Some students say this school is the most difficult part of the whole course.  It may have alot of material, but at its core, it is the most simple. 

The Biological Perspective views all behavior as a product of the body. 

In other words, your emotions come from either 1. neurotransmitters (natural chemicals in our body that help us feel), 2. the brain or 3. our body chemistry (our glucose levels, diet etc...). 

For example, if a person is suffering from depression, a psychologist from the biological school would examine the body to see what physiological grounds exists that is causing the depression.  There you go- that is the introduction...that is enough for today.

So the first and most basic structure in the biological school of psychology is the neuron which kind of looks like:

 

These neurons send information throughout our whole body.  Let's go through the specific parts of a neuron and their functions (isn't this edge of your seat, biting your fingernails exciting?)

Neuroanatomy	Function
Dendrites	The root like part of the cell that stretches out from the cell body.  Dendrites will receive messages from other neurons by grabbing on to neurotransmitters (chemicals we will talk about soon).
Soma (cell body)	Contains the nucleus (brain) of the cell.  Tells the cell to fire of not to fire.
Axon	Wire like structure that extends from the soma to the axon terminal buttons.  It is like a highway in which the messages will travel down the neuron.
Myelin Sheath	A fatty layer of tissue that surrounds the axon.  It helps speed up neural impulses.
Axon Terminal Buttons	The branches at the end of the axon that contain neurotransmitters and send them shooting across the synapse.  They also suck up excess neurotransmitter in a process called reuptake.
Neurotransmitters	Chemicals contained in the terminal buttons that enable neurons to communicate.  Neurotransmitters fit into receptor cells on the dendrites on other neurons like a key in a lock.
Synapse	The space in between neurons (neurons never touch each other).

Ok- when a neuron is hanging out doing nothing, it is called resting potential and it has a slightly negative charge inside of it.  When a neuron decides to go to work its called action potential (the process by which a neuron fires).  Action Potential is a electro-chemical process, which means half of the job is electrical and half is chemical.

Lets explain action potential by talking about three neuron buddies named Bikita, Fabian and Joe.  There is a rumor going around that Joe's girlfriend is cheating on him with a toenail cell, but Joe does not know about it yet.  Lets call that rumor a neurotransmitter (chemical messengers that run throughout our body).  Pieces of the rumor (neurotransmitter) first get shot over to Bikita and stick to her dendrites.  Bikita cannot send the rumor along because she is not yet sure it is true and does not want to hurt Joe's feelings.  When enough of the rumor (neurotransmitter) is attached to Bikita's dendrites it hits her threshold and she cannot hold it in any more (she has to tell Joe).  She does not believe in telling just a bit of the story, she wants to tell the whole damn thing (called the all-or-none response).  So Bikita opens up a portal on her axon and lets in positive ions into her causing an electrical charge.  The electrical charge travels down the axon to the axon terminal (or terminal buttons) where the rumor (neurotransmitter) is stored to tell the next neuron.  The rumor is shot across the gap in between Bikita and her buddy Fabian called the synapse.  Fabian uses his dendrites to collect the rumor so he can proceed to use action potential to send the process to Joe.  When Fabian has had enough of the rumor and decides to send the information to Joe, he signals Bikita to stop send messages (neurotransmitter).  Bikita will then suck up the rest of the rumor (neurotransmitter) that is in the synapse in a process called reuptake.  It you actually understood any of this you are a freakin genius because that may be the worst analogy of all time.  I better go over this in detail in class!!!

Just like there are different rumors in your school, there are different neurotransmitters in your body.  Just like various rumors will effect you differently, various neurotransmitters do different things to your body.  I CANNOT underestimate how important these chemicals (neurotransmitters) are to our body.  Everything we do, we need a neurotransmitter to do well.  Every time you move, think, smile, or even feel emotion; you are at the mercy of your neurotransmitter.

Here are the important ones you should know for the AP Exam.

