietal - occipital lobe - Temporal Frontal lobe - Includes specialized areas for - Decision making - Judgment - Planning - Abstract thought - Voluntary movement - Motor cortex - Broca's area
Lobe most severely damaged phineas gage famous case
One of the last areas of the brain to fully mature
- Age 25 parietal lobe
Primary lobe for processing touch
Serves large role in sensory integration
Some higher order cognitive abilities
Topographical map
In somatosensory cortex
Layout of what we feel and bigger areas man more sensitive parts of body
Large areas devoted to hands and face
Topographical
Adjacent parts of body are represented by adjacent parts of the cortex
Not proportional to size
More cortex is devoted to body parts with greater sensitivity not to body parts that are larger Occipital lobe
Processes visual information Temporal lobe
Central to hearing, processing language and other auditory stimuli Structural vs. functional neuroimaging methods
Structural brain imaging
CT scan
Multiple x ray photographs
Stitched together by computer programs
MRI
Scanner produces magnetic field and radio waves that cause the alignment and misalignment of brain molecules
Changes in alignment are picked up to create highly detailed images
Functional brain imaging
Allow researchers to watch brains in action
Key logic
Active brain areas demand more energy for neurons to work
Energy in those areas is supplied by increases in blood flow
Functional imaging involves measuring those changes in blood flow
Pet scan
Radioactive substance injected into participants
Scanner detects traces of radiation
fMRi
Fovea
- Small depression in the retina where vision is the clearest
- Contains all the cones
Rods
- Active under low light conditions
- Night vision
Cones
- Active under normal daylight conditions
- Detects color and allows us to see fine details
Way more rods than cones, rods are outside the fovea
At night look at the image to the side because the object will hit the rods
Rods and cones relay info to bipolar cells and then to retinal ganglion cells (rgc)
Compression is smart
- Rods more likely compressed than cones
- Cone goes to single rgc
- Rods go into multiple rgc
Blind spot
- Rgc create optic nerve, leave eye through a hole in retina
- Location in visual field that produces no sensation of the retina From retina to brian
Optic nerve → lateral geniculate nucleus (thalamus) → area v1 (primary visual cortex in occipital lobe) V
What does the primary visual cortex do?
Tells you what orientation an object is
Retinotopy / retinotopic mapping
Inject brain with glucose and it stains the neurons that are firing
Found adjacent parts of v1 process adjacent parts of visual scene
Brain almost recreates image we look at
Cortical magnification
Much larger portion of v1 is devoted to the fovea relative to periphery
Brain processes like a circle mirror on the road
Featural processing and featural binding - May report seeing blue and red and an a and x but get the colors wrong - Illusory conjunction - Ealy in visual processing - Brain picks out gestures of objects, - orientation color, size, shape etc.
