BS PsychologyQualifying Exam Reviewer
Chapter One – The Science of PsychologyINTRODUCTION
Psychology is not just a study of peopleand what motivates their behavior, but the studyof animals as well. Psychologists not only studywhat they do, but also what happens in their bodies and in their brains as they do it.Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
Behavior
includes all of our outward or overt actions and reactions, such as talking,facial expressions, and movement.
Mental processes
refers to all theinternal, covert (hidden) activity of our minds,such as thinking, feeling, and remembering.Psychologists use
scientific methods
tostudy psychology because they want to be precise, and to measure as carefully as they can.It is scientific because in order to study behavior and mental processes in both animals andhumans, researchers must observe them.
PSYCHOLOGY’S GOALS
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Description : What is Happening?
- Involves observing a behavior andnoting everything about it: what ishappening, where it happens, to whom ithappens, and under what circumstancesit seems to happen.
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Explanation : Why Is It Happening?
- Based on observations, the psychologistmight try to come up with a tentativeexplanation.- The goal of explanation helps to buildthe theory.
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Prediction : When Will It HappenAgain
- Determining what will happen in thefuture.
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Control : How Can It Be Changed?
- The focus of control, or the modificationof some behavior, is to change a behavior from an undesirable one to adesirable one.
THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY(135 years old)
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Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
- Physiologist, the father of psychology.- Psychology started to come together in alaboratory in Leipzig, Germany, in 1879when a physiologist attempted to applyscientific principles to the study of thehuman mind.- Wundt believed that consciousness, thestate of being aware of external events,could be broken down into thoughts,experiences, emotions, and other basicelements.- He called the inspection of thesenonphysical elements the
objectiveintrospection,
the process of objectivelyexamining and measuring one’s ownthoughts and mental activities.
Example
: Wundt might place an object, such asa rock, into a student’s hand and have thestudent tell him everything that he was feeling asa result of having the rock in his hand—all thesensations stimulated by the rock.
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Edward Titchener (1867-1927) andStructuralism
- One of Wundt’s students, eventuallytook Wundt’s ideas to CornellUniversity in Ithaca, New York.- He called his expanded and newviewpoint
structuralism
because thefocus of the study was the structure of the mind.- Titchener believed that every experiencecould be broken down into its individualemotions and sensations. He believedthat
objective introspection
could beused on thoughts as well as on physicalsensations.
Example
: Titchener might have asked hisstudents to introspect about things that are bluerather than actually giving them a blue objectand asking for reactions to it.- Margaret F. Washburn was his onlygraduate student in 1894 who becamethe first woman to receive a Ph.D. in psychology. She published
The Animal Mind
in 1908.
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William James (1842-1910) andFunctionalism
- Harvard University was the first schoolin America to offer classes inPsychology in the late 1870s. Theseclasses were taught by one of Harvard'smost illustrious instructors, WilliamJames.- He wrote
principles of Psychology
.- James was more interested in theimportance of consciousness toeveryday life rather than just itsanalysis. He believed that consciousideas are constantly flowing in anever-changing stream.- James focused on how the mind allows people to function in the realworld—how people work, play, andadapt to their surroundings, a viewpointhe called
functionalism.-
Functionalism was heavily influenced by Charles Darwin’s ideas about
natural selection.
- “Animals and people whose behavior helped them to survive would pass thosetraits on to their offspring, perhaps byteaching or even by some mechanism of heredity.”
Example
: A behavior such as avoiding the eyesof others in an elevator can be seen as a way of protecting one’s personal space—a kind of territorial protection that may have its roots inthe primitive need to protect one’s home andsource of food and water from intruders or as away of avoiding what might seem like achallenge to another person.
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Max Wertheimer and the Gestaltpsychology
- “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”- Wertheimer objected to the structuralist point of view because he believed that psychological events such as perceivingand sensing could not be broken downinto any smaller elements and still be properly understood.
Example
: You can take a smartphone apart, butthen you no longer have a smartphone—youhave a pile of unconnected bits and pieces.- Weltheimer and others devoted their efforts to studying sensation and perception in this new perspective,
Gestalt
(a German word meaning “anorganized” or “configuration”)
psychology.-
Gestalt ideas are part of the study of
cognitive psychology,
a field focusingnot only on perception but also onlearning, memory, thought processes,and problem solving.
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Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Psychoanalysis
- Physician in Austria, was a neurologist.- Freud’s patient suffered from nervousdisorders for which he could find no physical cause. Therefore, it wasthought, the cause must be in mind.- He proposed that there is an
unconscious
(unaware) mind into whichwe push, or
repress,
all of our threatening urges and desires. Freud believed that these repressed urges, intrying to surface, created the nervousdisorders in his patients.- Freud stressed the importance of earlychildhood experiences, believing that personality was formed in the first 6years of life; if there were significant problems, those problems must have begun in the early years.- Freudian
psychoanalysis
has been the basis of much modern
psychotherapy
(a process in which a trained psychological professional helps a person gain insightinto and change his or her behavior).
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Pavlov, Watson, and the Dawn of BehaviorismIvan Pavlov
- Was a Russian physiologist who showedthat a
reflex
(an involuntary reaction)could be caused to occur in response toa formerly unrelated stimulus.
Example
: . At the onset of his experiment,Pavlov would turn on the metronome, give thedogs food, and they would salivate. After severalrepetitions, the dogs would salivate to the soundof the metronome before the food was presented—a learned or conditioned reflexiveresponse.- This process was called
conditioning
.
John B. Watson
- In the 1990s, Watson challenged thefunctionalist viewpoint, as well as psychoanalysis, with his own “scienceof behavior,” or
behaviorism
.- He wanted to bring psychology back toa focus on scientific inquiry, and he feltthat the only way to do that was toignore the whole consciousness issueand focus only on
observablebehavior
—something that could bedirectly seen and measured.- Watson had read of Pavlov’s work andthought that conditioning could form the basis of his new perspective of behaviorism.- Unlike Freud, he believed that phobiasare learned through the process of conditioning and set out to prove it.
Example
: Along with his colleague RosalieRayner, he took a baby, known as “LittleAlbert,” and taught him to fear a white rat bymaking a loud, scary noise every time the infantsaw the rat, until finally, just seeing the ratcaused the infant to cry and become fearful.Even though “Little Albert” was not afraid of the rat at the start, the experiment worked verywell—in fact, he later appeared to be afraid of other fuzzy things including a rabbit, a dog, anda sealskin coat.
Mary Cover Jones
- One of Watson’s more famous studentsin behaviorism and child development,later demonstrated that a learned phobiacould be
counterconditioned
.
THE MODERN PERSPECTIVES OFPSYCHOLOGY
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Psychodynamic Perspective
- Based on Sigmund Freud’s theory.- the focus may still include theunconscious mind and its influence over conscious behavior and on earlychildhood experiences, but with less of an emphasis on sex and sexualmotivations and more emphasis on thedevelopment of a sense of self, socialand interpersonal relationships, and thediscovery of other motivations behind a person’s behavior.
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Behavioral Perspective
- B. F. Skinner became the new leader of the field.- He also developed a theory called
operant conditioning
, to explain howvoluntary behavior is learned.- In this theory,
behavioral
responses thatare followed by pleasurableconsequences are strengthened, or
reinforced
.
Examples
: A child who cries and is rewarded by getting his mother’s attention will cry againin the future.
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Humanistic Perspective
- Often called the “third force” in psychology.- Humanists held the view that peoplehave
free will,
the freedom to choosetheir own destiny, and strive for
self-actualization,
the achievement of one’s full potential.- Two of the earliest and most famousfounders of this view were AbrahamMaslow (1908– 1970) and Carl Rogers(1902–1987).
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Cognitive Perspective
- Has roots in Gestalt psychology- Cognitive psychology, which focuses onhow people think, remember, store, anduse information, became a major forcein the field in the 1960s. It also focuseson memory, intelligence, perception,thought processes, problem solving,language, and learning.- Within the cognitive perspective, therelatively new field of
cognitiveneuroscience
includes the study of the physical workings of the brain andnervous system when engaged inmemory, thinking, and other cognitive processes.
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Sociocultural Perspective
- The combination of two areas of study:
social psychology,
which is the study of groups, social roles, and rules of socialactions and relationships;
cultural psychology,
which is the study of cultural norms, values and expectations.- This perspective is important because itreminds people the way they and other behave or think is influenced not only by whether they are alone, with friends,in a crowd, or part of a group but also bythe social norms, fads, class differences,and ethnic identity concerns of the particular culture in which they live.- In
cross-cultural research
, the contrastsand comparisons of a behavior or issueare studied in at least two or morecultures. This type of research can helpillustrate the different influences of theenvironment when compared to theinfluence of heredity.
Example
: Dr. John Darley and Dr. Bibb Latané(1968) found that the presence of other peopleactually
lessened
the chances that a person introuble would receive help. The phenomenon iscalled the “
bystander effect
” and it is believedto be the result of
diffusion of responsibility,
which is the tendency to feel that someone elseis responsible for taking action when others are present.
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Biopsychological Perspective
- The study of the biological bases of behavior and mental processes.- Biopsychology is part of the larger fieldof
neuroscience
: study of the physicalstructure, function, and development of the nervous system.- Human and animal behavior is seen as adirect result of events in the body.Hormones, heredity, brain chemicals,tumors, and diseases are some of the biological causes of behavior and mentalevents.- Some of the topics include sleep,emotions, aggression, sexual behavior,and learning, and memory—as well asdisorders.
Examples
: Evidence continues to mount for agenetic cause for schizophrenia, a mentaldisorder involving delusions (false beliefs),hallucinations (false sensory impressions), andextremely distorted thinking.
Another example of research in thisfield is a study finding a possible link betweenthe tendency to lose one’s train of thought inlater adulthood—staring into space, unexplainedexcessive daytime sleepiness, and disorganizedthinking, for example—and the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
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Evolutionary Perspective
- Focuses on the biological bases for universal characteristics that all humansshare. It seeks to explain general mentalstrategies and traits.- In this perspective, the mind is seen as aset of information-processing machines,designed by the same process of naturalselection that Darwin (1859) firsttheorized, allowing human beings tosolve the problems faced in the earlydays of human evolution.
Example
:
Evolutionary psychologists
wouldview the human behavior of not eatingsubstances that have a bitter taste as an adaptive behavior that evolved as early humans came intocontact with such bitter plants.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY
In psychology, researchers want to seeonly what is really there, not what their biasesmight lead them to see. This can be achievedusing the
scientific method
, a system for reducing bias and error in the measurement of data.Scientific method is designed toovercome the tendency to look at only theinformation that might contradict their biases (or hypotheses).
Five Steps of Scientific Method1. Perceiving the Question
- You noticesomething interesting happening in your surroundings for which you would liketo have an explanation. This step isderived from the goal of
description
:What is happening here?
2. Forming a Hypothesis
- Based on your initial observations of what’s going onin your surroundings, you form aneducated guess about the explanation for your observations, putting it into theform of a statement that can be tested insome way. This method is related to thegoals of
description
and
explanation
.
3. Testing the Hypothesis
- The methodyou use to test your hypothesis willdepend on exactly what kind of answer you think you might get. Testing ahypothesis is all about the goal of getting an
explanation
for behavior.
Confirmation bias
- People have atendency to notice only things that agreewith their view of the world.
4. Drawing Conclusions
- Once you knowthe results of your hypothesis testing,you will find that either your hypothesiswas supported or they weren’tsupported. Any data that comes fromyour testing procedure will be analyzedwith some kind of statistical method thathelps to organize and refine the data.Drawing conclusions can be related tothe goal of
prediction
.
5. Report Your Results
- Other researchers need to know what hasalready been found out about theanswers to those questions so that theycan continue investigating and addingmore knowledge about the answers tothose questions. This allows others to predict behavior based on your findingsand to use the results of those findingsto modify or
control
behavior, the lastgoal in psychology.
Empirical questions
are those that can be testedthrough direct observation or experience.
RESEARCH METHODSDescriptive Methods
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Naturalistic Observation
- Watching people and animals behave intheir normal environment.- Researchers remain hidden or sometimes read books and wear glasses.- In other cases, researchers might useone-way mirrors, or participate in agroup (
participant observation
).
Advantages
- Realistic picture of how behavior occurs.
Disadvantages
- Animals or people who know they are being watched will not behavenormally—a process called
observereffect
.
- Observer bias
- happens when the person doing the observing has a particular opinion about what he or sheexpects to see. One way to avoid this isto use
blind observers
, or have morethan one.- The setting is unique and the conditionsare not identical time after time.