Neurotransmitter	Function	Issues with it.
Acetylcholine (ACH)	Motor Movement and Memory	To much you spasm.  Too little you do not move.  Lack of it has been linked to Alzheimer's disease.
Dopamine	Motor movement and Alertness	Lack of it has been linked to Parkinson's disease.  Too much of it has been linked to schizophrenia.
Endorphins	Pain Control	Involved in addictions.
Serotonin	Mood Control	Lack of it is linked to depression.

Now although we have all of these neurotransmitters naturally in our bodies, modern medicine has figured out a way to manipulate them using what we call drugs.

Ok, so we kind of understand what a neuron is and how it works (at least pretend you understand, it will make me feel good).  Now neurons don't hang out all alone (like Mr. Woolbert on a Saturday night), they party hardy together in what scientists call our nervous system.

There are basically three types of neurons that you should know about for the AP Exam.

• Sensory (sometimes called Afferent) Neurons: Sensory (Afferent) neurons take information from our senses (touch, vision, hearing etc...) to our brain.  When you have one of those infected zits and you try to pop it but the pain is just too much to bear; it is sensory (afferent) neurons that are telling your brain about the pain.
• Motor (sometimes called Efferent) Neurons: Motor (Efferent) neurons take information from the brain and send in out to the rest of the body.  If you have your heart set on popping that zit, you use motor (efferent) neurons to move your fingers into the proper pinching to pop position.
• Interneurons: These are the middlemen neurons.  You see, sensory and motor neurons hate talking to each other (they had a bad break up a few years back) and interneurons help them communicate with each other (you know that guy who sends messages back and forth between you and your best friend when you are fighting- that is the interneuron).  Interneurons are located in the brain and spinal cord while motor and sensory neurons are located throughout the body.

Think of it this way.  You are in sitting in math class and that really annoying guy sneezes on the back of your head.  Sensory (afferent) neurons send the feeling of sticky wetness up your spinal cord to your brain.  The sensory neurons pass the information off to the interneurons.  The interneurons hanging out in the brain decide what to do.  They then tell the motor (efferent) neurons the plan.  The motor (efferent) neurons then travel down your body and help your hand reach around and smack the guy upside the head.

Organization of the Nervous System

As you can see from the diagram above, the nervous system is broken down just like my man Stephan Marbury breaks down opposing defenses.  The two major categories of our nervous system are the Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems.

An easy way to think about the CNS is all nerve encased in bone.  In the case of human that includes just the brain and spinal cord.  We will talk WAY more about the brain in the next chapter.

Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)

The PNS consists of all the other nerves in our body or all nerves that are not encased in bone.  The PNS is divided into two categories, the Somatic and Autonomic Nervous Systems.

The Somatic Nervous System controls all of our voluntary muscle movements.  Everything from choosing to kick a ball to scratching an itch.  Every time you choose to move your body you are using motor neurons in the somatic nervous system.

The Autonomic Nervous System controls all of the automatic functions of our body.  Our heart rate, lungs, internal organs, etc...  Think about it for a second.  Lets day you eat a Hostess Cream filled cupcake.  The cupcake goes into your stomach.  Do you think about squirting stomach acid on the food? No!  Do you turn the food into glucose and fat your body can use? No!  Do you turn the leftover food into poop? No!  Although it would be really cool if we could control that.  All of these things happen automatically in our bodies, thus the name autonomic nervous system.  Now to make things even more complicated, the autonomic system is broken down into two more nervous systems; the sympathetic and parasympathetic.

• Sympathetic Nervous System: Whether it is the morning before the AP Exam, the night of a big date or you just pissed off a guy named Bubba, you are going to be nervous.  Whenever our body feels stress, the sympathetic nervous system automatically does some things to attempt to make things better.  It will speed up your heart rate, dilate your pupils, move alot of blood into your arms and legs and away from your stomach and genitals.  Why does your body do this?  It thinks that when you are stressed, there is a good chance you might die, so it gets ready to fight or run; you may have heard this called the fight or flight response.  The sympathetic nervous system was really important when we were stressed because dinosaurs were chasing us (of course I know that humans were not around when dinosaurs were, but the thought of a T-Rex chasing a caveman is just really neat). 

