The Brain

8 Key excerpts on "The Brain"

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  eBook - ePub

  Essentials of Processing Assessment, 3rd Edition

  • Milton J. Dehn, Alan S. Kaufman, Nadeen L. Kaufman, Alan S. Kaufman, Nadeen L. Kaufman(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Three THE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES

  The main purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of The Brain structures and functions involved in each of the 14 psychological processes. Knowing some basics about the neuroanatomy of psychological processes can enhance our understanding of how brain‐based processes influence learning and how dysfunctions or deficits in specific neuropsychological processes can impair specific types of learning and performance. Neuroanatomy also illustrates how and why some psychological processes are interrelated. For example, impairment in a visual pathway that connects the occipital and temporal lobes may account for a deficit in rapid automatic naming, a task that, on the surface, appears to depend primarily on memory processes.

  The human brain is incredibly complex, and much of its functioning is not fully understood. Some of the 14 processes can be more readily mapped to specific brain regions and structures than others. However, most brain‐processing relationships involve interrelated brain networks; very few specific processes function in just one brain structure. This chapter will not review all brain anatomy or all types of processing but focuses mainly on the 14 processes and the primary brain structures involved in these specific processes. Detailed neuroanatomy of several of the 14 processes can be found in Miller and Maricle (2019 ). For more details on brain anatomy, see Carter et al. (2019 ), Hale and Fiorello (2004 ), and Reynolds and Fletcher‐Janzen (1997 ).

  OVERVIEW OF BRAIN STRUCTURES AND FUNCTIONS

  Brain Cells

  The Brain's nerve cells, known as neurons, make up less than 10% of The Brain's volume. The remaining cells, known as glial cells, are support cells that provide such functions as supplying the neurons with glucose. What allows The Brain to function as an integrated whole is the ability of each neuron to send and receive signals with countless neurons. Signals are sent out from a neuron on a long, thin extension known as an axon. Receiving the signals are numerous, shorter extensions known as dendrites. The axons and dendrites exchange signals across a small gap known as a synapse. Most growth in brain size after birth results from myelination

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  The Brain and Psychology

  • M. C. Wittrock(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  PART III PSYCHOLOGY AND THE RECENT RESEARCH ON THE DRAIN The third and final section of this hook develops relationships between recent research on The Brain and cognitive processes of interest to many psychologists. These relationships between The Brain and psychology are developed from three different perspectives: that of a brain researcher, a developmental psychologist, and an educational psychologist. These chapters bring together many of the issues and findings reported in the earlier chapters of this volume and relate them to issues in cognition, development, and learning. This page intentionally left blank Chapter VII Cognition ond the Droin tÁAKCÍl KINSBOURNE The purpose of this chapter is to outline some principles of the functional organization of The Brain with respect to its control of in-telligent behavior. Drawing upon a combination of known facts and controversial but heuristically useful concepts, it attempts to show that the way the human brain is organized determines the manner in which we expand our potential to learn as our brains mature during childhood. If the educator takes note of the principles of acquisition of skill, and of how these are influenced by brain organization, he will be in a better position to use to best advantage his pupil's cognitive potential and understand an unexpected block to learning when it occurs. I. Point of Departure Neurologically simple organisms behave in a few stereotyped ways predetermined by species-specific genetically mediated control. The number of perceptual discriminations they can make is small, though sufficient to satisfy adaptive necessity. Their limited response repertoire is geared to the few broad categories of perceptual differentiation that they can make. But even quite early in the further elaboration of the nervous system, organisms achieve an additional capability: to learn. 025 The Brain AND PSYCHOLOGY Copyright © 1980 by Academic Press, Inc.

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  Psychological Criminology

  An Integrative Approach

  • Richard Wortley(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Examined in this chapter is the pivotal role in criminal behaviour played by The Brain as it mediates between internal biological inputs and external environmental inputs. The area of psychology concerned with brain structure and function is neuropsychology. Neuropsychologists examine the biological events in The Brain that underlie human action, emotion and thought, including those associated with criminal behaviour. They are concerned with both normal brain structures and functions, and with the behavioural implications of brain impairments. We begin with an overview of the general field of neuropsychology, before moving to a more specific discussion of neuropsychological correlates and explanations of criminal behaviour.

  Basic brain structures and functions

  Neuropsychology, like behavioural genetics, is a specialist field and it is beyond the scope of this book to cover it in detail here. What follows, then, is a simplified description of basic brain structures and functions that are especially relevant to neuropsychological explanations of crime; namely, the nervous system, biochemical messengers, brain anatomy, and environmental impacts on brain development.