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Laboratory Observation
- If the researcher wants to observe aninfants’ reactions to a mirror image of themselves, the researcher would bringthe infant to the equipment, controllingthe number of infants and their ages, aswell as everything else that goes on inthe laboratory.
Advatnages
- The degree of control that it gives to theobserver.
Disadvantages
- Artificial situations that might result inartificial behavior—both animals and people often react differently in thelaboratory than they would in the realworld.
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Case Studies
- One individual is studied in great detail.- Researchers try to learn everything theycan about that individual.- Sigmund Freud based his entire theoryof psychoanalysis on case studies of his patients in which he gatheredinformation about their childhoods andrelationships with others from the very beginning of their lives to the present.
Advantages
- Tremendous amount of detail.- Only way to get certain kinds of information. For example, one famouscase study was the story of PhineasGage, who, in an accident, had a largemetal rod driven through his head andsuffered a major personality change as aresult.
Disadvantages
- Researchers can’t really apply theresults to other similar people.- Results won’t necessarily apply or generalize to others.- A form of detailed observation and arevulnerable to bias on the part of the person conducting the case study.
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Surveys
- Researchers will ask a series of questions about the topic they arestudying — the only way to find outabout very private (covert) behavior.- In person in the form of interviews or onthe telephone, the Internet, or with aquestionnaire.
Advantages
- Ability to get private information.- Tremendous amount of data on a verylarge group of people.
Disadvantages
- People aren’t always going to giveresearchers accurate answers.- People tend to misremember things,distort the truth, and may lieoutright—even if the survey is ananonymous questionnaire.- Some deliberately give the answer theythink is more socially correct rather thantheir true opinion, so that no one getsoffended, in a process called
courtesybias
.
Correlations : Finding Relationships
A statistical technique, a particular wayof organizing numerical information so that it iseasier to look for patterns in the information.It is a measure of the relationship between two or more variables.
Variable
is anything that can change or vary—scores on a test, room temperature,gender).
The
correlation coefficient (r)
representsthe direction of the relationships and itsstrengths.Whenever researchers talk about twovariables being related to each other, what theyreally mean is that knowing the value of onevariable allows them to predict the value of theother variable.If the correlation is
positive
, the twovariables increase in the same direction—as onegoes up, the other goes up. If negative, , the twovariables have an inverse* relationship—as oneincreases, the other decreases.The strength of the relationship betweenthe variables will be determined by the actualnumber itself. That number will always range between +1.00 and −1.00. If the relationship is astrong one, the number will be closer to +1.00 or to −1.00. Notice that the closer the number is tozero, the weaker the relationship becomes.To sum up, a correlation will tellresearchers if there is a relationship between thevariables, how strong the relationship is, and inwhat direction the relationship goes. If researchers know the value of one variable, theycan predict the value of the other.
The Experiment
This method allows researchers todetermine the cause of a behavior. In anexperiment, researchers deliberately manipulatethe variable they think is causing some behavior while holding all the other variables that mightinterfere with the experiment’s results constantand unchanging.
Situation
: Effects of watching violent cartoonson children’s aggressive behavior.
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Selection
- Random selection of a sample of children from a “population” determined by the researchers.
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Variable
- To decide on the variable the researcherswant to manipulate (which would be theone they think causes changes in behavior) and the variable they want tomeasure to see if there are any changes(this would be the effect on behavior of the manipulation).- In this situation, the variable that causeschanges in aggressive behavior is theviolence in the cartoons.- In measuring aggressive behavior, theresearchers would have to define exactlywhat they mean by “aggressive behavior” so that it can be measured.This definition is called an
operationaldefinition
because it specifically namesthe operations (steps or procedures) thatthe experimenter must use to control or measure the variables in the experiment.
Independent Variable
- Variable that is manipulated in anyexperiment.- It is independent of anything the participants do.- The independent variable would be the presence or absence of violence in thecartoons.
Dependent Variable
- The response of the participants to themanipulation of the independentvariable is a dependent relationship.- In the example, the dependent variablewould be the measure of aggressive behavior in the children.- The dependent variable is always thething (response of subjects or result of some action) that is measured to see justhow the independent variable may haveaffected it.
Confounding Variable
- Variables that interfere with each other and their possible effects on some other variable of interest are the kindresearchers have to control for in someway.- For example, if most children in thisexperiment just happened to be from afairly aggressive family background,any effects the violent cartoon in theexperiment might have had on thechildren’s behavior could be confused(confounded) with the possible effectsof the family background.- Solution : Have two groups of participants and make one group watchviolent cartoons and nonviolent for theother.
Experimental Group
- The group that is exposed to theindependent variable (the violentcartoon in the example) is called theexperimental group, because it is thegroup that receives the experimentalmanipulation.
Control Group
- The other group that gets either notreatment or some kind of treatment thatshould have no effect (like the groupthat watches the nonviolent cartoon inthe example) is called the control group because it is used to control for the possibility that other factors might becausing the effect that is beingexamined.
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The Importance of Randomization
-
Random assignment
of participants toone or the other condition is the bestway to ensure control over other interfering, or
extraneous
, variables.- Each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to each condition.
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The Experimental Hazards
These problems are especially likelywhen studying people instead of animals, because people are often influenced by their ownthoughts or biases about what’s going on in anexperiment.For example, say there is a new drugthat is supposed to improve memory in peoplewho are in the very early stages of
Alzheimer’sdisease
. Researchers would want to test the drugto see if it really is effective in helping toimprove memory, so they would get a sample of people who are in the early stages of the disease,divide them into two groups, give one group thedrug, and then test for improvement.
Placebo Effect
- The improvement may have had more todo with participants’ belief in the drugthan the drug itself.- Expectations and biases of the participants in a study can influencetheir behavior.
- The control group is often given aharmless substitute for the real drug andthis substitute (which has no medicaleffect) is called the
placebo
.
Experimenter Effect
- Observer bias can also happen in anexperiment.- When the researcher is measuring thedependent variable, it’s possible that heor she could give the participants cluesabout how they are supposed torespond—through the use of bodylanguage, tone of voice, or even eyecontact.- The behavior of the experimenter causedthe participant to change his or her response pattern.
Single-Blind Studies
- The classic way to avoid the placeboeffect is to give the control group anactual placebo.- The participants in both theexperimental and the control groupswould not know whether or not they gotthe real drug or the placebo.- This is called a
single-blind study
because the participants are “blind” tothe treatment they receive.
Double-Blind Studies
- In a double-blind study neither the participants nor the person or personsmeasuring the dependent variable knowwho got what.- Every element gets
coded
in some way,so that only after all the measurementshave been taken can anyone determinewho was in the experimental group andwho was in the control group.
ETHICS OF PSYCHOLOGICALRESEARCH
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Research With People1. Rights and well-being of participantsmust be weighed against the study’svalue to science.
In other words, peoplecome first, research second.
2. Participants must be allowed to makean informed decision aboutparticipation.
This means thatresearchers have to explain the study tothe people they want to include beforethey do anything to them or withthem—even children—and it has to bein terms that the participants canunderstand;
informed consent
.
3. Deception must be justified.
The participants have to be told after thestudy exactly why the deception wasimportant. This is called
debriefing
.
4. Participants may withdraw from thestudy at any time.
The participantsmust be allowed to drop out for anyreason.
5. Participants must be protected fromrisks or told explicitly of risks.6. Investigators must debrief participants, telling the true nature of the study and expectations of results.
This is important in all types of studies but particularly in those involving adeception.
7. Data must remain confidential.
8. If for any reason a study results inundesirable consequences for theparticipant, the researcher isresponsible for detecting andremoving, or correcting, theseconsequences.
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Animal Research
- Researchers use animals because someresearch questions are important but can be difficult or dangerous to answer withhuman participants.- The focus is on avoiding exposing themto any unnecessary pain or suffering.
APPLYING PSYCHOLOGY TOEVERYDAY LIFECritical thinking
means makingreasoned judgments. The word
reasoned
meansthat people’s judgments should be logical andwell thought out.Critical thinking also includes the abilityto ask and seek answers for critical questions atthe right time.Critical thinking can also help us avoidfalse beliefs that may lead to poor decisions or even prove dangerous to our mental and physicalhealth.
Four basic criteria for critical thinking:
1. There are very few “truths” that do notneed to be subjected to testing.2. All evidence is not equal in quality3. Just because someone is considered to be an authority or to have a lot of expertise does not make everything that person claims automatically true.4. Critical thinking requires an open mind.
Chapter 2 – The Biological PerspectiveNEURONS AND NERVESNervous system
is a network of cellsthat carries information to and from all parts of the body.
Neuroscience
is a branch of the lifesciences that deals with the structure andfunctioning of the brain and the neurons, nerves,and nervous tissue that form the nervous system.
Biological psychology,
or
behavioralneuroscience
, is the branch of neuroscience thatfocuses on the biological bases of psychological processes, behavior, and learning, and it is the primary area associated with the biological perspective in psychology.In 1887, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, adoctor studying slides of brain tissue, firsttheorized that the nervous system was made upof individual cells.The
neuron
is the specialized cell in thenervous system that receives and sendsmessages within the system. Neurons are one of the messengers of the body, and that means thatthey have a very special structure.The
dendrites
pick up the signal andactivate the neuron’s
action potential
, or
firing impulse
, that shoots an electrical charge downthe
axon
to its
terminal
and towards theneighboring neurons.
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Dendrites
- The parts of the neuron that receivesmessages from other cells.- The name
dendrite
means “tree-like,” or “branch,” and this structure does indeedlook like the branches of a tree.- The dendrites are attached to the cell body or
soma
.
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Soma
or
cell body
- The part of the cell that contains thenucleus and keeps the entire cell aliveand functioning.- The word
soma
means “body.”
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Axon
- From the Greek word “axis,” is a fiber attached to the soma.- Its job is to carry messages out to other cells.- The end of the axon branches out intoseveral shorter fibers that have swellingsor little knobs on the ends called
axonterminals
.
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Axon terminals
- May also be called presynapticterminals, terminal buttons, or synapticknobs.- Responsible for communicating withother nerve cells.The other primary cells are called glia,or
glial cells
, which serve a variety of functions.- Some serve as a sort of structure onwhich the neurons develop and work and that hold the neurons in place.- Others are involved in getting nutrientsto the neurons, cleaning up the remainsof the neurons that have died,communicating with neurons and other glial cells, and providing insulation for neurons.- It appears in some parts of the brain,
major depressive disorder
ischaracterized by lower numbers of specific glial cells whereas in
schizophrenia
, parts of the brain have agreater number.
Two special types of glial cells:
Oligodendrocytes
- Produce myelin for the neuronsin the brain and spinal cord (thecentral nervous system).- Myelin from oligodendrocytescovering axons in the brain andspinal cord does not haveschwann cell’s unique feature,and these axons are more likelyto be permanently damaged.
Schwann cells
- Produce myelin for the neuronsof the body (the peripheralnervous system).- Has a unique feature that canserve as a tunnel through whichdamaged nerve fibers canreconnect and repair themselves. That’s why asevered toe might actuallyregain some function andfeeling if sewn back on in time.
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Myelin
- Wraps around the shaft of the axons,forming an insulating and protectivesheath.- Bundles of myelin-coated axons traveltogether as “cables” in the centralnervous system called
tracts
.- In the peripheral nervous system bundles of axons are called
nerves
.
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Myelin sheath
- It not only insulates and protects theneuron, it also speeds up the neuralmessage traveling down the axon.- The places where the myelin seems to bump are actually small spaces called
nodes
, which are not covered in myelin.- In the disease called
multiple sclerosis
(MS), the myelin sheath is destroyed(possibly by the individual’s ownimmune system), which leads todiminished or complete loss of neuralfunctioning in those damaged cells.
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Synapses
- The contact points between neurons.- The dendrites are decorated withsynapses that almost touch theneighboring axon.
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Synaptic gap
- Microscopic cleft.- When the
action potential
runs down tothe end of an axon, it activates the
chemical messengers
that jump the tinysynaptic gap on the receptor sites of thereceiving neuron.- The chemical messengers are calledneurotransmitters.
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Synaptic vesicles
- The presynaptic terminal is not empty. Ithas a number of little sac-like structuresin it called synaptic vesicles.- Inside the synaptic vesicles arechemicals suspended in fluid, which aremolecules of substances calledneurotransmitters.
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Neurotransmitters
- Inside a neuron and they are going totransmit a message.- They don’t stay bonded to the receivingneuron. They sort of pop out then theextras immediately get reabsorbed bythe neuron that released them in the first place in a process called
reuptake
.