But in today's world when being stressed means a test the next day, the changes in our body do not necessarily help (be thankful that school is your biggest stressor- it could be alot worse).

Parasympathetic Nervous System:  This part of the autonomic nervous system relaxes us (the opposite of the sympathetic).  think of the parasympathetic nervous system as what happens to you after a big Thanksgiving dinner.  You are tired, your pupils constrict,  the blood hangs out in your stomach and genitals- life is good.

Accidents

Every so often someone gets smacked in the head REALLY hard and from their injury we learn about the brain.  The most famous case occurred in 1848 to a fellow named Phineas Gage.  Phineas was working on the railroad when a iron pole shot through his head. 

Unbelievably, he survived the accident.  But his personality and behavior changed drastically after the catastrophe.  He became violent, angry and unpredictable (not just because a four foot pole shot through his head).  Phineas's accident first led scientists to believe that various parts of the brain control different parts of who we are.

Lesions

A lesion is the removal or destruction of part of the brain.  Doctors will lesion a patients brain during brain surgery (usually to remove some type of tumor).  By removing parts of the brain we were able to learn what different parts of the brain do. 

Below is a  lesion of a rat's brain

For example, if a doctor removed a tumor in your left temporal lobe of the brain and you were then unable to speak, we could assume that speech comes from that area of the brain.  Brain lesions were commonly used in the mid 1900s to control mentally unstable patients.  Part of the frontal lobe was removed (frontal lobotomy) and drastic behavioral changes occurred after surgery (we learned that our personalities are strongly centered in the front of our brains).

EEG (Electroencephalogram)

The brain is just like an electrical battery (remember the Matrix).  An EEG machine measures brain waves.  If you are awake it measures what we call alpha waves (short active waves) and when you are asleep it measures other waves like delta waves (long inactive waves).  If the EEG measures no activity then you are either brain dead or watching The Hills.  It is used commonly in sleep research.

CAT Scan (Computerized Axial Tomography)

A CAT scan is just a really sophisticated x-ray of the brain.  It gives us a 3D picture of the brain which is great for locating tumors, but it does NOT show brain activity or function.

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

An MRI gives us the most detailed picture of the brain.  It uses magnetic fields to knock electrons of their orbit and takes a picture by seeing them run back to their orbits (kind of).  There is no radiation so the procedure is safe, but once again it only gives us an idea of structure and not function.

PET Scan (Positron Emission Tomography)

A PET scan is the best way for us to see activity in the brain.  The patient will usually swallow a substance (like glucose) and the PET scan will see what parts of the brain are using the substance.  If a patient seems to be using alot of the substance in a certain part of the brain, we can tell what part of the brain is working.

Functional MRI

This is essentially a combination of the PET scan and the MRI.  The fMRI can give us the best picture of the brain while showing use blood flow information.  The Unicorns of brain technology.

 

The Anatomy of the Brain

OK lets break the brain down into three areas; the hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain. 

 

Hindbrain

From an evolutionary perspective, the hindbrain is the oldest part of our brain and is located deep within our head and on top of our spinal cord.  Because this was our first and most basic brain (way back before we were cave people) it controls most of our most basic functions.  There are three structures you should know in the hindbrain.

Medulla Oblongata:

The medulla helps control our heart rate, blood pressure and breathing.  It is located directing above our spinal cord and if you get hurt in the Medulla you should just pack it in.

Pons:  (known as the bridge between the hindbrain and cerebrum)

The Pons is located just above the medulla and it helps coordinate the hindbrain with the midbrain and forebrain.  It is also involved in facial expressions.

 Cerebellum:

The Cerebellum is located at the bottom rear or our brain and looks like a little version of our whole brain (like mini me).  The Cerebellum helps us coordinate our balance and fine muscle movements.  If you are playing Super Mario on the original Nintendo (still the best game), you are using your Cerebellum.