  The nervous system

  The Brain is part of the body’s nervous system, a network of nerve cells – or neurons – that is responsible for all psychological, behavioural, and physiological activity. The basic job of a neuron is to relay information. Neurons come in a variety of shapes and have different specialised functions, but most comprise four main structures. The body of the neuron is called the soma and houses the basic machinery of the cell. Extending from the soma are tree-like fibres – hundreds or even thousands in number – called dendrites, which have receptors responsible for receiving messages from other neurons. Also extending from the soma is a slender tube called an axon, which is responsible for sending messages. The axon divides and branches, and at the ends of the branches are terminal buttons from which the messages are sent. A simplified diagram of a neuron is shown in Figure 4.1.

  Figure   4.1

    A neuron.

  The nervous system is divided into two parts – the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS) (see Figure 4.2

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  Psychological Criminology

  An Integrative Approach

  • Richard Wortley(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Willan

    (Publisher)

  Examined in this chapter is the pivotal role in criminal behaviour played by The Brain as it mediates between internal biological inputs and external environmental inputs. The area of psychology concerned with brain structure and function is neuropsychology. Neuropsychologists examine the biological events in The Brain that underlie human action, emotion and thought, including those associated with criminal behaviour. They are concerned with both normal brain structures and functions, and with the behavioural implications of brain impairments. We begin with an overview of the general field of neuropsychology, before moving to a more specific discussion of neuropsychological correlates and explanations of criminal behaviour.

  Basic Brain Structures and Functions

  Neuropsychology, like behavioural genetics, is a specialist field and it is beyond the scope of this book to cover it in detail here. What follows, then, is a simplified description of basic brain structures and functions that are especially relevant to neuropsychological explanations of crime.

  The Nervous System

  The Brain is part of the body’s nervous system, a network of nerve cells – or neurons – that is responsible for all psychological, behavioural and physiological activity. The basic job of a neuron is to relay information. Neurons come in a variety of shapes and have different specialised functions, but most comprise four main structures. The body of the neuron is called the soma and houses the basic machinery of the cell. Extending from the soma are tree-like fibres – hundreds or even thousands in number – called dendrites, which have receptors responsible for receiving messages from other neurons. Also extending from the soma is a slender tube called an axon, which is responsible for sending messages. The axon divides and branches, and at the ends of the branches are terminal buttons from which the messages are sent. A simplified diagram of a neuron is shown in Figure 4.1.

  Figure 4.1

  A neuron.

  The nervous system is divided into two parts: the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS) (see Figure 4.2). The CNS comprises The Brain and the spinal cord and is the body’s ‘command centre’. The Brain receives and processes stimuli from inside and outside of the body, it interprets and stores information, and it dispatches messages to initiate responses. The spinal cord is connected to the base of The Brain and primarily acts as a conduit between The Brain and the rest of the body below the neck.

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  eBook - ePub

  The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology

  • Sarah Robins, John Symons, Paco Calvo, Sarah Robins, John Symons, Paco Calvo(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part IVThe biological basis of psychology Passage contains an image

  25Representation and The Brain

  Arthur B. Markman

  Representation and The Brain

  The fundamental premise on which the information-processing revolution in psychology was built is that the mind/brain can be profitably understood as a computational device. Central to this notion of computation is that there are data structures in the mind that format the information used in psychological processing, and that these data structures are processed by procedures that make use of this information (Markman 1999; Palmer 1978). Many theories in psychology focus on representation in a functional sense (see the chapter in this volume by Polger). That is, they talk about the ways that people represent and process information independently of the physical implementation of those representations and processes within The Brain. In contrast, this chapter is explicitly concerned with issues relevant to thinking about representation and The Brain.

  To accomplish this goal, the chapter begins with a brief discussion of the concept of representation (see also the chapters in this volume by Ryder, and Adams and Aizawa). Then, we examine two ways of thinking about representational issues in The Brain. The first examines representation at the level of individual neurons and groups of neurons. The second focuses on broad implications of the regions of The Brain that are active during cognitive processing for the content of mental representations. In both of these sections we focus primarily on philosophical issues that affect our ability to make claims about mental representation rather than on current beliefs about the way The Brain is representing particular kinds of information. The reason for this focus is that neuroscience is a rapidly developing field. Specific claims about the functionality of particular brain regions will undoubtedly become outdated quickly, but the philosophical issues underlying our understanding of representation in The Brain remain more constant.

