Neuro Chapter 1

somatic intervention

Alteration of a structure or function (body or the brain) to see how a behavior is altered
Ex: leisure a part of the brain and infer how it affects behavior

correlational studies

measures how much a body measure varies with a behavioral measure... BUT correlation does not imply causation
Does the serotonin cause the depression or vice versa

neuroplasticity

describes the ability of the brain to be changed by environment (Brain changing its structure in response to experience)

reductionism

breaks a system down into smaller parts in order to understand it.

Leonardo da Vinci

pioneered anatomical drawings, including the use of cross sections.
Descartes

Descartes

Explained animal behavior in terms of a machine
Proposed the concept of spinal reflexes and their neural pathways
Proposed the pineal gland as the junction between mind and body (where the two come together)
Dualism (sep card)

Dualism

The idea put forth by descartes that humans have a nonmaterial soul (mental life) as well as material body (blood etc)

Phrenology

assigned separate functions (mental faculties) to cortical areas
Bumps on the skull were thought to overlie enlarged brain regions which are then matched to behaviors
Ex: if you have a big forehead, your prefrontal cortex is large, and you can infer somet

Paul broca

Showed that language ability is restricted to a small area, based on symptoms of a patient with damage in that region
This research idea continued during the 19th century- to find differences in brain regions and to relate behaviors to those regions

Craniometry and biological determinism

pseudoscience in the 19th century
Samuel george morton: looked to see how many mustard seeds can your skull hold (they compared people with different races and social classes etc) (white people have larger cranial capacity)
People were eager to find corre

New" Phrenology

Single region vs peak activity
Their are areas of the brain that are more active during certain tasks than others (brain is always active tho)