5 Steps to a 5: AP Psychology - McGraw Hill 2021

Techniques to Learn About Structure and Function
6 Biological Bases of Behavior
STEP 4 Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High

IN THIS CHAPTER

Summary: As you read this page, lots of things are going through your mind. Your mind is what your brain does, according to many psychologists. The relationships of behavior, the mind, and the nervous system, especially the brain, have become increasingly clear as improvements in technology have enabled scientists to make better observations. In all areas of anatomy and physiology, structure is related to function. Specialized structures throughout your body enable regulatory function at all levels of organization from your neurotransmitter molecules to your nervous and endocrine systems.

Neuropsychologists explore the relationships between brain/nervous systems and behavior. Neuropsychologists are also called biological psychologists or biopsychologists, behavioral geneticists, physiological psychologists, and behavioral neuroscientists.

Consciousness is your awareness of the outside world and yourself, including your own mental processes, thoughts, feeling, and perceptions. Your consciousness is selective, subjective, and unique to you—always changing, and central to your sense of self.

This chapter focuses on our nervous system—all its parts at different levels of organization—and the tools that have enabled us to learn about it. It also deals with the impact sleep and drugs on our nervous system.

Key Ideas

Techniques to learn about structure and function

Nervous system organization

Brain structure and function

Neuron structure and function

Endocrine system structure and function

Evolution and behavior

Genetics and behavior

Various states of consciousness and their impact on behavior

Psychoactive drugs: depressants, narcotics, stimulants, and hallucinogens

Sleep and dreams

Sleep disorders

Techniques to Learn About Structure and Function

As technology has improved, scientists have used a wide range of techniques to learn about the brain and neural function. Over 150 years ago, studying patients with brain damage linked loss of structure with loss of function. Phineas Gage was the level-headed, calm foreman of a railroad crew (1848) until an explosion hurled an iron rod through his head. After the injury severed the connections between his limbic system and frontal cortex, Gage became hostile, impulsive, and unable to control his emotions or his obscene language. Observed at autopsy, his loss of tissue (where the limbic system is connected to the frontal lobes) revealed the relationship between frontal lobes and control of emotional behavior. In another case, Paul Broca (1861) performed an autopsy on the brain of a patient, nicknamed Tan, who had lost the capacity to speak, although his mouth and his vocal cords weren’t damaged and he could still understand language. Tan’s brain showed deterioration of part of the frontal lobe of the left cerebral hemisphere, as did the brains of several similar cases. This connected destruction of the part of the left frontal lobe known as Broca’s area to loss of the ability to speak, known as expressive aphasia. Carl Wernicke similarly found another brain area involved in understanding language in the left temporal lobe. Destruction of Wernicke’s area results in loss of the ability to comprehend written and spoken language, known as receptive aphasia.

“Structure is always related to function in living things.”

—Adrianne, AP teacher

Gunshot wounds, tumors, strokes, and other diseases that destroy brain tissue enabled further mapping of the brain. Because the study of the brain through injury was a slow process, quicker methods were pursued. Lesions, precise destruction of brain tissue, enabled more systematic study of the loss of function resulting from surgical removal (also called ablation), cutting of neural connections, or destruction by chemical applications. Surgery to relieve epilepsy severs neural connections at the corpus callosum, between the cerebral hemispheres. Studies by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga of patients with these “split brains” have revealed that the left and right hemispheres do not perform exactly the same functions (brain lateralization) that the hemispheres specialize in. The left cerebral hemisphere is specialized for verbal, mathematical, and analytical functions. The nonverbal right hemisphere is specialized for spatial, musical, and holistic functions such as identifying faces and recognizing emotional facial expressions.

Direct electrical stimulation of different cortical areas of the brain during surgery enabled scientists to observe the results. Stimulating the back of the frontal cortex at particular sites caused body movement for different body parts, enabling mapping of the motor cortex.

In recent years, neuroscientists have been able to look inside the brain without surgery. Computerized axial tomography (CAT or CT) creates a computerized image using X-rays passed through various angles of the brain showing two-dimensional “slices” that can be arranged to show the extent of a lesion. In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a magnetic field and pulses of radio waves cause the emission of faint radio frequency signals that depend upon the density of the tissue. The computer constructs images based on varying signals that are more detailed than CT scans. Both CT scans and MRIs show the structure of the brain but don’t show the brain functioning.

Measuring Brain Function

Scientists have developed a number of tools to measure the brain functions of people. An EEG (electroencephalogram) is an amplified tracing of brain activity produced when electrodes positioned over the scalp transmit signals about the brain’s electrical activity (“brain waves”) to an electroencephalograph machine. The amplified tracings are called evoked potentials when the recorded change in voltage results from a response to a specific stimulus presented to the subject. EEGs have been used to study the brain during states of arousal such as sleeping and dreaming, to detect abnormalities (such as deafness and visual disorders in infants), and to study cognition. Another technology, positron emission tomography (PET) produces color computer graphics that depend on the amount of metabolic activity in the imaged brain region. When neurons are active, an automatic increase in blood flow to the active region of the brain brings more oxygen and glucose necessary for respiration. Blood flow changes are used to create brain images when tracers (such as radioactively tagged glucose) injected into the blood of the subject emit particles called positrons, which are converted into signals detected by the PET scanner. Functional MRI (fMRI) shows the brain at work at higher resolution than the PET scanner. Changes in oxygen in the blood of an active brain area alters its magnetic qualities, which is recorded by the fMRI scanner. After further computer processing, a detailed picture of that local brain activity emerges. With new brain imaging technology, psychologists can explore far more about our abilities than ever before, from well-known systems like perception to less understood systems like motivation and emotion.

A magnetic source image (MSI), which is produced by magnetoencephalography (MEG scan), is similar to an EEG, but the MEG scans are able to detect the slight magnetic field caused by the electric potentials in the brain. The images can pinpoint locations of seizures.

Brain Imaging Technologies