 Midbrain

Located in the middle of our brain, the midbrain does a whole lot of things, but for the purposes of the AP Psychology test, lets narrow it down to the two biggies.

1. The midbrain helps coordinate sensory information with simple movements.  What does that mean?  Sensory information is anything you feel using one of your five basic senses.  If someone hocks a lugi  at your head and you watch the goober travel through the air and track the incoming with your eyes at it races at your head, you are using your vision and eye and neck muscles together.  That is what I mean by sensory information with simple movements.  Just reading this text now, you are using your midbrain to keep your eyes and head moving.

2. The only structure you have to know in the midbrain is called the Reticular Formation.  The Reticular Formation control arousal.  Not sexual arousal, but actual "wake me up" arousal".  If you were in a deep sleep and I stimulated your Reticular Formation you would instantly wake up and not be tired at all.  If I lesioned (cut out) your Reticular Formation, you would fall into a coma in which you would never wake.

Forebrain

The forebrain is the most important part of the brain for this class.  It contains the newest structures in our brain (those that evolved most recently).  We are going to break the forebrain down into three parts.

Thalamus:

The thalamus is the operator/switchboard of our brain.  Any sensory information that comes into out bodies (sight, hearing, touch and taste) go to our Thalamus first and the Thalamus sends the information to the right parts of our brain to get processed (except for smell).

Limbic System:

The Limbic System is sometimes called the emotional control center of our brain because it contains structures that help us feel our most raw emotions.  The Limbic System itself is made up of several structures for which you have to know three of them:

1. Hypothalamus:  The hypothalamus is the size of a frozen pea (I don't know why a said frozen, it could be a thawed or fresh pea as well) but may the the most important structure in our brain.  It is involved in controlling the following activities: thirst, hunger, body temperature, sexual arousal and the endocrine system. Remember the 4 F's (fight/flight, feeding, fornicating) and 2 T's (thirst and temperature).

2. Hippocampus:  The hippocampus is involved in memory processing.  Our memories are not stored in the hippocampus, but it does help put the memories in the right places all around our brain.  Think of the hippocampus as you school librarian (in out school he likes to be known as the medial specialist).  Your librarian does not store the information of all the books in the library in their head, but can tell you where to find that information.

3. Amygdala:  The amygdala handles some memory processing, but for the most part handles basic emotions like anger and jealousy.

The Cerebral Cortex

The cerebral cortex is the most important part of our brain (at least in the field of psychology) because it is what makes us human.  The cerebral cortex (sometimes referred to as called "gray matter", is actually densely packed neurons.   We actually are born with more neurons in our cerebral cortex than we have now, but they are young and inexperienced.  As you get older the neurons learn to work together forming what we call neural networks.  Let's go back to when you were a kid and your parents taught you how to wipe your own butt.  The first time you wiped it was awkward, you probably wiped poo poo everywhere and had to concentrate really hard.  The neurons in your cerebral cortex were firing in the pattern of butt wiping for the first time.  Every time you wiped your butt afterward, the neurons practice.  Pretty soon those bunch of neurons that fire whenever you have to wipe your butt form a butt wiping team called a neural network.  Today you probably do not even have to think when you wipe your tushy because your neural network has formed such a cohesive team- congratulations!!!

Now our cerebral cortex is pretty big and full of wrinkles- these wrinkles are call fissures.  If you took out your cerebral cortex and ironed out all of the wrinkles it would be as big as a large pizza from Pizzeria Uno (but probably would not taste as good).

Now the cerebral cortex is divided into two hemispheres- the left and right hemispheres.  For the most part the hemispheres exhibit what we call Contralateral control: which means the left hemisphere controls the right side of out body and the right hemisphere controls the left side.  In general, right handed people (those with a stronger LEFT hemisphere) seem to be better at logical and sequential tasks.  Left handed people (those with a stronger RIGHT hemisphere) are better at spatial and creative tasks.

