2. Behavioral Neuroscience
• Why study this in psychology?
• How can it help us understand the goals of
psychology?
• Goals
– Describe
– Understand
– Predict
– Control or modify
• Behaviors & thoughts
4. Historical View of the Brain
• 1000 BC Egyptian Pharaohs mummification
• Brain
– Removed & discarded
• Vital to afterlife
– Heart
• Left in body
• Seen as containing perception, cognition & soul
– Intestines, liver, lungs & stomach
• Removed, wrapped & placed in canopic jars.
5. Historical View of the Brain
• Many cultures similar views of heart
• Brain interpreted in various ways
– Aristotle cooling emotions of heart
• Change began in 1500’s
• Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519
– Head seen as holding cognition
– Ventricle system
• Holes in the brain.
8. Evolutionary Psychology
• Focuses on
–Adapted benefits of selected behaviors
• Women
–Talk
–Multi-task
» Women larger area for communication
• Men
–Quiet
–Singularly focused
» Larger area of brain for sex
11. Evolution Does :
• Works to improve
reproduction success
Evolution Doesn’t:
• Work to improve a
species
• Have a conscious plan
or purpose
• Work to produce
happiness or
contentment
Evolution
12. Evolutionary Psychology
– Natural selection
• Evolutionary process by which those individuals of a
species that are best adapted are the ones that survive
& reproduce
– Survivors better adapted to world than non-
survivors
13. Evolutionary Psychology
Emphasizes importance of
Adaptation
Reproduction
“Survival of the fittest”
In shaping behavior
Spatial skills in finding way home
Fit
Ability to
Bare offspring that survive long enough to bare offspring
Pass your genes to next generation
18. Terminal Button
1. Synthesis of
neurotransmitter (NT)
2. Storage & transport of
NT within vesicles
3. NT Release
4. Activation of
postsynaptic receptors
5. Termination of
transmitter effect (e.g.
reuptake)
21. Synapse
• Synapse
–Space between axon terminal &
adjacent dendrite or cell body
• Neurotransmitter (NT)
–Molecules released from terminal
button into synapse.