- Done independently and in parallel bu specialized feature detectors in visual system
- Processing images is fast
- Only later in visual processing
- Does brian combine separate features to form an unified representation of objects
- Combining features is slow, requires attention Dual streams of vision
- Dorsal (where) stream
- Occipital → parietal lobes
- Primary function supported
- Vision for action determining spatial location, guiding movements
- Reaching, aiming, tracking,
- Ventral (What) pathway
- Occipital → temporal lobe
- Primary function supported
- Vision for perception, determining an object's shape and identity
- Is it a ball or frisbee
- Visual form agnosia (DF)
- Damage to lateral occipital cortex (along ventral stream) from carbon monoxide poisoning
- Ability to recognize objects (ventral tasks) is severely impaired
- She can perform visually guided actions perfectly fine
LECTURE 7 Science of sound - Sources of sound create vibrations that travel as waves of pressure (sound waves) - Sound waves have multiple properties - Bottom up processing - Perception based on physical features of the stimulus - Top down processing - How knowledge, expectations, past experiences shape the interpretation of sensory information - When we know we will hear Sound wave properties - Frequency - Correspond to our perception of pitch - Longer waves = lower frequency - Shorter waves = higher frequency - Amplitude - Loudness of the sound
- High frequency
- Processed in back part of A
- Ventral stream
- Identify sound, know whos speaking, what the noise is coming from
- Caudal stream
- Where is the sound coming from, what direction,
- Different type of sounds associated with firing different neurons along ventral stream
- Different location
LECTURE 8 Are you getting enough sleep - Less than 7 hours of sleep - Doubles risk of cancer - Increases risk for alzheimer's disease - Disrupts blood sugar levels - Increases risk for cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart failure - Reproductive issues Why we sleep - Circadian rhythm (process c) - Naturally occuring on 24 hour cycle - About 24 hours and 11 minutes - Brains master clock is in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) - Part of hypothalamus - Ablation studies (removal) of SCN in rodents - Does not disturb sleep/wake itself - Instead disrupts the sleep wake cycle - When you sleep is entirely enumerated to the light outside - Homeostatic sleep drive (process 2) - Chemical called adenosine builds up in your brain, creates sleep drive - Caffeine is antagonist, blocks adenosine from receptors - When process c and s are aligned, it is a regular sleep cycle - They're aligned but independent Stages of sleep and their neural correlates - Infant study - Infants eyes would dart from side to side during sleep - Infants would cycle through stages of sleep when eyes would move and when eyes would be at rest - Rem - Rapid eye movement - Nrem
Non rapid eye movement
EEG (electroencephalography)
Neuroimaging method that records brain electrical activity via electrodes placed on the scalp
Beta waves
Alert, active, awake, engaged
Usually awake
Alpha waves
Rest, relaxed, drowsy
Laying down about to sleep, maybe ate a lot of food
Theta waves
Shallow sleep
Delta waves
Deep sleep
Stage 1
Theta waves
nrem
Stage 2
Theta waves
Sleep spindles
nrem
Stage 3 / 4
Delta waves
Slow wave sleep
nrem
Rem
Beta waves
Paradoxical sleep
Stage patterns
Stage 1-4, 4-1 to rem, back down to 4 over and over
Time in each stage differs, as night goes on more likely to not go to stage 4 or 3
Less rem sleep = more slow wave sleep
More rem = less slow wave sleep (usually stage 2)
Cycles are usually 90 minutes Sleep learning and memory
Sleep after learning is important because it ensures memories are consolidated
Sleep before learning is important because it prepares brain for learning
Matching names to faces
2 groups matched names to faces, task one answers were identical
Sleep group showed 30-40% learning advantage in task 2
8 in 10 dreams are negative
Recurrent dewas
70% of adults report reoccurring dreams
Most are negative
Common dream themes
Being chased
Falling
Arriving late
Rejection /failure
Flying
Dream reports are surprisingly similar across cultures and across time Freudian theory
Dreams hold meanings, unconscious wishes that hide themselves in dreams
Latent content
Dreams underlying meaning
Manifest content
Dreams apparent topic/meaning/storyline
Critiques
Too many interpretations
Interpretations of dreams could neither be proven right or wrong activation -synthesis model
The brain imposes meaning on random neural activity
Dreams are produced when upon waking up, the mind tries to make sense of all the random neural activity experienced during dreaming
Dreams begin random, meaning is added after the fact
Dreams as “epiphenomenal” Why do we dream
During rem
80-90% likelihood of dreaming
Dream reports are longer and more elaborate
During nrem
20% likelihood dreaming
Dream reports are brief, less weird Rem sleep, dreaming and creativity
People come up with music, periodic table