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  The Cambridge Handbook of Cultural-Historical Psychology

  • Anton Yasnitsky, René van der Veer, Michel Ferrari(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  (p. 2) Similarly, neuroscientists may decide that they are studying human mind from now on; but they cannot decide that psychology shall become a part of neuroscience. In fact, the opposite is true, neuroscience should be a part – a part that complements other parts – of the approaches to the study of human nature. Cerebral organization of psychological functions The question of cerebral organization of psychological functions is far from being understood today despite numerous advancements in technology that allow us to study brain structure and physiology in vivo. There are two interrelated matters that cultural-historical neuropsychology aims to resolve. First, the relation of a psychological function to The Brain is understood when its systemic localization is described. It is necessary to reveal all the localized subprocesses and the ways in which these precise localizations are functionally related. A substantial amount of neuropsychological research today is dedicated to studying functions of certain brain regions as if they can be isolated from the whole system that underlies a psychological process. This approach is very likely to give misleading results because it is not possible to detect what functional properties of the studied area are inherent and what properties actually are emergent properties that come to being because this or that brain region became part of a whole system – it is a structural systemic principle that properties of components change when they are included in a higher-order structure. The whole can never be ignored if the properties of the parts are studied. Second, the actual function of localized areas should be studied. The major problem that is commonly ignored is that the same region participates in many different psychological functions. If functions of the regions are studied in relation to psychological functions one by one, the real function of the region is very hard to reveal.

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  Mapping the Mind

  The Intersection of Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience

  • Fred M. Levin(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  10 Psychological Development and the Changing Organization of The Brain 1 P R E C I S A description of the optimal psychoanalytic model should contain sufficient information to explain how the model itself came into being, since the model is of the mind, an organ that is in many ways self-replicating. The Brain is the kind of self-replicating machine that John von Neumann dreamed about and wrote mathematical descriptions of. But few of our developmental models of mind map out the manner in which new mental structure-function comes into being and becomes assimilated into the model itself. Rather, even the best merely describe the series of steps that a particular type of develop-ment traverses. Two shifts within science may result in our scientific, psychoanalytic world changing substantially over the next several decades. First, the high-speed digital computer has begun to extend into so-called supercomputer realms, where computers can be used to model behavior of systems of ultracomplejcity: the weather, the flow of heat within the mantel of the earth, and the complex activity within the central nervous system (note well, the metabolic activity within The Brain is thinking). Second, we have the combined insights of a large number of sources, which seem themselves to be growing more or less exponentially: economics (decision-making theory), artificial intelligence, learning disabilities science, neuropsychology, neu-ropsychiatry, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, anthropology, archaeology, 1 This chapter is dedicated to Dr. David Armstrong Breuckner, who pioneered in the area of interdisciplinary research. 185

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  Handbook of Psychology, History of Psychology

  • (Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3 Biological Psychology Robert E. Clark, Jena B. Hales, Stuart M. Zola, and Richard F. Thompson The Mind The Brain Sensory Processes Learning and Memory Motivation and Emotion Cognitive Neuroscience Conclusion References

  The great questions of philosophy, the mind–body problem and the nature of knowledge, were also the questions that drove early developments in the pathways to modern psychology. This is especially true of biological or physiological psychology. Wilhelm Wundt, who founded experimental psychology, titled his major work Foundations of Physiological Psychology (1874/1908). William James, the other major figure in the development of modern psychology, devoted a third of his influential text Principles of Psychology (1890) to The Brain and nervous system. Both Wundt and James studied medicine and philosophy, and both considered themselves physiologists. Their goal was not to reduce psychology to physiology but rather to apply the scientific methods of physiology to the study of the mind. The other driving force in early biological psychology was the study of The Brain and nervous system.

  The major topics in modern biological psychology are sensory processes, learning and memory, motivation and emotion, and, most recently, cognition—in short, behavioral and cognitive neuroscience. A number of other areas began as part of physiological psychology and have spun off to become fields in their own right. We treat the major topics in biological psychology separately in the text that follows. But first we sketch very briefly the recent philosophical and physiological roots.

  The Mind

  The history of such issues as the mind–body problem and epistemology is properly the domain of philosophy, treated extensively in many volumes and well beyond the scope of this chapter and the expertise of these authors. Our focus in this brief section is on the history of the scientific study of the mind, which really began in the 19th century.

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