Excitatory Neurotransmitters
- Rev up the neuron, increasingthe chances it will fire off anaction potential.
Inhibitory Neurotransmitters
- Chill neurons out, decreasingthe likelihood that the neuronwill jump into action.
NEUROTRANSMITTERS
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Acetylcholine (ACh)
- Plays a key role in memory, arousal,attention, muscle action, and learning.- Found at the synapses between neuronsand muscle cells.- Acetylcholine stimulates the skeletalmuscles to contract but actually slowscontractions in the heart muscle.- If acetylcholine receptor sites on themuscle cells are blocked in some way,then the acetylcholine can’t get to thesite and the muscle will be incapable of contracting—paralyzed.
- Curare
, a drug used by South AmericanIndians on their blow darts in an
antagonist
for ACh.- The bite of a black widow spider makesneurons release too much ACh. Itsvenom stimulates the release of excessive amounts of ACh and causesconvulsions and possible death.- ACh is found in the
hippocampus
, anarea of the brain that is responsible for forming new memories, and low levelsof ACh have been associated withAlzheimer’s disease, the most commontype of dementia.- An
enzyme
specifically designed to break apart ACh clears the synaptic gapvery quickly without having to waitaround for the “suckin up” process of vesicles (a process called
enzymaticdegradation
).
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Dopamine (DA)
- Influences movement, learning,attention, and emotion.- Found in the brain.- Too little DA is released in a certain areaof the brain, the result is Parkinson’sdisease—a brain disorder that causesunintended or uncontrollablemovements, such as shaking, stiffness,and difficulty with balance andcoordination. (Muhammad Ali andMichael j. Fox)- Too much DA is released in other areas,the result is a cluster of symptoms thatmay be part of schizophrenia.
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Serotonin (5-HT)
- Associated with sleep, mood, anxiety,and appetite.- A neurotransmitter originating in thelower part of the brain that can haveeither an excitatory or inhibitory effect.- Low amounts of serotonin are linked todepression.
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Glutamate
- Also plays an important role in learningand memory, and may also be involvedin the development of the nervoussystem and
synaptic plasticity
(theability of the brain to changeconnections among its neurons).- The nervous system’s major excitatoryneurotransmitter.- An excess of glutamate results inoveractivation and neuronal damage,and may be associated with the celldeath that occurs after stroke, headinjury, or in degenerative diseases likeAlzheimer’s disease and Huntington'sdisease.
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Gaba-aminobutyric acid (GABA)
- Involved in sleep and inhibitsmovements.- The most common neurotransmitter producing inhibition in the brain.- GABA can help to calm anxiety, for example, by binding to the samereceptor sites that are affected bytranquilizing drugs and alcohol.- The effect of alcohol is to enhance theeffect of GABA, which causes thegeneral inhibition of the nervous systemassociated with getting drunk. Thismakes alcohol an agonist for GABA.
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Endorphins
- A set of
neuropeptides
(serve asneurotransmitters, hormones, or influence the action of other neurotransmitters) called endorphins arethe pain-controlling chemicals in the body.- When a person is hurt, aneurotransmitter that signals pain isreleased. When the brain gets thismessage, it triggers the release of endorphins. The endorphins bind toreceptors that open the ion channels onthe axon. This causes the cell to beunable to fire its pain signal and the painsensations eventually lessen.
Example
: You might bump your elbow andexperience a lot of pain at first, but the pain willquickly subside to a much lower level. Athletesmay injure themselves during an event and yetnot feel the pain until after the competition isover, when the endorphin levels go down.
NERVOUS SYSTEMCentral Nervous System (CNS)
Composed of the brain and the spinal cord. Boththe brain and the spinal cord are composed of neurons and glial cells that control thelife-sustaining functions of the body as well asall thought, emotion, and behavior.
⋙
Brain
- Core of the nervous system, the part thatmakes sense of the information receivedfrom the senses, makes decisions, andsends commands out to the muscles andthe rest of the body.
⋙
Spinal cord
- A long bundle of neurons that servestwo vital functions for the nervoussystem.- The cross-section is divided into twoareas. The
white
or
outer section
iscomposed mainly of myelinated axonsand nerves, while the
gray
or
inner section
is mainly composed of cell bodies of neurons.- The purpose of the outer section is tocarry messages from the body up to the brain and from the brain down to the body.- The inner section, which is made up of cell bodies separated by glial cells, isactually a primitive sort of “brain.” This part of the spinal cord is responsible for certain reflexes.- To understand how the spinal cordreflexes work, it is important to knowthere are three basic types of neurons:
Afferent (sensory) neurons
- Carry messages from the sensesto the spinal cord.
- A
fferent neurons
a
ccess thespinal cord.
Efferent (motor) neurons
- Carry messages from the spinalcord to the muscles and glands.
- E
fferent neurons
e
xit the spinalcord.
Interneurons
- Connect the afferent neurons tothe motor neurons (and make upthe inside of the spinal cord andmuch of the brain itself).
Example
: Touch a flame or a hot stove withyour finger, for example, and an afferent neuronwill send the pain message up to the spinalcolumn where it enters into the central area of the spinal cord. The interneuron in that centralarea will then receive the message and send outa response along an efferent neuron, causingyour finger to pull back. The pain message doeseventually get to the brain, where other motor responses may be triggered, like saying “Ouch!”and putting the finger in your mouth.
Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)
Made up of all the nerves and neurons that arenot contained in the brain and spinal cord. It isthis system that allows the brain and spinal cordto communicate with the sensory systems of theeyes, ears, skin, and mouth and allows the brainand spinal cord to control the muscles andglands of the body.
⋙
Somatic nervous system
- Consists of nerves that control thevoluntary muscles of the body.- Made up of
sensory pathway
, whichwhich comprises all the nerves carryingmessages from the senses to the centralnervous system (those nerves containingafferent neurons), and the
motorpathway
, which is all of the nervescarrying messages from the centralnervous system to the voluntary, or skeletal,* muscles of the body—musclesthat allow people to move their bodies(those nerves composed of efferentneurons).- When people are walking, raising their hands in class, lifting a flower to smell,or directing their gaze toward the personthey are talking to or to look at a pretty picture, they are using the somaticnervous system.
⋙
Autonomic nervous system
- Large groups of neurons near the spinalcolumn make up the autonomic nervoussystem.- Suggests that the functions of thissystem are more or less automatic.- The autonomic division controlseverything else in the body—organs,glands, and involuntary muscles.- The autonomic nervous system isdivided into two systems: the
sympathetic
and
parasympatheticdivision
.
Sympathetic division
- From the Greek “
feeling together
.”- Primarily located on the middleof the spinal column—runningfrom near the top of the ribcageto the waist area.- The sympathetic fibers arethoracolumbar – meaning theyoriginate from between thoracicvertebrae where the ribs areattached, and the lumbar vertebrae just inferior to theribs.- Usually called the “fight or flight system” because it allows people and animals to deal withall kinds of stressful events.- Emotions during these eventsmight be anger (hence, the termfight) or fear (that’s the “flight” part, obviously) or even extreme joy or excitement; synonymousto stress.- If the stress ends, the activity of the sympathetic division will bereplaced by the activation of the parasympathetic division.
Parasympathetic division
- Para
means “beyond” or “nextto.”- The neurons of this division arelocated at the top and bottom of the spinal column, on either sideof the sympathetic divisionneurons.- Nerve fibers of this system begin both above and belowwhere the sympathetic do.They’re craniosacral, meaningthey sprout from the base of the brain and also from the sacralspinal cord, just superior to thetailbone.- Might be called the“eat-drink-and-rest” system as itis responsible for maintainingthe body and conserving energyfor later.- The parasympathetic division’s job is to return the body tonormal functioning after astressful situation ends.- It is also this division that isresponsible for most of theordinary, day-to-day bodilyfunctioning, such as regular heartbeat and normal breathingand digestion.
THE ENDOCRINE GLANDSEndocrine system
is the body’s “slow”chemical communication system; a set of glandsthat secrete
hormones
into the bloodstream.
Hormones
are chemical messengersthat are manufactured by the endocrine glands,travel through the bloodstream, and affect other tissues. These affect our moods, arousal, andcircadian rhythm, they regulate our metabolism,monitor our immune system, signal growth, andhelp with sexual reproduction.As compared to synapticcommunication, endocrine communication isgenerally slower due to the time it takeshormones to travel to target organs, and the behaviors and responses they affect may notoccur until hours, weeks, or years later.Some of the hormones produced byendocrine glands are:
⋙
Pituitary gland
- The
master gland
which produces manyhormones that signal other glands tomake their own.- It is located in the brain itself, just belowthe hypothalamus (controls theglandular system by influencing the pituitary).- Pituitary produces many hormonesincluding
follicle-stimulating hormone
which helps regulate growth nd trigger sexual maturity, and only targets specificcells in the ovaries and testes.- The hormone that controls aspects of pregnancy is called
oxytocin
, and it isinvolved in a variety of ways with bothreproduction and parental behavior suchas contractions of the uterus inchildbirth, and milk letdown reflex.- The hormone that controls levels of water in our body is called
vasopressin
.- Another hormone called
growthhormone
controls and regulates theincrease in size as children grow frominfancy to adulthood.
⋙
Pineal gland
- Located in the brain, near the back,directly above the brainstem.- Secretes a hormone called
melatonin
which helps track day length (andseasons).- In some animals, this influencesseasonal behaviors such as breeding andmolting.- In humans, it influences the regulationof the sleep-wake cycle.
⋙
Thyroid gland
- Located inside the neck and secreteshormones that regulate growth andmetabolism (
thyroxin
).- As related to growth, the thyroid plays acrucial role in body and braindevelopment.
⋙
Pancreas
- Controls the level of blood sugar in the body by secreting
insulin
and
glucagon
.- Too little insulin results in
diabetes
,whereas too much insulin results in
hypoglycemia
, or low blood sugar.
⋙
Gonads
- The sex glands but do not control allsexual behavior as it can also be affected by psychological factors such asattractiveness.- They secrete hormones that regulatesexual behavior and reproduction.
⋙
Adrenal glands
- Produce hormones that help regulatemetabolism, immune system, blood pressure, response to stress and other essential functions.- It is located on top of each kidney.- Each gland is divided into two sections:
Adrenal medulla
- Inner part of an adrenal gland.- Releases epinephrine andnorepinephrine, when peopleare under stress, and aids insympathetic arousal.
Adrenal cortex
- Outer region and largest part of an adrenal gland.- Produces over 30 differenthormones called
corticoids
(or steroids) that regulate saltintake, help initiate and controlstress reactions, and provide asource of sex hormones inaddition to those provided bygonads.-
Cortisol
is important in therelease of glucose into the bloodstream during stress, providing energy for the brainitself, and the release of fattyacids from the fat cells that provide the muscles withenergy.
STRUCTURES OF THE BRAINThe Hindbrain
Coordinates functions that are fundamental tosurvival, including respiratory rhythm, motor activity, sleep, and wakefulness. The hindbrainincludes the medulla, pons, and cerebellum.
⋙
Medulla
- The first “swelling” at the top of thespinal cord, just at the very bottom of the brain.- It controls life-sustaining functions suchas heartbeat, breathing, and swallowing.- It is in the medulla that sensoryinformation from the left side of the body goes to the right side of the brainand vice versa.
⋙
Pons
- The larger “swelling” just above themedulla.- This term means “bridge” and it isindeed the bridge between the lower parts of the brain and upper sections.- As in the medulla, there is a crossover of nerves, but in this case it is the motor nerves carrying messages from the brainto the body. This allows the pons tocoordinate the movements of the leftand right sides of the body.- The pons also influence sleep, dreaming,and arousal.
⋙
Reticular formation (RF)
- A network of neurons running throughthe middle of the medulla and the ponsand slightly beyond.- Responsible for people’s ability togenerally attend to certain kinds of information in their surroundings.- RF allows people to ignore constant,unchanging information (such as thenoise of an air conditioner) and becomealert to changes in information (if the air conditioner stopped, most people wouldnotice immediately).- Helps keep people alert and aroused.- One part of the RF is called:
Reticular activating system (RAS)
- Stimulates the upper part of the brain, keeping people awakeand alert.- When a person is driving andsomeone suddenly pulls out infront of the vehicle, it is theRAS that brings that driver tofull attention.- It is also the system that lets amother hear her baby cry in thenight, even though she mightsleep through other noises.- The RAS has also beensuggested by brain-scanningstudies as a possible areainvolved inattention-deficit/hyperactivitydisorder, in which children or
adults have difficultymaintaining attention to a singletask.
