Disciplines of Neuroscience Related to Biopsychology
Biopsychology and a few of the disciplines of neuroscience that are particularly relevant to it.
- biopychology
- nueroanatomy
- nuerophysiology
- nueroendocrionology
- nuerophramacology
- nueropathology
- nuerochemistry
Human Subjects
Advantages of Humans
- Follow Directions
- Report Subjective Experience
- Less Expensive
- Human Brain
Nonhuman Subjects
Advantages of Nonhuman Subjects
- Simpler Nervous Systems
- Comparative Approach
- Fewer Ethical Constraints
- developmental research (easy with flies)
naked mole rat: stroke
zebrafish: knockout a gene and is that related to nueronal growth
IRB
IACUC
no one protects the flies
- IRB: protects humans
- IACUC: making sure all animals are safe
- no one protects the flies
Experiments
Experiments
- Used for cause and effect relationships
- Between subjects design (more subjects)
- Within subjects design (less subjects (go through levels)
- Independent variables (change levels)
- Dependent variables (measuring)
- Confounding variables (reduce these and makes experiments difficult )
Quasiexperiments
- Used when controlled experiments are impossible
- Self-selected subjects
- Key Problem-Can’t control confounds
- researchers examine subjects in real-world situations who have self-selected into specific conditions (e.g., excessive alcohol intake)
- you cannot control for potential confounding variables
- it does not allow a researcher to establish direct cause-and-effect relationships
Example: Researchers cannot randomly assign humans to control and alcohol groups, and then expose one group to 10 years of chronic alcohol exposure to see if alcohol causes brain damage. Instead, they must compare the brains of alcoholics and non-alcoholics found in the real world.
case studies
- Used when conditions are rare
- Single-subject design
- Questionable generalizability
example: patient H.M.
The main problem with case studies main problem: generalizability, or the extent to which their results tell us something about the general population.
Pured and Applied Research
Pure research (basic function of the brain)
- Curiosity of the researcher
- Focus on basic concepts
- how things workd
- provide info. to a problem
Applied Research
- motivated by an attempt to directly use the building blocks of basic research to answer specific questions; human and animal problems are directly addressed.
- Use basic research to answer specific problems
- clinical applications (help alleviate symptoms)
physiological psychology
- Direct manipulation of nervous system
- controlled lab settings (lesions)
- Mostly lab animals
- Focus on pure research
Psychopharmacology
- Manipulation of nervous system pharmacologically
- Focuses on drug effects on behavior
- Drug effects change neural activity
- Conduct both pure and applied questions
- pure research (brain-behavior interactio of drug) and applied (drug abuse)
Drugs: theraptics, some are looking at what is wrong, others look at treating a disorder
- look at abuse
reduce symptoms - use it as a tool to understand the brain (focus on receptors)
5HT (serotonin)
- 14
- 5-HT1, 5-HT2A
- 5-HT2B
Neuropsychology
- Focuses on behavioral effects of brain damage (cortical damage)
- Cannot be done in experiemnts and instead uses case studies and quasiexperimental designs
- Applied research
- Most applied of the six divisions of biopsychology; neuropsychological tests of brain-damaged patients facilitate diagnosis, treatment, and lifestyle counseling (e.g., the case of Mr. R. described in the text)
- human interaction on whats happening
dr. jones does this
psycophsiology
- Focuses on physiological and psychological processes
Uses noninvasive recordings from humans
* Muscle tension
* Eye movement
* Pupil dilation
* Electrical conductance of the skin
* HRV
* non invasive
dr. brunet does this with eeg
eyetracker: people w/ schizo. have trouble with smooth eye movement
Cognitive Neuroscience
- Newest division of biopsychology
Focus: Neural basis of cognitive processes
* Learning/memory
* Attention
* Perceptual processes
- Use noninvasive, functional brain imaging
- Often collaborative between varied scientists
*
Functional Brain Imaging
- Functional brain imaging is the major method of cognitive neuroscience.
- This image—taken from the top of the head with the participant lying on her back—reveals the locations of high levels of neural activity at one level of the brain as the participant views a flashing light.
- The red and yellow areas indicate high levels of activity in the visual cortex at the back of the brain.
- assuming that brain area use more oxygen than than others
know dif. between ipislateral and contralteral
MRI
structure
fMRI
does not measure nuerons directly
- particpants do the same tasks over and over, then you get the avg. of those changes
- areas turn on bc of specfifc tasks
DTI
- tells you what direction infomration is going
- colors let you know where info is going
- use mri data
Prefrontal Lobotomy
- Dr. Egas Moniz received a Nobel Prize for developing a novel treatment for mental illness: prefrontal lobotomy, a procedure that separates the prefrontal lobes from the rest of the brain.
- Moniz based his technique on a report that a chimpanzee (Becky) was easier to handle after part of her prefrontal lobes had been destroyed as part of an experiment.
- different types of lobotomy exsisted (transoribitoal lobotomy: inserting an ice pick-like device through the eye sockets)
- lobotomy used all over the wolrd
- Howard Dully, the boy who was lobotomized at the insistence of his stepmother.
Regions Affected by Prefrontal Lobotomy
right frotal lobe
left
- executive function
- can be removed and you would be okay
- this makes us dif. than other species
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lecture 129
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lesson 219
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lec 2.5 (neuron)32
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lecture 39
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article 1 : Nueral systems and the emotion-memory link34
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article 2 Critical role of hippocampal muscarinic acetylcholine receptors on memory reconsolidation in mice35
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article 3 Dopamine D2 receptors in the expression and extinction of contextual and cued conditioned fear in rats32
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review22