Between the two hemispheres is a band of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum.  The job of the corpus callosum is to help the two hemispheres communicate with each other.  In some cases of people with severe epilepsy, the corpus callosum is surgically removed and the seizure activity decreases.  However, these people lose the ability of there hemispheres to communicate to each other- they are called split brain patients.  They actually have two separate brains inside their head, and one brain has no idea what the other is doing.  For example, for most people the ability to see comes from the left hemisphere (which controls the right field of vision).  So if a split brain patient sees an elephant in their left visual field they will not be able to say what they see, but they can write it with their right hand (but not left hand)- get it?  Through the process of plasticity (which you should already know) most split brain patients will compensate and find ways for the hemispheres to communicate.

Areas of the Cerebral Cortex

We are going to talk about alot of places in the cerebral cortex-but there are also even more places that we will not talk about.  Let's call these places association areas- or areas that are involved in thought, memory, judgment humor, etc....- basically all areas not involved in sensory information or movement are association areas.

The Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex

Our cerebral cortex is divided up into four lobes (areas).  However, to be more specific, we really have eight lobes because each lobe has a right and left side- remember the cerebral cortex is contralateralized!!!

Frontal Lobes

The frontal lobes are located at the top part of our brain behind our eyes.  The frontal lobe is where most of our personality hangs out.  It is involved in the ability to control our emotions and abstract thought.  There are two specific areas in the frontal lobe that you should know for the AP Exam:

Motor Cortex

Located in the back of the frontal lobe this thin strip of tissue sends signals (motor neurons) to tell our body to move.  The things we move more (fingers) have more space devoted on the motor cortex, than parts of us we do not move much (pinky toes).  The top of the motor cortex controls the bottom of our body and the bottom of the cortex controls the top of our body.  If that is too confusing, just know that every time you voluntarily move your body, you are using the motor cortex in the frontal lobe.

Broca's Area

Located in the left frontal lobe (at least for most people- in some left handed people, Broca's area is on the right side), this areas controls the muscles in our mouth involved in speech.  Speaking is a complicated task and we have a whole area devoted just to talking.  If you damage Broca's area (called Broca's Aphasia) you will be unable to talk.

Parietal Lobes

The parietal lobes are located in back of the frontal lobes on the top of our head.  Most of the parietal lobes are made up of association areas.  There is only one structure you should know:

Sensory Cortex

Located in the front of the parietal lobe (directly behind the sensory cortex in the frontal lobe), this structure is responsible for us feeling touch sensations from our body.  Every time you feel a type of touch sensations (both pleasurable and pain) the information is sent up by sensory neurons to the thalamus and sent to the sensory cortex so we can feel it.  It is set up the same way the motor cortex is (see picture to right) in that the bottom of the cortex is responsible for the top of our body and the top of the cortex responsible for the bottom of our body.

Occipital Lobes

Located in the very back of our brain, the occipital lobes are responsible for our eyesight.  They contain the primary visual cortex which helps us interpret the information sent to us by our eyes (more specifically the retinas located in the back of our eyes- but we will get into that later on).  Just to make your lives a little more confusing- do you remember that our cerebral cortex is contralateralized- well so are our eyes- kind of.  You see, the right half of each of our retinas sends info to the left side of the occipital lobe and the left side of each retina sends info to our right occipital lobe.  Follow that- yeah right!!!  I will explain it in class.

Temporal Lobes

Located just above our ears on both sides of our head, the temporal lobes control our hearing and contain the auditory cortex.  What makes the temporal lobes so unique is that are NOT lateralized.  The left temporal lobe is involved in BOTH the hearing from the right and left ear.  There is one critical structure you should know that is in the temporal lobe:

Wernicke's Area

Wernicke's area is located in our left temporal lobe and is responsible for interpreting BOTH written and spoken speech.  You use Wernicke's area both the read and to listen.  If you damage Wernicke's Area (Wernicke's Aphasia) you would be unable to understand what you are reading or hearing.