⋙
Cerebellum
- Located at the base of the skull, behindthe pons and below the main part of the brain.- “Little brain.”- The cerebellum is the part of the lower brain that controls all involuntary, rapid,fine motor movement.- People can sit upright because thecerebellum controls all the little musclesneeded to keep them from falling out of their chair.- It also coordinates voluntary movementsthat have to happen in rapid succession,such as walking, skating, dancing, playing a musical instrument, and eventhe movements of speech.- Learned reflexes, skills, and habits arealso stored here, which allows them to become more or less automatic.- Because of the cerebellum, people don’thave to consciously think about their posture, muscle tone, and balance.- Damage in the cerebellum happens in adisease called
spinocerebellar degeneration
, where the first symptomsof cerebellum deterioration are tremors,an unsteady walk, slurred speech,dizziness, and muscle weakness.
Cortex: The Limbic System
The forebrain includes the two cerebralhemispheres of the brain, including the cortex.This chapter will focus on the subcorticalstructures that have been collectively referred toas the
limbic system
.The limbic system (limbic means “marginal”and these structures are found in the inner margin of the upper brain) is involved inemotions, motivation, memory, and learning.
⋙
Thalamus
- “Inner chamber.”- Somewhat round structure in the center of the brain acts as a kind of relaystation for incoming sensoryinformation.- The thalamus might perform some processing of that sensory information before sending it on the part of thecortex that deals with that kind of sensation—hearing, sight, touch, or taste.- Damage to the thalamus might result inthe loss or partial loss of any or all of those sensations.- Smell is the only sense that doesn’t haveto first pass through the thalamus as itgoes directly through
olfactory bulbs
.
⋙
Hypothalamus
- “Below the inner chamber.”- Located just below and in front of thethalamus.- Regulates body temperature, thirst,hunger, sleeping and walking, sexualactivity, and emotions.- Sits right above the pituitary gland.- The hypothalamus controls the pituitary,so the ultimate regulation of hormoneslies with the hypothalamus.
⋙
Hippocampus
- A Greek word for “seahorse.”- Located within the medial (toward themiddle) temporal lobe on each side of the brain.- Instrumental in forming long-term(permanent) declarative memories thatare then stored elsewhere in the brain.- ACh, a neurotransmitter involved inmuscle control, is also involved in thememory function of the hippocampus.- People who have Alzheimer’s disease,for example, have much lower levels of ACh in that structure than is normal, andthe drugs given to these people boost thelevels of ACh.
⋙
Amygdala
- “Almond” shape.- Located near the hippocampus.- Involved in fear responses and memoryof fear.- Information from the senses goes to theamygdala before the upper part of the brain is even involved, so that peoplecan respond to danger very quickly,sometimes before they are consciouslyaware of what is happening.- In 1939 researchers found that monkeyswith large amounts of their temporallobes removed—including theamygdala—were completely unafraid of snakes and humans, both normallyfear-provoking stimuli. This effect cameto be known as the
Klüver-Bucy syndrome
.- Case studies of humans with damage tothe amygdala also show a link todecreased fear response.
⋙
Cingulate Cortex
- Actually found in the cortex, right abovethe corpus callosum in the frontal and parietal lobes, and plays an importantrole in both emotional and cognitive processing.- Can be divided up to four regions that play different roles in processingemotions, cognitive, and autonomicinformation.- It has been shown to be active during avariety of cognitive tasks such asselective attention, written wordrecognition, and working memory andhas been implicated in a variety of psychological and mental disordersincluding attention-deficit/hyperactivitydisorder, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder.\
The Cortex
The cortex is the outermost part of the brain. It ismade up of tightly packed neurons.It is divided into two sections called the
cerebral hemispheres
, which are connected bya thick tough band of neural fibers (axons)called
corpus callosum
(literally meaning “hard body”, as calluses on the feet are hard.The corpus callosum allows both hemispheres tocommunicate with each other.For specific regions, each hemisphere isresponsible for the opposite side of the body,either for control or for receiving information.This feature, referred to as
contralateral organization
, plays a role in information comingfrom many of the sense organs to the brain, andin the motor commands originating in the braingoing to the rest of the body.Information from our body can also betransmitted to both sides of the brain, or
bilaterally
(as in hearing and vision), or to onlyone side of the brain, or
ipsilaterally
(as in tasteand olfaction).
⋙
Occipital lobes
- At the base of the cortex, toward the back of the brain.- Ths area processes visual informationfrom the eyes in the
primary visual cortex
.- The
visual association cortex
, also inthis lobe and in parts of the temporaland parietal lobes, helps identify andmake sense of the visual informationfrom the eyes.- The famed neurologist Oliver Sacksonce had a patient who had a tumor inhis right occipital lobe area. He couldstill see objects and even describe themin physical terms, but he could notidentify them by sight alone.
⋙
Parietal lobes
- At the top and back of the brain, justunder the parietal bone in the skull.- This area contains the
somatosensorycortex
, an area of neurons at the front of parietal lobes on either side of the brain.This area processes information fromthe skin and internal receptors for touch,temperature, and body position. Thecells at the top of the brain receiveinformation from the bottom of the body, and as one moves down the area,the signals come from higher and higher in the body.
⋙
Temporal lobes
- The beginning of this lobe is found just behind the temples of the head.- Contain the
primary auditory cortex
and
auditory association area
.
- Also found in the left temporal lobe isan area that in most people is particularly involved in language.- Amygdala and hippocampus.- There are parts of the temporal lobe thathelp us process visual information.
⋙
Frontal lobesMotor Somatosensory
- At the front of the brain.- Here are found all the higher mentalfunctions of the brain—planning, personality, memory storage, complexdecision making, and (in the lefthemisphere of most people) areasdevoted to language.- Helps in controlling emotions by meansof its connection to the limbic system.- Contains the
motor cortex
, a band of neurons located at the back of each lobewhich control the movements of the body’s voluntary muscles by sendingcommands out to the somatic division of the peripheral nervous system.- Special type of neuron called
mirror neurons
fire when an animal performsan action—but they also fire when ananimal observes the same action being performed by another.
Association Areas of the Cortex
Made up of neurons in the cortex that aredevoted to making connections between thesensory information coming into the brain andstored memories, images, and knowledge.Help people make sense of the incoming sensoryinput.
⋙
Broca’s area
- Paul Broca.- In the left frontal lobe of most people isan area of the brain devoted to the production of speech.- Allows a person to speak smoothly andfluently.- Damage to Broca’s area causes a personto be unable to get words out in asmooth, connected fashion. This iscalled
Broca’s aphasia
.
- Aphasia
refers to an inability to use or understand either written or spokenlanguage.
⋙
Wernicke’s area
- Carl Wernicke.- In the left temporal lobe in most people.- Involved in understanding the meaningof words.- Person with
Wernicke’s aphasia
would be able to speak fluently and pronouncewords correctly, but the words would bethe wrong ones entirely.\
Example
: For example, Elsie suffered a stroketo the temporal lobe, damaging this area of the brain. As the ER nurse inflated a blood pressurecuff, Elsie said, “Oh, that’s so Saturday hard.”Elsie thought she was making sense. She also
had trouble understanding what the peoplearound her were saying to her.In another instance, Ernest suffered astroke at the age of 80. He asked his wife to gethim some milk out of the air conditioner. Rightidea, wrong word.
Through the Looking Glass—Spatial Neglect
Ellen’s son came to visit her. He sawthat her mother looked neat only to her right sideand a mess to her left side of her body.Spatial neglect, or unilateral neglect, iswhen a person with damage to the right parietaland occipital lobes of the cortex will ignoreeverything in the left visual field. Damage toareas of the frontal and temporal lobes may also play a part along with the parietal damage.When an assistant held a pen just withinthe woman’s reach, reflected in the mirror on her left side, she tried to reach through the mirror toget the pen with her good right hand. When thedoctor told her that he wanted her to grab thereal object and not the image of it in the mirror,she told him that the pen was behind the mirror and even tried to reach around to get it.Persons suffering from spatial neglectcan no longer perceive the world in the sameway as other people do. For these people, the leftsides of objects, bodies, and spaces aresomewhere “through the looking glass.”
Cerebral Hemispheres
Roger Sperry was a pioneer in the field of hemisphere specialization. In looking for a wayto cure epilepsy (severe muscle spasms or seizures resulting from brain damage), Sperrycut through the corpus callosum.In early research with animals, this techniqueworked and seemed to have no side effects. Thefirst people to have this procedure done alsoexperienced relief from their severe epilepticsymptoms, but testing found that (in a sense)they now had two brains in one bodySpecialization of Two Hemispheres
Left Hemisphere Right Hemisphere
Right hand Left handSpoken language nonverbalWritten language Visual-spatial perceptionMathematicalcalculationsMusic and artistic processingLogic thought processesEmotional thoughtand recognitionAnalysis of detail Processes the wholeReading Pattern recognitionFacial recognition
⋙
Left hemisphere
- Specializes in language, speech,handwriting, calculation (math), senseof time and rhythm (which ismathematical in nature), and basicallyany kind of thought requiring analysis.- Processes information in a sequence andis good at breaking things down intosmaller parts, or performing analysis.
⋙
Right hemisphere
- Specialize in more global (widespread) processing involving perception,visualization, spatial perception,recognition of patterns, faces, emotions,melodies, and expression of emotions. Italso comprehends simple language butdoes not produce speech.- Processes information all at once andsimultaneously, a more global or holisticstyle of processing.
PAYING ATTENTION TOATTENTION-DEFICIT /HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER
ADHD is a developmental disorder involving behavioral and cognitive aspects of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.
Three diagnostic categories for ADHD in theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of MentalDisorders (DSM-5)
1. ADHD predominantlyhyperactive/impulsive presentation2. ADHD predominantly inattentive presentation3. ADHD combined presentationInattention and impulsivity are oftenreported in adults, whereas symptoms of hyperactivity tend to decline with age. TheADHD-related problems in adults can rangefrom strained relations with family, friends, or asignificant other to problems with substanceabuse, traffic accidents, or job stability.A recent longitudinal study found agroup of males diagnosed with ADHD inchildhood were more likely to have issues acrossa variety of domains when followed up with asadults. At a mean age of 41, the men withADHD had significantly worse educational,occupational, economic, and social outcomes,and more divorces than non-ADHDcomparisons.The brain areas involved in the behavioral and cognitive characteristics of ADHD are typically divided into thoseresponsible for regulating attention andcognitive control and those responsible for
alertness and motivation. Cortical andsubcortical brain areas involved, and found to besmaller in neuroimaging studies of ADHD, arethe prefrontal cortex (primarily on the rightside), basal ganglia (subcortical structuresinvolved in response control), cerebellum, andcorpus callosum.
Chapter Three – Sensation and PerceptionWHY STUDY SENSATION ANDPERCEPTION?
Without sensations to tell us what isoutside our own mental world, we would liveentirely in our own minds, separate from oneanother and unable to find food or any other basics that sustain life. Sensations are the mind’swindow to the world that exists around us.Without perception, we would be unableto understand what all those sensations mean— perception is the process of interpreting thesensations we experience so that we can actupon them.Oliver Sacks, a physician, can’trecognize his own face in the mirror. Sacks has aform of
prosopagnosia
, a neurological disorder that impairs a person’s ability to perceive or recognize faces, also known as
face blindness
.Prosopagnosia is a good example of how sensing and perceiving are connected, butdifferent.
Sensation
is the bottom-up process bywhich our senses, like vision, hearing and smell,receive and relay outside stimuli.
Perception
is the top-down way our brains organize and interpret that informationand put it into context.
THE ABCs OF SENSATIONSensation
Occurs when special receptors in thesense organs—the eyes, ears, nose, skin, andtaste buds—are activated, allowing variousforms of outside stimuli to become neuralsignals in the brain. This process of convertingoutside stimuli, such as light, into neural activityis called transduction.The
sensory receptors
are specializedforms of neurons. Instead of receivingneurotransmitters from other cells, thesereceptor cells are stimulated by different kindsof energy—for example, the receptors in theeyes are stimulated by light, the receptors in theears are activated by vibrations. Touch receptorsare stimulated by pressure or temperature, andthe receptors for taste and smell are triggered bychemical substances.Each receptor type transduces the physical information into electrical informationin different ways, which then either depolarizesor hyperpolarizes the cell, causing it to fire moreor to fire less based on the timing and intensityof information it is detecting from theenvironment.