VR spatial navigation task
Dreams helped with tasks
During rem sleep
Cortical connections are linked to existing memories / knowledge
Rem sleep linked with creativity
Rem sleep, dreaming, and emotional brain processing - Rem sleep helps divorce memories from the emotional charge that is associated with those memories - Rem sleep has a very unique neurochemistry - Rem sleep associated with highly reduced levels of norepinephrine - NT involved in states of vigilance/heightened awareness of dangers in environment - Stress NT - Rem sleep associated with emotional processing - Sleep leads to reduction of rating of previously viewed emotional stimuli - Goes from a 4 to a 3. - Heightened amygdala activation in sleep deprived participants when reviewing emotional images - Dreaming of painful events reported to be linked to overcoming bouts of depression - Half of participants wrote about divorce in their dreams, half did not - Those who dreamt and wrote it in dream diary, depression lessended
LECTURE 10 Neural signatures of dreaming - Heightened activation in __ while in rem - Visual association areas - Motor cortex - Amygdala - Brain stem - Depressed activation in __ while in rem - prefrontal cortex Identifying dreams from brain activity dream decoding - Can we tell what people are dreaming from their brain waves / neural activity - We can get a common theme, but not exactly what happened - Implications of this work - More objective measure of dreams than subjective dream reports - More complete analysis of dreams 3 processes of memory - Encoding - Process of transforming what we perceive think or feel into enduring memory - Getting memory in - Storage - Process of painting info of memory overtime - Holding memory - Retrieval
Short term memory - Type of memory that holds non-sensory information for more than a few seconds but less than a minute - We remember things in 7 (+/- 2) - Process that relies heavily on frontal lobe, especially prefrontal cortex Stages of memory - Sensory input → sensory memory → short term memory → long term memory - Reverse when recalled Retrieval - Two key ideas - Matching the context of retrieval to those of encoding aids with retrieval - In library when studying, go to library to remember better - Scuba diving - Those who encoded underwater remembered better than those who encoded in water and remembered on land - Encoding - specificity - Also when drinking it is the same - State dependant learning - Retrieving memories alters memories - Computer metaphor of human memory - Memories are like files, there to be retrieved - Punchbowl metaphor of human memory - Memories are like a bowl of punch, changes with everything you add - All jumbled together - Most argue it is like the punchbowl - Memory is an active reconstructive process - Act of memory is like recreating the memory, not just pulling it up - Retrieval process can boost / improve memory - Test enhanced learning - Study and study - Do significantly worse when waiting - Study and test - Closer to studying, better you do Highly superior autobiographical memory - Can remember everything from everyday - We know very little - Hsam is not driven by super encoding, must be something with the storage and retrieval - They do not do anything special to encode memories - Hsam do not exhibit higher iq or out of the ordinary memory networks in their brain
- Hsam shows link to ocd
- Ocd to their own memories Types of long term memory
- Implicit memory
- Non-declarative memory
- Influence of past experiences on behavior without conscious effort to remember
- Procedural memory
- Gradual acquisition of skills as a result of practice, or knowing how to do things
- Tying your shoes, playing guitar chords, riding a bike, constructing grammatical sentence
- Priming
- An enhanced ability to think of stimulus (word or object) as a result of
- Word completion task
- Ch—nk
- Image completion tasks
- People are much faster at recalling words when given some letters from a set they were supposed to remember a week ago, rather than random words with missing letters
- Explicit memory
- Declaratie memory
- Consciously or initially retrieving past experiences
- Memories we are consciously aware of
- Episodic
- Memory of past personal experience connected to a particular time and place
- What were you for halloween? Where were you last halloween?
- Semantic memory
- Network of facts and concepts; general world knowledge
- What date do we celebrate halloween Patient H.
- Surgery to remove parts of medial temporal lobes (including hippocampus) at age 27
- Basically all of hippocampus was taken out
- Primary impairment
- Inability to form new memories
- Many other cognitive abilities intact
- Language, non-verbal intelligence, short term memory
- Can't remember any new memories only old ones Patient E.
- Keeps repeating same memories over and over and forgetting hes repeating them
Psyc 1100 notes - professor Umay Suanda
Course: General Psychology I (PSYC 1100)
University: University of Connecticut
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