Sensory Thresholds
⋙
Weber’s Law
- Ernst Weber (1795–1878) did studiestrying to determine the smallestdifference between two weights thatcould be detected.- His research led to the formulationknown as Weber’s law of
justnoticeable differences (jnd
, or the
difference threshold)
. A jnd is thesmallest difference between two stimulithat is detectable 50 percent of the time,and Weber’s law simply means thatwhatever the difference between stimulimight be, it is always a
constant
.
⋙
Absolute Threshold of Sensation
- Gustav Fechner’s expansion of Weber’swork.- The minimum stimulation needed toregister a particular stimulus fifty percent of the time.- An absolute threshold is the lowest levelof stimulation that a person canconsciously detect 50 percent of thetime the stimulation is present.
Example
: Assuming a very quiet room andnormal hearing, how far away can someone sitand you might still hear the tick of their analogwatch on half of the trials?
⋙
Subliminal Stimuli
- Stimuli that are below the level of conscious awareness.- “Below the threshold”- These stimuli are just strong enough toactivate the sensory receptors but notstrong enough for people to beconsciously aware of them.- Many people believe that these stimuliact upon the unconscious mind,influencing behavior in a process called
subliminal perception
.- The stimuli typically influenceautomatic reactions (such as an increasein facial tension) rather than directvoluntary behaviors (such as going to buy something suggested byadvertising).
Habituation and Sensory Adaptation
Some of the lower centers of the brainfilter sensory stimulation and “ignore” or prevent conscious attention to stimuli that do notchange. The brain is primarily interested inchanges in information. That’s why people don’treally “hear” the noise of the air conditioner unless it suddenly cuts off, or the noise made insome classrooms, unless it gets very quiet or someone else directs their attention toward it.Although they actually are hearing it, they aren’t paying attention to it.This is called
habituation
, and it is theway the brain deals with unchanginginformation from the environment.
Sensory adaptation
is another process by which constant, unchanging information fromthe sensory receptors is effectively ignored. Inhabituation, the sensory receptors are still
responding to stimulation but the lower centersof the brain are not sending the signals fromthose receptors to the cortex. The process of sensory adaptation differs because the receptor cells themselves become less responsive to anunchanging stimulus—garbage odorsincluded—and the receptors no longer sendsignals to the brain.For example, when you eat, the foodthat you put in your mouth tastes strong at first, but as you keep eating the same thing, the tastedoes fade somewhat. Generally speaking, all of our senses are subject to sensory adaptation.
THE SCIENCE OF SEEINGPerceptual Properties of Light
It was Albert Einstein who first proposed thatlight is actually tiny “packets” of waves. These“wave packets” are called
photons
and havespecific wavelengths associated with them,
⋙
Brightness
- Determined by the amplitude of thewave—how high or how low the waveactually is.- The higher the wave, the brighter thelight appears to be. Low waves aredimmer.
⋙
Color
- Or hue, is largely determined by thelength of the wave. Long wavelengths(measured in nanometers) are found atthe red end of the
visible spectrum
(the portion of the whole spectrum of lightvisible to the human eye) whereasshorter wavelengths are found at the blue end.
⋙
Saturation
- The purity of the color people perceive.- A highly saturated red, for example,would contain only red wavelengths,whereas a less-saturated red mightcontain a mixture of wavelengths.
Example
: When a child is using the red paintfrom a set of poster paints, the paint on the paper will look like a pure red, but if the child mixes insome white paint, the paint will look pink. Thehue is still red but it will be less of a saturatedred because of the presence of whitewavelengths.- When combining different colors, lightworks differently than pigments or paint.
The Structure of the Eye
Light enters the eye directly from a source (suchas the sun) or indirectly by reflecting off of anobject. To see clearly, a single point of lightfrom a source or reflected from an object musttravel through the structures of the eye and endup on the retina as a single point. Light bends asit passes through substances of differentdensities, through a process known as refraction.
⋙
Cornea
- Cell membrane covering the surface of the eye.- Not only protects the eye but also is thestructure that focuses most of the lightcoming into the eye.- Has a fixed curvature, like a camerathat has no option to adjust the focus.However, this curvature can be changedsomewhat through vision-improvingtechniques that change the shape of thecornea (LASIK and PRK).
⋙
Aqueous humor
- Clear, watery fluid.- This fluid is continually replenished andsupplies nourishment to the eye.
⋙
Pupil
- The light from the visual image thenenters the interior of the eye through ahole, called the pupil, in a round musclecalled the
iris
(the colored part of theeye).
⋙
Iris
- Round muscle; colored part of the eye.- Can change the size of the pupil, lettingmore or less light into the eye.- That also helps focus the image; peopletry to do the same thing by squinting.
⋙
Lens
- Behind the iris, suspended by muscles,another clear structure.- The flexible lens finishes the focusing process begun by the cornea.- In a process called
visualaccommodation
, the lens changes itsshape from thick to thin, enabling it tofocus on objects that are close or far away.- The variation in thickness allows thelens to project a sharp image on theretina. People lose this ability as the lenshardens through aging (a disorder called presbyopia).- In nearsightedness, or
myopia
, visualaccommodation may occur but the shapeof the eye causes the focal point to fallshort of the retina.- In farsightedness, or hyperopia, thefocus point is behind the retina.
⋙
Vitreous humor
- Once past the lens, light passes througha large, open space filled with a clear, jellylike fluid called the vitreous humor.- This fluid, like the aqueous humor, alsonourishes the eye and gives it shape.
⋙
Retina, rods, and cones
- The final stop for light within the eye isthe
retina
, a light-sensitive area at the back of the eye containing three layers:ganglion cells, bipolar cells, and the
rods
and
cones
, special receptor cells(
photoreceptors
).- Rods and cones are the business end of the retina—the part that actuallyreceives the photons of light and turnsthem into neural signals for the brain,sending them first to bipolar cells andthen to the retinal ganglion cells.- There are 6 million cones in each eye; of these, 50,000 have a private line to theoptic nerve (one bipolar cell for eachcone). This means that the cones are thereceptors for visual acuity, or ability, tosee fine detail.- Cones are located all over the retina butare more concentrated at its very center where there are no rods (the area calledthe
fovea
).- Cones also need a lot more light tofunction than the rods do, so cones work best in bright light, which is also when people see things most clearly. Conesare also sensitive to differentwavelengths of light, so they areresponsible for color vision.
- The rods (about 100 million of them ineach eye) are found all over the retinaexcept the fovea, but are concentrated inthe periphery. Rods are sensitive tochanges in brightness but not to avariety of wavelengths, so they see onlyin black and white and shades of gray.- They can be very sensitive becausemany rods are connected to a single bipolar cell, so that if even only one rodis stimulated by a photon of light, the brain perceives the whole area of thoserods as stimulated. But because the braindoesn’t know exactly what part of thearea (which rod) is actually sending themessage, the visual acuity (sharpness) isquite low. That’s why things seen in lowlevels of light, such as twilight or adimly lit room, are fuzzy and grayish.Because rods are located on the periphery of the retina, they are alsoresponsible for peripheral vision.
⋙
The blind spot
- If people stare with one eye at one spotlong enough, objects that slowly crosstheir visual field may at one pointdisappear briefly because there is a“hole” in the retina—the place where allthe axons of those ganglion cells leavethe retina to become the optic nerve, the
optic disk
.- There are no rods or cones here, so thisis referred to as the
blind spot
.
How the Eye Works
The areas of the retina can be divided intohalves:
temporal retinas
and
nasal retinas
.The information from the left visual field(falling on the right side of each retina) goes tothe right visual cortex, while the informationfrom the right visual field (falling on the left sideof each retina) goes to the left visual field.This is because the axons from the temporalhalves of each retina project to the visual cortexon the same side of the brain while the axonsfrom the nasal halves cross over to the visualcortex on the opposite side of the brain. Theoptic chiasm is the point of crossover.
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Dark adaptation
- Rods are the cells that allow the eyes toadapt to low light.- Occurs as the eye recovers its ability tosee when going from a brightly lit stateto a dark state.
- The brighter the light was, the longer ittakes the rods to adapt to the new lower levels of light.- This is why the bright headlights of anoncoming car can leave a person lessable to see for a while after that car has passed.
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Light adaptation
- When going from a darkened room toone that is brightly lit, the opposite process occurs.- The cones have to adapt to the increasedlevel of light, and they accomplish thislight adaptation much more quickly thanthe rods adapt to darkness—it takes afew seconds at most.
Perception of Color
Are there cones that detect each color? Or do allcones detect all colors?
⋙
Trichromatic theory
- First proposed by Thomas Young in1802 and later modified by Hermannvon Helmholtz in 1852.- Proposed three types of cones: redcones, blue cones, and green cones, onefor each of the three primary colors of light.- The mixing of direct light is additive,resulting in lighter colors, more light,and when mixing red, blue, and green,we see white, the reflection of the entirevisual spectrum.- In the trichromatic theory, differentshades of colors correspond to differentamounts of light received by each of these three types of cones. These conesthen fire their message to the brain’svision centers.- It is the combination of cones and therate at which they are firing thatdetermine the color that will be seen.
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Opponent-process theory- Afterimages
occur when a visualsensation persists for a brief time evenafter the original stimulus is removed.The person would also notice rather quickly that the colors of the flag in theafterimage are all wrong—green for red, black for white, and yellow for blue.Afterimages explains the theory.- In opponent-process theory, there arefour primary colors: red, green, blue,and yellow. The colors are arranged in pairs, with each member of the pair asopponents. Red is paired with itsopponent green, and blue is paired withits opponent yellow. If one member of a pair is strongly stimulated, the other member is inhibited and cannot beworking—so there are no reddish-greensor bluish-yellows.
⋙
Color blindness
- Caused by defective cones in the retinaof the eye called the
color-deficient vision
.- Kinds of color-deficient vision:
Monochrome color blindness
- People either have no cones or havecones that are not working at all.- If they have cones, they only have onetype and, therefore, everything looks thesame shades of gray to the brain.
Dichromatic vision
- Having one cone that does not work properly.- Instead of experiencing the world withnormal vision based on combinations of three cones or colors, individualsexperience the world with essentiallycombinations of two cones or colors.
THE HEARING SENSEPerception of Sound
Sound waves are simply the vibrations of themolecules of air that surround us. Just as peoplerarely see pure colors in the world around us,they also seldom hear pure sounds.
⋙
Pitch
- Wavelengths are interpreted by the brainas frequency or pitch (high, medium, or low).
⋙
Volume
- Amplitude in light waves.- How soft or loud a sound is.
⋙
Timbre
- What would correspond to saturation or purity in light.
A person is limited in the range of frequencieshe or she can hear.Frequency is measured in cycles (waves) per second, or hertz (Hz). Human limits are between20 and 20,000 Hz, with the most sensitivity fromabout 2000 to 4000 Hz, very important for conversational speech. (In comparison, dogs canhear between 50 and 60,000 Hz, and dolphinscan hear up to 200,000 Hz.)
The Structure of the Ear
⋙
The Outer EarPinna
- Visible, external part of the ear thatserves as a kind of concentrator,funneling* the sound waves from theoutside into the structure of the ear.- Entrance
auditory canal
.
Auditory canal
- Ear canal.- Short tunnel that runs down to the
tympanic membrane
, or eardrum.- When sound waves hit the eardrum, theycause three tiny bones in the middle ear to vibrate.
⋙
The Middle Ear
- The three tiny bones in the middle ear are known as the hammer (
malleus
),anvil (
incus
), and stirrup (
stapes
), eachname stemming from the shape of therespective bone.- Collectively they are referred to as the
ossicles
and they are the smallest bonesin the human body. The vibration of these three bones amplifies thevibrations from the eardrum. Thestirrup, the last bone in the chain, causesa membrane covering the opening of theinner ear to vibrate.
⋙
The Inner Ear
- A membrane called the
oval window
,and its vibrations set off another chainreaction within the inner ear.- The inner ear is a snail-shaped structurecalled the
cochlea
, which is filled withfluid. When the oval window vibrates, itcauses the fluid in the cochlea to vibrate.This fluid surrounds a membranerunning through the middle of thecochlea called the
basilar membrane
.
Basilar membrane
- Resting place of the organ of Corti,which contains the receptor cells for thesense of hearing.- When the basilar membrane vibrates, itvibrates the organ of Corti, causing it to brush against a membrane above it.
Organ of Corti
- On this organ are special cells called
hair cells
, which are receptors for sound.- When these auditory receptors or hair cells are bent up against the other membrane, it causes them to send aneural message through the auditorynerve and into the brain, where after passing through the thalamus, theauditory cortex will interpret the sounds(the transformation of the vibrations of sound into neural messages is
transduction
).- The louder the sound in the outsideworld, the stronger the vibrations thatstimulate more of those hair cells—which the brain interprets asloudness.
Perceiving Pitch
Pitch refers to how high or low a sound is. Thereare three primary theories of how the brainreceives information about pitch.
⋙
Place theory
- Based on an idea proposed in 1863 byHermann von Helmholtz and elaboratedon and modified by Georg von Békésy.- In this theory, the pitch a person hearsdepends on where the hair cells that arestimulated are located on the organ of Corti.- If the person is hearing a high-pitchedsound, all of the hair cells near the ovalwindow will be stimulated, but if thesound is low pitched, all of the hair cellsthat are stimulated will be locatedfarther away on the organ of Corti.- For place theory to be correct, the basilar membrane has to vibrateunevenly— which it does when thefrequency of the sound is above 1000Hz.- Place theory works for moderate to high pitches.
⋙
Frequency theory
- Developed by Ernest Rutherford in1886.- States that pitch is related to how fastthe basilar membrane vibrates.- The faster this membrane vibrates, thehigher the pitch; the slower it vibrates,the lower the pitch. (In this theory, all of the auditory neurons would be firing atthe same time.)- For the frequency theory to be correct,the neurons associated with the hair cells would have to fire as fast as the basilar membrane vibrates. This onlyworks up to 1000 Hz.- Frequency theory works for low pitches.
⋙
Volley principle
- Ernest Wever and Charles Bray.- Appears to account for pitches fromabout 400 Hz up to about 4000.- Groups of auditory neurons take turnsfiring in a process called
volleying
. If a person hears a tone of about 3000 Hz, itmeans that three groups of neurons havetaken turns sending the message to the brain.
Types of Hearing Impairments
Hearing impairment is the term used to refer todifficulties in hearing.
⋙
Conduction hearing impairment
- Or conductive hearing loss.- Problems with the mechanics of theouter or middle ear and means thatsound vibrations cannot be passed fromthe eardrum to the cochlea.- The cause might be a damaged eardrumor damage to the bones of the middle ear (usually from an infection).- Can be restored, for example, withhearing aids.
⋙
Nerve hearing impairment
- Or sensorineural hearing loss.- The problem lies either in the inner ear or in the auditory pathways and corticalareas of the brain.- Most common type of permanenthearing loss.- Causes: normal aging causes loss of hair cells in the cochlea, exposure to loudnoises.
- Tinnitus
is an extremely annoyingringing in one’s ear, and it can also becaused by infections or loud noises.
CHEMICAL SENSES
The sense of taste (in food) and thesense of smell are very closely related becausethe sense of taste is really a combination of tasteand smell.
Gustation: How We Taste The World
Taste is one of our earliest developed senses.
⋙
Taste buds
- Common name for taste receptor cells,special kinds of neurons found in themouth that are responsible for the senseof taste, or
gustation
.- Most taste buds are located on thetongue, but there are a few on the roof of the mouth, the cheeks, under thetongue, and in the throat as well.- The bumps at the tongue are called
papillae
, and the taste buds line thewalls of taste of these papillae.- The receptors on taste buds work exactly like receptor sites onneurons—they receive molecules of various substances that fit into thereceptor like a key into a lock.
- Taste is often called a chemical sense because it works with the molecules of foods people eat in the same way theneural receptors work withneurotransmitters.- When the molecules (dissolved insaliva) fit into the receptors, a signal isfired to the brain, which then interpretsthe taste sensation.
⋙
Five basic tastes
- Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami
The Sense of Scents: Olfaction
The ability to smell odors is called
olfaction
, or the
olfactory sense
.The outer part of the nose serves as a way tocollect the sensory information and get it to the part of the body that will translate it into neuralsignals.The part of the olfactory system that transducesodors is located at the top of the nasal passages.
⋙
Olfactory receptor cells
- Each has little “hairs” called
cilia
that project into the cavity. There arereceptor sites on these hair cells thatsend signals to the brain whenstimulated by the molecules of substances that are in the air moving past them.- Vision, hearing, taste, and touch all passthrough the thalamus and then on to thearea of the cortex that processes that particular sensory information. But thesense of smell has its own special placein the brain—the
olfactory bulbs
.
⋙
Olfactory bulbs
- Located right on top of the sinus cavityon each side of the brain directly beneath the frontal lobes.- Olfactory receptors send their neuralsignals directly up to these bulbs, bypassing the thalamus, the relay center for all the other sensory information.- Olfactory information is then sent fromthe bulbs to higher cortical areas,including the primary olfactory cortex(
piriform cortex
), orbitofrontal cortex,and the amygdala.
SOMESTHETIC SENSES
Somesthetic senses, or body senses,came from the words
soma
(body) and
esthetic
(feeling).
⋙
Skin senses
- Having to do with touch, pressure,temperature, and pain.
⋙
Kinesthetic sense
- Having to do with the location of body parts in relation to each other.
⋙
Vestibular senses
- Having to do with movement and body position.
Perception of Touch, Pressure, Temperatureand Pain
Skin is an organ that receives and transmitsinformation from the outside world to the centralnervous system (specially to the somatosensorycortex).
THE ABCs OF PERCEPTION
The method by which the brain takes allthe sensations a person experiences at any givenmoment and allows them to be interpreted insome meaningful fashion.Perception has some individuality to it.For example, two people might be looking at acloud and while one thinks it’s shaped like ahorse, the other thinks it’s more like a cow.
Perceptual Constancies
⋙
Size constancy
- The tendency to interpret an object asalways being the same size, regardlessof its distance from the viewer (or thesize of the image it casts on the retina).- If an object that is normally perceived to be about 6 feet tall appears very smallon the retina, it will be interpreted as being very far away.
⋙
Shape constancy
- The tendency to interpret the shape of anobject as constant, even when it changeson the retina.- This is why a person still perceives acoin as a circle even if it is held at anangle that makes it appear to be an ovalon the retina. Dinner plates on a tableare also seen as round, even thoughfrom the angle of viewing they are oval.
⋙
Brightness constancy
- The tendency to perceive the apparent brightness of an object as the same evenwhen the light conditions change.- If a person is wearing black pants and awhite shirt in broad daylight the shirtwill appear to be much brighter than the pants. But if the sun is covered by thick clouds, the shirt will still appear to be just as much brighter than the pants as before—because the different amount of light reflected from each piece of clothing is still the same difference as before.
The Gestalt Principles
⋙
Figure-Ground Relationships
- Refer to the tendency to perceive objectsor figures as existing on a background.- The illusions are
reversible figures
, inwhich the figure and the ground seem toswitch back and forth.
⋙
Proximity
- The tendency to perceive objects thatare close to one another as part of thesame grouping.- “Nearness”
⋙
Similarity
- Refers to the tendency to perceive thingsthat look similar as being part of thesame group.- When members of a sports team wear uniforms that are all the same color, itallows people viewing the game to perceive them as one group even whenthey are scattered around the field or court.
⋙
Closure
- The tendency to complete figures thatare incomplete.
⋙
Continuity
- Refers to the tendency to perceive thingsas simply as possible with a continuous pattern rather than with a complex, broken-up pattern.
⋙
Contiguity
- Involves not just nearness in space butnearness in time also.- The tendency to perceive two things thathappen close together in time as beingrelated. Usually the first occurring eventis seen as causing the second event.- Ventriloquists make vocalizationswithout appearing to move their ownmouths but move their dummy’s mouthinstead. The tendency to believe that thedummy is doing the talking is duelargely to contiguity
⋙
Common Region
- Similarity would suggest that people seetwo groups, stars and circles.- But the colored backgrounds define avisible common region, and thetendency is to perceive three differentgroups.
Depth Perception
The capability to see the world in threedimensions. It’s a handy ability because withoutit you would have a hard time judging how far away objects are.Kind of cues:
⋙
Monocular Cues
- Pictorial depth cues- Artists can use these cues to give theillusion of depth to paintings anddrawings.
Examples of monocular cues:
Linear perspective
- When looking down a long interstatehighway, the two sides of the highwayappear to merge together in the distance.- This tendency for lines that are actually parallel to seem to converge on eachother is called
linear perspective
.- It works in pictures because peopleassume that in the picture, as in real life,the converging lines indicate that the“ends” of the lines are a great distanceaway from where the people are as theyview them.
Relative size
- The principle of size constancy.- When objects that people expect to be of a certain size appear to be small and are,therefore, assumed to be much farther away.
Overlap
- If one object seems to be blockinganother object, people assume that the blocked object is behind the first oneand, therefore, farther away.- This cue is also known as
interposition
.
Aerial (atmospheric) perspective
- The farther away an object is, the hazier the object will appear to be due to tiny particles of dust, dirt, and other pollutants in the air.
Texture gradient
- The pebbles or bricks that are close toyou are very distinctly textured, but asyou look farther off into the distance,their texture becomes smaller and finer.
Motion parallax
- The next time you’re in a car, noticehow the objects outside the car windowseem to zip by very fast when they areclose to the car, and objects in thedistance, such as mountains, seem tomove more slowly.
Accommodation
- Not one of the pictorial cues; makes useof something that happens inside theeye.- The process of visual accommodation asthe tendency of the lens to change itsshape, or thickness, in response toobjects near or far away.- A cue for distance.- “Muscular cue”
⋙
Binocular Cues
- The cues that require the use of twoeyes.
Convergence
- Another muscular cue.- Refers to the rotation of the two eyes intheir sockets to focus on a single object.- If the object is close, the convergence is pretty great (almost as great as crossingthe eyes). If the object is far, theconvergence is much less.
Binocular disparity
- Scientific way of saying that because theeyes are a few inches apart, they don’tsee exactly the same image.- If the two images are very different, theobject must be pretty close. If they arealmost identical, the object is far enoughaway to make the retinal disparity verysmall.
Perceptual Illusions
An
illusion
is a perception that does notcorrespond to reality. Another way of thinkingof illusions is as visual stimuli that “fool” theeye.Sometimes illusions are based on early sensory processes, subsequent processing, or higher-level assumptions made by the brain’svisual system.
⋙
Hermann Grid
- One explanation for this illusion isattributed to the responses of neurons inthe primary visual cortex that respond best to bars of light of a specificorientation.
⋙
Müller-Lyer Illusion
- The distortion happens when the viewer tries to determine if the two lines areexactly the same length. They areidentical, but one line looks longer thanthe other.
⋙
The Moon Illusion
- The moon on the horizon appears to bemuch larger than the moon in the sky.- The moon high in the sky is all alone,with no cues for depth surrounding it.But on the horizon, the moon appears behind trees and houses, cues for depththat make the horizon seem very far away.
- Apparent distance hypothesis
.
⋙
Illusions of Motion
- People perceive an object as movingwhen it is actually still.
Other Factors That Influence Perception
People’s tendency to perceive things acertain way because their previous experiencesor expectations influence them is called
perceptual set
or
perceptual expectancy
.The way in which people interpret whatthey perceive can also influence their perception.For example, people can try to understand whatthey perceive by using information they alreadyhave (as is the case of perceptual expectancy).But if there is no existing information thatrelates to the new information, they can look ateach feature of what they perceive and try to putit all together into one whole.Anyone who has ever worked on a jigsaw puzzle knows that it’s a lot easier to put ittogether if there is a picture of the finished puzzle to refer to as a guide. It also helps to haveworked the puzzle before—people who havedone that already know what it’s going to look like when it’s finished. In the field of perception,this is known as
top-down processing
—the useof preexisting knowledge to organize individualfeatures into a unified whole. This is also a formof perceptual expectancy.If the puzzle is one the person has never worked on before or if that person has lost thetop of the box with the picture on it, he or shewould have to start with a small section, put ittogether, and keep building up the sections untilthe recognizable picture appears. This analysisof smaller features and building up to a complete perception is called
bottom-up processing
. Inthis case, there is no expectancy to help organizethe perception, making bottom-up processingmore difficult in some respects. Fortunately, thetwo types of processing are often used together in perceiving the surrounding world.
Chapter 4 – ConsciousnessWHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness is your awareness of everything that is going on around you andinside your own head at any given moment,which you use to organize your behavior (Farthing, 1992), including your thoughts,sensations, and feelings.In a cognitive neuroscience view,consciousness is generated by a set of action potentials in the communication among neurons just sufficient to produce a specific perception,memory, or experience in our awareness (Crick & Koch, 1990, 2003; Koch & Mormann, 2010).In other words, your eyes see a dog, theneurons along the optic pathway to the occipitallobe’s visual cortex are activated, and the visualassociation cortex is activated to identify theexternal stimulus as a “dog.”—consciousness!Much of people’s time awake is spent ina state called
waking consciousness
in whichtheir thoughts, feelings, and sensations are clear and organized, and they feel alert. But there aremany times in daily activities and in life when people experience states of consciousness thatdiffer from this organized waking state. Thesevariations are called “altered states of consciousness.”
Altered States of Consciousness
Occurs when there is a shift in thequality or pattern of your mental activity.Thoughts may become fuzzy and disorganizedand you may feel less alert, or your thoughtsmay take bizarre turns, as they so often do indreams.Sometimes being in an altered state maymean being in a state of increased alertness, aswhen under the influence of a stimulant.You may also divide your consciousawareness, as when you drive to work or schooland then wonder how you got there—one levelof conscious awareness was driving, while theother was thinking about the day ahead, perhaps.This altered state of dividedconsciousness can be a dangerous thing, asmany people who try to drive and talk on a cell phone at the same time have discovered. Studieshave shown that driving while talking on a cell phone, even a hands-free phone, puts a person atthe same degree of risk as driving under theinfluence of alcohol.There are many forms of altered statesof consciousness. For example, daydreaming, being hypnotized, or achieving a meditative stateare usually considered to be altered states.Being under the influence of certaindrugs such as caffeine, tobacco, or alcohol aredefinitely examples of altered states.
Over several decades, there has been adefinite rise in the use of stimulants that wouldordinarily be prescribed for children andadolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivitydisorder, but are also used by college studentsand older adults who feel that the drugs givethem an “edge.”But the most common altered state people experience is the one they spend about athird of their lives in on a nightly basis—sleep.
SLEEPThe Biology of Sleep
Sleep was once referred to as “the gentle tyrant”(Webb, 1992). People can try to stay awake, andsometimes they may go for a while withoutsleep, but eventually they
must
sleep.One reason for this fact is that sleep is one of thehuman body’s
biological rhythms
, natural cyclesof activity that the body must go through.Some biological rhythms are monthly, like thecycle of a woman’s menstruation, whereasothers are far shorter—the beat of the heart is a biological rhythm. But many biological rhythmstake place on a daily basis, like the rise and fallof blood pressure and body temperature or the production of certain body chemicals. The mostobvious of these is the sleep–wake cycle.
⋙
The Rhythms of Life: CircadianRhythms
- Sleep-wake cycle- Latin words,
circa
(about) and
diem
(day): a cycle that takes “about a day” tocomplete.- For most people, this means that theywill experience several hours of sleep atleast once during every 24-hour period.- The sleep–wake cycle is ultimatelycontrolled by the brain, specifically byan area within the
hypothalamus
, thetiny section of the brain that influencesthe glandular system.
⋙
The Role of HypothalamusMelatonin
- Release of melatonin is influenced by astructure deep within the tinyhypothalamus in an area called the
suprachiasmatic nucleus
(SCN), theinternal clock that tells people when towake up and when to fall asleep.- SCN is sensitive to changes in light. Asdaylight fades, the SCN tells the pinealgland (located in the base of the brain)to secrete melatonin. As melatoninaccumulates, a person will feel sleepy.- As the light coming into the eyesincreases (as it does in the morning), theSCN tells the pineal gland to stopsecreting melatonin, allowing the bodyto awaken.- Melatonin supplements are often used totreat a condition called
jet lag
, in whichthe body’s circadian rhythm has beendisrupted by traveling to another timezone.- There is some evidence that melatoninmay be linked to a healthier metabolism.It may help people who suffer fromsleep problems due to shift work.
Serotonin
- Once theorized that serotonin promotedsleepiness. However, it is not thatsimple.- Serotonin-producing neurons are mostactive during wakefulness, less activeduring SWS (
slow-wave sleep
), andrelatively inactive during REM (
rapid eye movement
).- Effects differ based on whichserotonergic cells are firing and which brain structures are receiving thosemessages.- Lastly, some serotonin receptors areexcitatory and others are inhibitory. For example, some receptors facilitate somestages of sleep while others inhibit other stages
Body temperature
- Plays a part in inducing sleep.- SNC controls body temperature. Thehigher the body temperature, the morealert people are; the lower thetemperature, the sleepier they are.- When people are asleep at night, their body temperature is at its lowest level.- Be careful: The research on the effectsof serotonin and body temperature onsleep is correlational, we cannot assumecausation and there are many differentfactors involved in sleep.- In the same studies, body temperaturedropped consistently even in the absenceof light (Czeisler et al., 1980). As bodytemperature dropped, sleep began,giving further support to the importanceof body temperature in the regulation of sleep.
Access to information about day and night
- In studies in which volunteers spendseveral days without access toinformation about day or night, their sleep–wake cycles lengthened.- The daily activities of their bodies—such as sleeping, waking, waste production, blood pressure rise and fall,and so on—took place over a period of 25 hours rather than 24 hours.- It appears that the SCN may beresponsible for resetting the body’s biological “clock” to a 24-hour cycleevery day.
⋙
The Importance of Sleep and thePrice of Not Sleeping
- Most young adults need about 7 to 9hours of sleep each 24-hour period inorder to function well. As we age, weseem to sleep less during each nightuntil the average length of sleepapproaches only 6 hours.
Sleep Patterns of Infants and Adults
Microsleeps
- Although people can do without sleepfor a while, they cannot do without italtogether. In one experiment, rats were placed on moving treadmills over water.They couldn’t sleep normally becausethey would then fall into the water and be awakened, but they did driftrepeatedly into
microsleeps
, or brief sidesteps into sleep lasting only seconds.- People can have microsleeps, too.Microsleep periods are no doubtresponsible for a lot of car accidents thatoccur when drivers have had very littlesleep.
Sleep deprivation
- For most people, a missed night of sleepwill result in concentration problemsand the inability to do simple tasks thatnormally would take no thought at all,such as loading a DVD into a player.More complex tasks, such as math problems, suffer less than these simpletasks because people
know
they mustconcentrate on a complex task.
- Sleep deprivation
, or loss of sleep, is aserious problem which many peoplehave without realizing it.- Students, for example, may stay up allnight to study for an important test thenext day. In doing so, they will losemore information than they gain, as agood night’s sleep is important for memory and the ability to think well.- Some typical symptoms of sleepdeprivation include trembling hands,inattention, staring off into space,droopy eyelids, and general discomfort,as well as emotional symptoms such asirritability and even depression.- Add to that list an increased risk of insulin resistance, which can lead todiabetes, and even possible delays in theonset of puberty.
Importance
- Forming memories.- Studies have shown that the physicalchanges in the brain that occur when weform memories are strengthened duringsleep, and particularly so for children.- This memory effect is no doubt due, atleast in part, to the finding that sleepenhances the synaptic connectionsamong neurons, thus increasing the plasticity of the brain—the brain’sability to adapt to experiences.
THEORIES OF SLEEP
⋙
Adaptive Theory of Sleep
- Sleep is a product of evolution (Webb,1992).- Proposes that animals and humansevolved different sleep patterns to avoid being present during their predators’normal hunting times, which typicallywould be at night.- If a human or a prey animal is out andabout at night, they are more at risk of being eaten. However, if during activehunting hours the prey is in a safe placesleeping and conserving energy, it ismore likely to remain unharmed.- Lions will sleep nearly 15 hours a day,whereas animals such as gazelles thatare lions’ prey sleep a mere 4 hours aday, usually in short naps.- Nocturnal animals such as the opossumcan afford to sleep during the day and beactive at night (when their food sourcesare available), because they are protected from predators by sleepinghigh up in trees.
⋙
Restorative Theory of Sleep
- States that sleep is necessary to the physical health of the body.- During sleep, chemicals that were usedup during the day’s activities arereplenished and cellular damage isrepaired.- Brain plasticity is enhanced by sleep,and there is evidence that most bodilygrowth and repair occur during thedeepest stages of sleep, when enzymesresponsible for these functions aresecreted in higher amounts.
THE STAGES OF SLEEP
There are two kinds of sleep.
⋙
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep
- A relatively psychologically active typeof sleep when most of a person’sdreaming takes place.The voluntary muscles are inhibited, the person in REM sleep moves very little.
⋙
non-REM (NREM) sleep
- Sleep spans from lighter stages to amuch deeper, more restful kind of sleep.- The person’s body is free to movearound (including kicking one’s bed partner).A machine called an
electroencephalograph
allows scientists torecord the brain-wave activity as a person passesthrough the various stages of sleep and todetermine what type of sleep the person hasentered.
A person who is wide awake andmentally active will show a brain-wave patternon the EEG called
beta waves
. Beta waves arevery small and very fast. As the person relaxesand gets drowsy, slightly larger and slower
alpha waves
appear. The alpha waves areeventually replaced by even slower and larger
theta waves
.
Terminology Describing Sleep Stages:
Primary
American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM)R - REM N - NREMW - wakefulness N3 - NREM Stages 3 and 4
Older
Rechtschaffen and Kales (1968) sleepmanual terminology noted in parentheses as“R&K.”
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N1 (R&K Stage 1): Light Sleep
- What people enter as
theta wave
activity increases and alpha waveactivity fades away.- If people are awakened at this point,they will probably not believe that theywere actually asleep. May alsoexperience vivid visual events called
hypnagogic images
or
hallucinations
.- Many researchers now believe that peoples’ experiences of ghostly visits,alien abductions, and near-deathexperiences may be most easilyexplained by these hallucinations.- A much more common occurrence iscalled the
hypnic jerk
.- Have you ever been drifting off to sleepwhen your knees, legs, or sometimesyour whole body gives a big “jerk”?Although experts have no solid proof of why this occurs, many believe that it hassomething to do with the possibility thatour ancestors slept in trees: Therelaxation of the muscles as one driftsinto sleep causes a “falling” sensation, atwhich point the body jerks awake to prevent the “fall” from the hypotheticaltree.
⋙
N2 (R&K Stage 2): Sleep Spindles
- As people drift further into sleep, the body temperature continues to drop.Heart rate slows, breathing becomesmore shallow and irregular, and the EEGwill show the first signs of
sleep spindles
, brief bursts of activity lastingonly a second or two.- Theta waves still predominate in thisstage, but if people are awakened duringthis stage, they will be aware of having been asleep.
⋙
N3 (R&K Stages 3 and 4): DeltaWaves Roll In
- Slowest and largest waves called
deltawaves
make their appearance. Thesewaves increase during this stage fromabout 20 percent to more than 50 percent of total brain activity.- Now the person is in the deepest stageof sleep, often referred to as
slow wave sleep
(SWS) or deep sleep.- It is during this stage that growthhormones (GH) are released from the pituitary gland and reach their peak.- The body is at its lowest level of functioning. Eventually, the delta waves become the dominant brain activity for this stage of sleep.
- People in deep sleep are very hard toawaken. If something does wake them,they may be very confused anddisoriented at first.- Children are even harder to wake upwhen in this state than are adults. Deepsleep is the time when body growthoccurs. This may explain why childrenin periods of rapid growth need to sleepmore and also helps to explain whychildren who are experiencing disruptedsleep suffer delays in growth.
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R (R&K REM)
- The sleeping person will go back upthrough N2 and then into a stage inwhich body temperature increases tonear-waking levels, the eyes moverapidly under the eyelids, the heart beatsmuch faster, and brain waves resemble
beta waves
—the kind of brain activitythat usually signals wakefulness.- The person is still asleep but in the stageknown as rapid eye movement sleep(REM) and sometimes referred to as
paradoxical sleep
.
REM Sleep: Perchance to Dream
- When a person in REM sleep isawakened, he or she almost alwaysreports being in a dream state.- REM sleep is, therefore, associated withdreaming, and 90 percent of dreamsactually take place in REM sleep.People do have dreams in the other non-REM stages, but REM dreams tendto be more vivid, more detailed, longer,and more bizarre.- NREM dreams tend to be more likethoughts about daily occurrences and far shorter than REM dreams.- The body is unable to act upon thesedreams under normal conditions becausethe voluntary muscles are paralyzedduring REM sleep, a condition known as
sleep paralysis
. (This is why yousometimes have a dream in which youare trying to run or move, andcan’t—you are partially aware of sleep paralysis.)
Purpose of REM Sleep
- Considered restful.- An emotionally stressful day leads toincreased time in REM sleep. Perhapsthe dreams people have in REM sleepare a way of dealing with the stressesand tensions of the day, whereas physical activity would demand moretime for recovery of the body in NREMsleep.- If deprived of REM sleep (use of sleeping pills or other depressant drugs),a person will experience greatlyincreased amounts of REM sleep thenext night, a phenomenon called
REMrebound
.- Babies spend nearly 50 percent of their sleep in REM as compared to adults’ 20 percent (different brain-wave patterns).- When infants are engaged in REMsleep, they are not dreaming but rather forming new connections betweenneurons.
SLEEP DISORDERS
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Nightmares and REM BehaviorDisorders
- Far more dangerous than sleepwalking.- Bad dreams, some nightmares can beutterly terrifying.- Children tend to have more nightmaresthan adults do because they spend moreof their sleep in the REM state. As theyage, they have fewer nightmares because they have less opportunity tohave them. But some people still suffer from nightmares as adults.- Some people have a rare disorder inwhich the brain mechanisms thatnormally inhibit the voluntary musclesfail, allowing the person to thrasharound and even get up and act outnightmares. This disorder is called
REM behavior disorder
. Usually seenin men over age 60, it can happen inyounger men and in women.
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Night Terrors
- More likely in children and also likely todisappear as the child grows older.- Essentially a state of panic experiencedwhile sound asleep.- People may sit up, scream, run aroundthe room, or flail at some unseenattacker. It is also not uncommon for people to feel unable to breathe whilethey are in this state.- Most people do not remember whathappened during a night-terror episode,although a few people can remember vividly the images and terror theyexperienced.Some very real differences exist between night terrors and nightmares. Nightmares are usually vividly rememberedimmediately upon waking. A person who hashad a nightmare, unlike a person experiencing anight terror, will actually be able to awaken andimmediately talk about the bad dream. Perhapsthe most telling difference is that nightmaresoccur during REM sleep rather than deepnon-REM sleep, which is the domain of nightterrors, which means that people don’t movearound in a nightmare as they do in anight-terror experience.
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Sleepwalking or somnambulism
- Occurs in about 20 percent of the population and is at least partially due toheredity.- More common in childhood, morefrequently in boys than girls.- A person who is sleepwalking may donothing more than sit up in bed. Butother episodes may involve walkingaround the house, looking in therefrigerator or even eating, and gettinginto the car.- Most people typically do not remember the episode the next day.
Situation
: One student said that her brother walked in his sleep, and one morning his familyfound him sound asleep behind the wheel of thefamily car in the garage. Fortunately, he had not been able to find the keys in his sleep.- The only real precaution that thefamilies of people who sleepwalk shouldtake is to clear their floors of obstaclesand to put not-easy-to-reach locks on thedoors. And although it is typically notdangerous to wake sleepwalkers, theymay strike out before awakening.
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Insomnia
- Inability to get to sleep, stay asleep, or get a good quality of sleep.- Some of the psychological causes areworrying, trying too hard to sleep, or having anxiety. Some of the physiological causes are too muchcaffeine, indigestion, or aches and pain.
Several steps people can take to help them sleep:
1. Consuming no caffeinated drinks or foods that cause indigestion before bedtime.2. Taking medication for pain.3. Dealing with anxieties in the daytimerather than facing them at night.4. Go to bed only when you are sleepy.5. Don’t do anything in your bed but sleep.Using the bed as a cue for sleeping is akind of learning called
classical conditioning
, or the pairing of cues andautomatic responses.6. Don’t try too hard to get to sleep, andespecially do not look at the clock andcalculate how much sleep you aren’tgetting.7. Keep to a regular schedule.8. Don’t take sleeping pills or drink alcohol or other types of drugs that slowdown the nervous system.
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Sleep ApneaSituation
: Gerald was a snorer. Actually, that’san understatement. Gerald could give a jetengine some serious competition. Snoring isfairly common, occurring when the breathing passages (nose and throat) get blocked. Most people snore only when they have a cold or some other occasional problem, but some peoplesnore every night and quite loudly, like Gerald.- It is this type of snoring that is oftenassociated with a condition called
sleepapnea
, in which the person stops breathing for 10 seconds or more.- When breathing stops, there will be asudden silence, followed shortly by agasping sound as the person struggles toget air into the lungs.- Apnea can cause heart problems as wellas poor sleep quality.- If a person suspects the presence of apnea, a visit to a physician is the firststep in identifying the disorder anddeciding on a treatment. While some people can benefit from wearing a nasalopening device, losing weight (obesityis often a primary cause of apnea), or using a nasal spray to shrink the nasaltissues, others must sleep with a devicethat delivers a continuous stream of air under mild pressure, called a
continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device
.Still others undergo a simple surgery inwhich the
uvula
and some of the softtissues surrounding it are removed.- Some very young infants alsoexperience a kind of apnea due toimmaturity of the brain stem. Theseinfants are typically placed on monitorsthat sound an alarm when breathingstops, allowing caregivers to help theinfant begin breathing again.
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Narcolepsy
- A disorder affecting 1 in every 2,000 persons, narcolepsy is a kind of “sleepseizure.”
- Person may slip suddenly into REMsleep during the day (especially whenthe person experiences strong emotions).- Excessive daytime sleepiness thatresults in the person falling asleepthroughout the day at inappropriatetimes and in inappropriate places.- May occur many times and withoutwarning.- The sudden REM attacks are especiallydangerous because of the symptom of
cataplexy
, or a sudden loss of muscletone.- The same hypnagogic images that mayaccompany N1 sleep may also occur inthe person with narcolepsy.
DREAMSFreud’s Interpretation:Dream as Wish Fulfillment
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) believed that the problems of his patients stemmed from conflictsand events that had been buried in their unconscious minds since childhood.These early traumas were seen as the cause of behavior problems in adulthood, in which his patients suffered from symptoms such as a typeof paralysis that had no physical basis or repetitive, ritualistic hand washing.One of the ways Freud devised to get at theseearly memories was to examine the dreams of his patients, believing that conflicts, events, anddesires of the past would be represented insymbolic form in the dreams. Freud believeddreams to be a kind of wish fulfillment for his patients.
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Manifest Content
- The actual dream itself.
Example
: If Chad has a dream in which he istrying to climb out of a bathtub, the manifestcontent of the dream is exactly that—he’s tryingto climb out of a bathtub.
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Latent Content
- True meaning of a dream was hidden, or latent, and only expressed in symbols..
Example
: In the dream, the water in the tubmight symbolize the waters of birth, and the tubitself might be his mother’s womb. Using aFreudian interpretation, Chad may be dreamingabout being born.
The development of techniques for looking at the structure and activity of the brainhas led to an explanation of why people dreamthat is more concrete than that of Freud.
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The Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis
- Hobson and McCarley- Using brain-imaging techniques,researchers have found evidence thatdreams are products of activity in the pons.- When signals from the pons bombardthe cortex during waking consciousness,the association areas of the cortexinterpret those signals as seeing,hearing, and so on. Because thosesignals come from the real world, this process results in an experience of reality.- But when people are asleep, the signalsfrom the brain stem are random and notnecessarily attached to actual externalstimuli, yet the brain must somehowinterpret these random signals. It
synthesizes
(puts together) anexplanation of the cortex’s activationfrom memories and other storedinformation.- In this theory, a dream is merely another kind of thinking that occurs when people sleep. It is less realistic becauseit comes not from the outside world of reality but from within people’smemories and experiences of the past.- The frontal lobes, which peoplenormally use in daytime thinking, aremore or less shut down duringdreaming, which may also account for the unrealistic and often bizarre natureof dreams.
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Activation-Information-Mode Model(AIM)
- Hobson and colleagues- Information that is accessed duringwaking hours can have an influence onthe synthesis of dreams. When the brainis “making up” a dream to explain itsown activation, it uses meaningful bitsand pieces of the person’s experiencesfrom the previous day or the last fewdays rather than just random items frommemory.
THE EFFECTS OF HYPNOSIS
Hypnosis is a state of consciousness inwhich a person is especially susceptible tosuggestion.
Steps in Hypnotic Induction (Druckman &Bjork, 1994)
1. The hypnotist tells the person to focuson what is being said.2. The person is told to relax and feel tired.3. The hypnotist tells the person to “let go”and accept suggestions easily.4. The person is told to use vividimagination.Using brain-scanning techniques,researchers found that two areas in the brains of highly hypnotizable people, areas associatedwith decision-making and attention, seem to bemore active and connected when compared to people who cannot be hypnotized.A test of hypnotic susceptibility, or thedegree to which a person is a good hypnoticsubject, often makes use of a series of orderedsuggestions. The more suggestions in theordered list the person responds to, the moresusceptible that person is.Although the popular view is that thehypnotized person is acting involuntarily, thefact is that the hypnotist may only be a guideinto a more relaxed state, while the subjectactually hypnotizes himself or herself.People cannot be hypnotized againsttheir will. The tendency to act as though their behavior is automatic and out of their control iscalled the
basic suggestion effect
; it gives peoplean excuse to do things they might not otherwisedo because the burden of responsibility for their actions falls on the hypnotist.Hypnosis is also a controversial toolwhen used in therapy to help people “recover”what are thought to be repressed memories.hypnosis is a handy way to help people relaxand/or to control pain.Hypnosis is sometimes used in psychological therapy to help people cope withanxiety or deal with cravings for food or drugs.
Theories of Hypnosis
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Hypnosis as Dissociation: The HiddenObserver
- Ernest Hilgard believed that hypnosisworked only on the immediateconscious mind of a person, while a partof that person’s mind (a “hiddenobserver”) remained aware of all thatwas going on.
Example
: When people drive somewherefamiliar and then wonder how they got there.One part of the mind, the conscious part, isthinking about dinner or a date or somethingelse, while the other part is doing the actualdriving. When people arrive at their destination,they don’t really remember the actual trip.
- In one study (Miller & Bowers),subjects were hypnotized and told to puttheir arms in ice water, although theywere instructed to feel no pain. Therehad to be pain. But subjects reported no pain at all. The subjects who weresuccessful at denying the pain alsoreported that they imagined being at the beach or in some other place thatallowed them to dissociate from the pain.
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Hypnosis as Social Role-Playing: TheSocial-Cognitive Explanation
- An experiment in which participantswho were not hypnotized wereinstructed to behave as if they were.- Researchers also found that participantswho were not familiar with hypnosis,and had no idea what the “role” of ahypnotic subject was supposed to be,could not be hypnotized.- The social-cognitive theory of hypnosisassumes that people who are hypnotizedare not in an altered state but are merely playing the role expected of them in thesituation.- They might believe that they arehypnotized, but in fact it is all a verygood performance, so good that even the“participants” are unaware that they arerole-playing.
THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOACTIVEDRUGS
Whereas some people seek altered statesof consciousness in sleep, daydreaming,meditation, or even hypnosis, others try to take ashortcut. They use psychoactive drugs, chemicalsubstances that alter thinking, perception,memory, or some combination of those abilities.
Physical Dependence
- Drugs that people can become physically dependent on cause the user’s body to crave the drug.- After using the drug for some period of time, the body becomes unable tofunction normally without the drug andthe person is said to be dependent or addicted.- One sign of physical dependence is thedevelopment of a
drug tolerance
. Asthe person continues to use the drug,larger and larger doses of the drug areneeded to achieve the same initialeffects of the drug.- Another sign of a physical dependenceis that the user experiences symptoms of
withdrawal
when deprived of the drug.Depending on the drug, these symptomscan range from headaches, nausea, andirritability to severe pain, cramping,shaking, and dangerously elevated blood pressure.- These physical sensations occur becausethe body is trying to adjust to theabsence of the drug. Many users willtake more of the drug to alleviate thesymptoms of withdrawal, which makesthe entire situation worse. This isactually an example of:
- Negative reinforcement
. The tendency tocontinue a behavior that leads to the
removal of or escape from unpleasantcircumstances or sensations.- The mechanisms of dependence are not just a product of learning—the brainitself plays an important part. Drugs thatcan lead to dependence cause the releaseof dopamine in a part of the brain calledthe mesolimbic pathway, a neural track that begins in the midbrain area (justabove the pons) and connects to limbicsystem structures, including theamygdala and the hippocampus, andcontinues to the middle of the prefrontalcortex.- When a drug enters the body, it goesquickly to this area, known as the brain’s “reward pathway,” causing arelease of dopamine and intense pleasure. The brain tries to adapt to thislarge amount of dopamine by decreasingthe number of synaptic receptors for dopamine. The next time the user takesthe drug, he or she needs more of it toget the same pleasure response becauseof the reduced number of receptors—drug tolerance hasdeveloped.
Psychological Dependence
- The belief that the drug is needed tocontinue a feeling of emotional or psychological well-being.- The body may not need or crave thedrug, and people may not experience thesymptoms of physical withdrawal or tolerance, but they will continue to usethe drug because they think they need it.-
